Mobile Connections – Are we getting Our Money’s Worth in Africa?

No – according to a new report by Speedcheck, the high prices that people in Africa pay for the internet are rarely matched by the connection speeds. Speedcheck, a website that allows users to test the speed of internet connections, has studied at the relationship between the price of mobile data and the speeds at which carriers deliver the data and finds that Tunisia, the study’s highest-ranking African country, has download speeds that are almost twice as fast as those of Israel, the study’s highest ranking country. But the average price per gigabyte in Tunisia  is 65 times that of a gigabyte in Israel. This means even though there are instances where internet speeds on the continent might be faster than those elsewhere, customers are still paying exorbitant rates for their connections. Speedcheck analysed the mobile broadband speeds experienced by the users of its service in 89 countries on 5 continents and compared this to the cost of data in each of the countries. The result is a speed-price index (SPI). The higher the index, the more value for money for mobile internet users. The Speedcheck report, which covers 9 African countries, adjusts these data prices with the purchasing power index for each country for better comparison. According to the study, users of mobile internet in Africa countries are getting comparatively low value for money. High data prices in Africa are a determining factor.