An in-depth study of the ICT ecosystem in a South African rural community: unveiling expenditure and communication patterns

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dc.contributor.authorRey-Moreno, Carlos
dc.contributor.authorBlignaut, Renette
dc.contributor.authorMay, Julian
dc.contributor.authorTucker, William David
dc.date.accessioned2018-04-28T12:54:18Z
dc.date.available2018-04-28T12:54:18Z
dc.date.issued2016
dc.description.abstractThere is no doubt of the contributions made by mobile phones and mobile network operators in increasing access to communications in rural areas of developing countries. Yet how affordable is this ubiquitous access in such an ICT ecosystem? Using data from two stratified random surveys conducted in a South African rural community, this paper provides a unique in-depth picture of the expenditure and communication patterns of its dwellers. Results show a high access ratio of people using mobile phone services weekly and a high proportion of disposable income dedicated to a very constrained set of mobile phone services. Factors such as mobile phone charging and the extra charges added by airtime resellers contribute to increase the communication costs. This data and its analysis can be used by the following: regulators and government agencies to better design their policy implementations to provide universal service and access; competing industry players to understand the dynamics within rural communities to better target their products; civil society organizations to a constitutional right.en_US
dc.identifier.citationRey-Moreno, C., Blignaut, R., May, J., & Tucker, W. D. (2016). An in-depth study of the ICT ecosystem in a South African rural community: unveiling expenditure and communication patterns. Information Technology for Development, 22(sup 1), 101–120. http://doi.org/10.1080/02681102.2016.1155145en_US
dc.identifier.issn0268-1102
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10566/3623
dc.identifier.urihttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02681102.2016.1155145
dc.privacy.showsubmitterFALSE
dc.publisherRoutledgeen_US
dc.rights# 2016 Commonwealth Secretariat This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
dc.status.ispeerreviewedTRUE
dc.subjectICT ecosystemen_US
dc.subjectSouth Africaen_US
dc.subjectExpenditure patternsen_US
dc.subjectMobile phone usageen_US
dc.subjectRural areasen_US
dc.subjectMobile phone ownershipen_US
dc.titleAn in-depth study of the ICT ecosystem in a South African rural community: unveiling expenditure and communication patternsen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US

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