ABSTRACT

South Africa’s mobile telecommunications industry boasts four major players, namely Vodacom, MTN, CELL C and Telkom. On the face of it, this suggests a diverse market with healthy competition. However, the costs of mobile services, including data and voice calls remains among the highest in the world, suggesting a distorted and uncompetitive market. Despite increasing awareness of this reality, and growing public outcry, change has been slow and piecemeal, with both policymakers and regulatory authorities not taking decisive action. Using institutional policy analysis, document analysis and interviews with sampled actors from the telecommunication industry, civic society and the regulatory authority, this paper argues that a combination of regulatory paralysis, collusive behaviour by oligopolistic operators, indecisive government policy, and to some degree citizen inaction have led to sustained overpricing of mobile data in South Africa. It highlights the corporate dominance in the policing of this sector, which has implications for citizens’ capacity to participate in various spheres of life, and hence for democracy. The paper is premised on the public interest theory and theories of universal (internet) access which are germane to understanding access to information as a human rights issue.

抽象的

南非的移动电信行业拥有四个主要参与者，分别是Vodacom，MTN，CELL C和Telkom。从表面上看，这表明存在竞争激烈的多元化市场。但是，包括数据和语音呼叫在内的移动服务成本仍然是世界上最高的，这表明市场处于扭曲和无竞争力的状态。尽管人们越来越意识到这一现实，并且公众的呼声日益高涨，但变革仍是缓慢而零碎的，决策者和监管机构均未采取果断行动。通过机构政策分析，文件分析以及对来自电信行业，公民社会和监管机构的样本参与者的采访，本文认为监管麻痹，寡头经营者的串通行为，优柔寡断的政府政策，公民的不作为在一定程度上导致了南非移动数据的持续定价过高。它突显了公司在该部门维持治安方面的主导地位，这对公民参与各种生活领域的能力以及民主产生了影响。本文以公共利益理论和普遍（互联网）访问理论为前提，这与将信息访问作为人权问题理解为紧密相关。