Recently, millions of South Africans have grown aware of the notable price increase for mobile data. Technology has advanced to being highly data consumptive from running apps to even just having your smartphone on. Facebook and Instagram, both very popular social media platforms, use masses of data per page scrolled. Both platforms average about 2.5mb a minute, a lot more if you’re scrolling through rich media content (5mb< per minute).
South Africa’s main service providers have well increased their mobile data prices in 2016. It currently costs you around R30 for 100mb of data that’s valid for one month, but won't because of how data intensive smartphones are, perhaps if you only run the Whatsapp application you’ll last the month on R29/100mb.
This has caused a #datamustfall frenzy in South Africa. Social media has gone crazy with thousands of #datamustfall tweets. It’s understandable though, especially when you compare the data prices to other countries. In India it costs you R11 per gb and in Nigeria it costs you R22 per gb. In South Africa you pay R149 per gb that’s valid for one month only – how ridiculous? Sure, the infrastructure costs were different upon setting up stations but that is quite a dramatic hike in pricing.
On the up-side, it does seem that data will fall. The right people are involved to make it happen; radio personalities Thabo Molefe and business partner Gareth Cliff‚ have taken their fight against high data costs to parliament‚ where the two pleaded with MPs to support their call. Helen Zille has even stepped in to provide Western Cape’s schools with free Internet, the argument is that there are dangers associated with no internet because students would then have to visit libraries after class which can be dangerous, and students have been attacked in various ways when attending libraries at night. Let’s hope this can be avoided.
Read below: How to save your mobile data
http://raztech.co.za/blogs/raz-tech-blog/stop-wasting-all-your-iphone-cellular-data-save-money-and-time-with-these-tips