APA-Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) Burkinabe citizens have denounced the high cost of cell phone products by activating the “airplane mode” on their cell phones for an hour as a mark of protest.
Several Ouagalais (Ouagadougou residents) were unreachable between 11am and 12pm on Tuesday as a way of protesting what they called the prohibitive cost of the internet.
They responded to an appeal launched on social media, following protests in Abidjan, Ivory Coast for the same reasons.
One of the spearheads of the protest movement is Alain Traore known as Alino Faso, a Burkinabe activist well known on social media.
“This is the first boycott action against the exorbitant costs of cell phone companies on the cost of the Internet, billing and cuts in services that customers have never asked, on the time of consumption of megabytes that must be removed … and on the quality of the Internet in Burkina Faso” he told to APA.
“No recharges, no calls, no messages … plane mode from 11am to 12pm. Pass the message to the neighbor,” added Raïssa Compaoré in a post shared by more than 1200 people.
Samuel Kabore, a student at the University of Ouagadougou 1 Joseph Ki-Zerbo, denounced the “extremely high” cost of telecommunication services in Burkina Faso, compared to other countries.
The call is supported by consumer rights organisations that also find such services expensive and failing.
“A minute’s call costs CFA90. As for data, you get a gigabyte for more than CFA2,100, CFA2,500, while in neighboring countries like Ghana, a gigabyte goes for less than CFA400. We cannot understand why,” said Adama Bayala, president of the National Network of Consumers of Faso (RENCOF).
There are two types of tariffs in Burkina Faso: those set by the regulatory authority itself and the retail tariffs, applied to the end consumer, according to the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Communications and Posts (ARCEP).
“For these tariffs, the freedom to set them in accordance with the law on competition was given. The operators set the rates freely; however, there is a small framework that wants these rates to be transparent to the consumer,” said Salamata Rouamba, Director of Regulation of Fixed and Mobile Markets at ARCEP.
The regulatory authority announced last week that consultations with mobile operators are continuing and urged Burkinabes to trust the outcome of the ongoing talks.
DS/ac/fss/as/APA