Include particulars for local mobile

Letter to the Editor

Dear Ogone,

[The front page article of last week refers]

Please note that your heading is misleading. Namibia is ranked 19th for mobile prepaid voice in Africa in terms of cheapest product in a country, and 15th in terms of cheapest product from a dominant operator.
A full list of countries is available here: http://www.researchictafrica.net/prices/Fair_Mobile_PrePaid.php
The policy brief was written for South Africa. In a version for Namibia one would need to discuss the particularities of the Namibian market in more detail.
The OECD basket for prepaid mobile voice calculates the cost for 40 calls and 60 SMS. The calls are defined for various durations and destinations, in total 78 minutes.
Our website displays prices of that basket for all countries, all operators and all prepaid products. A further requirement is the duration of 1 month. Any weekly product is thus taken times 4, even though each bundle would already surpass the OECD basket usage by a multiple for Aweh Aweh.
In short, the Namibian consumer get more value for their money than the OECD basket displays. [This is] a weakness of any basket methodology.
Same applies to Mobile broadband data prices, as you mentioned in your article.

Kind regards

Dr. Christoph Stork
Partner – Research ICT Solutions
Vancouver / Cape Town