Telecoms/Internet: Expensive gigabytes!

The price per gigabyte in Morocco is 10 times higher than in Europe! The average cost of Internet access is more than double that of OECD countries. In prepaid, phone carriers charge 10 Dirhams (US$ 1) per gigabyte. However, the same gigabyte is marketed at the equivalent of 1 dirham (US$ 0.1) in Europe.

In France, for example, 90 gigabytes of Internet in unlimited calls cost 9.90 euros. “The price of a gigabyte is so inaccessible in Morocco that it reduces connections and leads to very limited Internet use”, analyzes Khalid Ziani, IT & Telecoms expert. The other constraint lies in the configuration of the Moroccan market with a proportion of more than 80% of consumers who opt for recharging (prepaid mode) and less than 20% of post-paid subscribers. In other words, the poorest section of the population pays more for Internet service. “How, then, can this gap be explained knowing that Morocco does not have 80% of poor people?”, asks the same telecoms expert. The fact that the price of a gigabyte is excessively high does not encourage large subscriptions in post-paid mode, says Khalid Ziani. According to the expert, logic dictates that the situations should be exactly the opposite, i.e. 80% postpaid and 20% prepaid (recharge). It should be underlined that if the Moroccan market has remained blocked for a long time in this predominantly recharge-based scheme, it is because Moroccans do not have trust in the phone payment system, says the expert.

Nonetheless, telecom carriers, the telcos as they are called, have another discourse that is totally different concerning the supposed unaffordable prices for customers in recharge mode. According to the leader of a reference telecom group, “there is more generosity towards this category of customers with special phone recharge deals (X10 airtime recharge bonus recharges, X5 recharge bonuses, and other deals) practically all year round, and even more so during end-of-year celebrations, Ramadan, religious holidays, summer, and other periods of the year” . The leader of this phone carrier adds that it is above all the low-income sections of the population who benefit from free offers via double and triple refills… But there again, there are many gray areas. “This is totally false, this is pure window-dressing”, retorts the expert. “This explanation is completely biased, since the counting and calculation methods mean that the consumption of promotional refills is billed by the second and not by the minute. As a result, whatever the volume promised (by the phone carriers), the recharge coupled with a promotion is consumed faster and therefore sooner than expected”. In addition, Khalid Ziani considers that it is “abnormal that the prepaid offers are similar among the three phone carriers… Moreover, the laws regulating the sector do not promote greater competition concerning prepaid offers”. 

Amin RBOUB