How do you feel about telecom operators’ plan to raise data fare?
Nigerian telecom operators recently made public their plan to increase data fare. Daily Trust sought opinions of some Nigerians on the issue. Waziri Siman, 21, Student, Bauchi State In Nigeria everything is expensive. So the service providers will have to increase their date fare as well. By so doing we the consumers will have […]
Nigerian telecom operators recently made public their plan to increase data fare. Daily Trust sought opinions of some Nigerians on the issue.
Waziri Siman, 21, Student, Bauchi State
In Nigeria everything is expensive. So the service providers will have to increase their date fare as well. By so doing we the consumers will have to suffer the increase of the data fare. It will affect us a lot. Take for instance am a student if I want to browse I will have to purchase the data no matter how expensive it gets. So what we are saying is that we only pray for things to go back to normal so that when the economy is stabilised the cost of things will drop and hopefully the data fare will drop as well.
Bello Abdulmutalib O., 22 Entrepreneur, Abuja
I don’t think hiking data fare is the way forward. The youth especially, are the major group of people that purchase this data, majorly students. Therefore, if you hike it, you are only making things more difficult because already the data is expensive as it is. Therefore I advise the telecom service providers to reduce the data fare rather than hike it.
Aisha Mamman Mandara, 26, Civil Servant, Adamawa
The network providers cannot just increase fare for data. If they do, there is going to be a problem because already the data price is high. To top it all, the network is not all that good, so I suggest they should focus on providing better services rather than hiking data fare.
Jamal Alkali, 35, Businessman, Abuja
It is bad news because of the state of our economy. As you can see, the economy is not doing well, so if telecoms companies increase data fare it would certainly create a problem. The hike in data will affect a lot of people, especially the Nigerian youth, because they are the people that use data plans a lot.
Dauda Abdulkadir, 28, Accountant, Abuja
First and foremost, in the Nigerian context, since the network providers are not very efficient I don’t see any reason for them to hike the data fare because the services rendered are not normal. Whenever rain is falling you find out that the network is bad or not even working, or they keep sending you messages and subscribing you to services you didn’t request to be subscribed to. You also find out that they don’t deactivate it and the messages over time keep coming. So far Glo has the worst network as far as I am concerned.
Ismail Haruna, 30, Fashion Designer, Abuja
If the tariff plan is increased, there will be a problem when it comes to browsing. The network itself is bad, therefore I expect the service providers to increase the network efficiency and reduce the data fare, not increase it. The government needs to impose this on these service providers because the network itself is not strong. It is only MTN network that is a bit strong sometimes. Airtel is cheap, but the network is not good, so there is need for change in these networks. Another issue is the money they charge for things we don’t subscribe to. So they need to help us.
Mubarak Hamisu, 23, Student, Kano
The data fare hike is really a cause for alarm for us as students. We didn’t expect this now because as it is, the data is already expensive, so you can imagine how expensive it will be by the time they decide to increase it. It is actually very unfortunate. Therefore I plead with these telecom service providers not to take this line of action. It is not good and will only favour them.
Emmanuel Idobo, 25, Pharmacist, Cross River
This decision is very bad and is not supposed to happen because the economy of the country is not good. People cannot afford to spend excessively. You can only buy what you need, therefore there should be another solution to this current problem.