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DA Youth wants mobile data allowance

Staff Writer
By Staff Writer, ITWeb
Johannesburg, 10 Oct 2017
DA Youth encourages government to allocate a mobile data allowance to aid poor young South Africans.
DA Youth encourages government to allocate a mobile data allowance to aid poor young South Africans.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) Youth wants poor young South Africans to have access to Internet services and is calling on government to allocate an allowance of 500MB free mobile data every month.

This was the sentiment shared by DA Youth's federal chairperson, Yusuf Cassim, speaking at a mass rally in Port Elizabeth, to announce the youth organisation's national campaign for mobile data for all.

According to Cassim, a mobile data allowance will enable young people to exploit the opportunities that technology offers.

"People with no Internet connection, by definition, have less economic power in the 21st century than other people. They have less access to training, no ways to see over the horizon, their connections to the world are entirely local except for those few people they maintain contact with by telephone."

Such an allowance must be made available to poor and missing middle students, matric learners registered at government schools and registered jobseekers, Cassim noted.

"Amongst the multitude of challenges confronting our youth... joblessness, an unequal and oppressive basic education system, exclusion from skills training and university education, substance abuse, etc, the exclusion from information and communication power provided through the Internet remains the largest obstacle to the freedom to progress as an individual.

"An allowance of 500MB a month will allow poor students, matrics and jobseekers to access the Internet for study purposes and to find work, and government must fund the costs of this allowance to enable poor young South Africans to take advantage of the benefits of the Internet."

Cassim pointed out that funding for the mobile data allowance can be achieved by the immediate release of the extra mobile data spectrum.

This will bring much-needed competition to the market and will naturally drive prices down, he said.

Meanwhile, following government pressure about the high price of data services in SA, regulatory bodies launched independent investigations on the same issue. Last year, South Africans took to social media to complain about the cost to communicate in the country.

In July, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa gazetted a notice "of its intention to conduct an inquiry to determine the priority markets in the electronic communications sector", which should be finalised by 31 March 2018.

The Competition Commission also followed by launching its own inquiry into the high price of data services in SA. The inquiry was initiated in response to a request by economic development minister Ebrahim Patel, who also expressed concerns over high data costs and highlighted the importance of data affordability, according to the commission.

The inquiry is due for completion by 31 August 2018 and the commission will then release its findings and recommendations.

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