<\/a>Figure 2: Percentage changes in a person\u2019s monthly income spent on mobile service in May 2011 versus November 2011 (Source ICT Pulse)<\/p><\/div>\n
For the most part, where rates increased, the change in the percentage of a person\u2019s monthly income spent on mobile service might be considered relatively small, ranging from 0.01% in St. Kitts and Nevis, to maximum of1.0% in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. However, in Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, the percentages dropped by up to 0.25% for a LV basket of services, whilst a difference of up to 1.5% was realised for HV baskets of services.<\/p>\n
Discussion<\/h3>\n
When considered in isolation, the results of this review might seem reasonable \u2013 that up to 5.5% of a person\u2019s monthly income is spent on mobile service. However, paying one\u2019s mobile phone bill is only one of a number of expenses that are normally borne by the average consumer, which could include housing expenses, along with those for utilities, food, transportation, and even for other telecoms services, such as Internet and cable\/subscriber TV. In other words, mobile calling rates, particularly for prepaid calling services, are still too high in most Caribbean countries.<\/p>\n
Further, although the service baskets used, might be indicative of the volume of calls and text message made by the average, LV, MV and HV user, it is entirely possible, especially in the Caribbean, that the \u201caverage customer\u201d might be a MV user. It therefore means that monthly spend on mobile service could represent as much as 12.7% of a person\u2019s monthly income, and become a commodity s\/he can ill afford to maintain, although they are prepaid subscribers.<\/p>\n
However, it must be highlighted that traditionally, prepaid mobile plans were considered a special\/premium service. Although these plans might predominate across the region, their revenue streams are inconsistent, since customers decide in advance how much and how frequently they will top-up their accounts, which make service providers nervous. This uncertainty results in higher calling rates for prepaid plans than post-paid plans.<\/p>\n
____________<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This post builds on our monthly spend update as at November 2011. We now examine the affordability of mobile\/cellular service across the English-speaking Caribbean. In the Caribbean, mobile phones have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,11,19],"tags":[59,32,61,63,15],"class_list":["post-2271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-caribbean","category-ict-tech","category-mobile-telecoms-2","tag-digital-divide","tag-information-society","tag-snapshot-series","tag-survey","tag-trends","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2iE1G-AD","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2271"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2312,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271\/revisions\/2312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}