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Comment by AmirS2 | Hacker News Reader

Kenya has pretty good rates for prepaid data, approx 1 US cent per MB if you buy a 500Mb bundle:

http://www.safaricom.co.ke/personal/internet/data-plans/prep...

500KSH for the 500Mb bundle, current FX rate is 90KSH/USD. Even the smallest bundle, 4Mb, is hardly more expensive per MD, at only 5 KSH (5.6 cents).

Are these prices unrepresentative of other African countries?

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That bundle price in Kenya is pretty good by African Standards, but I do not think its representative. And even if it is, the masses do not have 5$ to put towards data bundles (bare in mind that they also have to buy airtime bundles just to use voice and SMS), so they end up paying the out-of-bundle data rates, which are about 20 times higher than the in-bundle rates.

God damn I just "topped up" my paltry 1GB per month in the UK at a cost almost twice that.

I don't care if information wants to be free, but I want my bandwidth to be free :-)

Edit: more seriously is control over the bandwidth usage. I notice my phone does a lot of background work that I either don't have control over or might do but is so diffuse to control I cannot be bothered. A few tens of dollars a month is annoying but it's not making me choose between food or bandwidth as it might in other areas.

I would hope that phones like the locked down android become more widespread or some other approach (can you write an app that controls other apps bandwidth?)

1c/MB is a huge price even for me in a western country. For me, it's between $1k and $2k a month!

For Africans the cost is even higher.

You probably wouldn't use nearly as much data if the speeds were only 2G/3G.

Was in Senegal a few years ago, frequently bought 100MB for 5,000CFA (about $10). At least that's what I remember. Is Orange just cheaper or is that about right?

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