#BTEditorial – High internet prices limit access and retard growth

We again find ourselves compelled to address yet another aspect of the high cost of doing business in Barbados that is retarding needed efforts to revitalise a long-ailing domestic economy through home-grown investment.

Communications in a small island such as ours often come at a premium. Without adequate air, sea and land transport and telecommunications, businesses decline and fall.

This newspaper depends on the ready availability of broadband access at home and on the road. You need a smartphone with mobile data or Wi-Fi connection, or a tablet, desktop, laptop or other device hooked up to the internet to get news, comment and entertainment from Barbados TODAY.

We trade in what has become known as the Third and Fourth Industrial Revolutions, in which access to information must be as swift as the content is accurate and comprehensive.

If you can’t afford data and are forced to scotch on somebody’s Wi-Fi, your experience of this newspaper and the access of our sponsors who pay for its delivery will be limited. We are not alone.

It is time we address the exorbitantly high cost of internet access, just as we this week urged lower intraregional airfares.

Barbados is at the portal of a bold new world, with bright new vistas of entrepreneurship and industry. The so-called digital economy, green economy, blue economy and creative economy all require new skills, new ways of seeing and doing things.

Yet, politicians speak of these new adventures almost oblivious to the difficulty many ordinary Barbadians face in getting broadband Internet access at affordable rates – not merely to play games, socialise or access foreign content, but to produce, create and trade.

Trinidad and Tobago is the only country in the Eastern Caribbean to offer unlimited mobile data access for a flat fee. For many of our creative entrepreneurs, it costs hundreds of dollars a month to produce and distribute content. Many would-be consumers are beyond their reach because they themselves cannot afford to pay large sums for every byte of data.

Most Caribbean nations feature towards the expensive end of the world league tables in mobile internet access, given our reliance on mobile networks to get online.

Enter the Alliance for Affordable Internet, a global coalition that advocates reform of policy and regulations to drive down the cost of internet access in low- and middle-income countries such as ours. It is part of the Web Foundation, created by the inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

In its 2019 Affordability Report, published Wednesday, the Alliance’s research revealed that the main reason for expensive broadband access and high mobile data prices is a lack of competition.

The researchers argue that “consolidated broadband markets are keeping prices high and putting life-changing internet access out of reach for hundreds of millions of people”.

But while millions are kept offline from affordable Internet access, the report points to a new gold standard of access – not the usual suspects of North American and Europe but the most populous democracy and a fellow developing nation in the Commonwealth – India. With a young population and a particularly high technological awareness, India is a vibrant smartphone market, with strong adoption and many competitors. Data there is cheap and plentiful.

The Alliance for Affordable Internet argues that when governments increase market competition, they can dramatically boost the number of people able to access the internet. We agree.

A4AI advocates for public policies and regulation to promote market competition, including fair rules for market entry and incentives to new competitors, bringing down costs for new operators to compete by supporting affordable access to wholesale internet data, so that competitors aren’t locked out by high capital barriers to entry.

And rather than leave it to the feigned philanthropy of telecom giants, our Government must invest heavily in free public WiFi, telecentres and community networks, as part of its own e-government drive.

“A failure to build and sustain competitive markets will push up broadband prices and undermine efforts to get everyone online,” the Alliance said.

The handful of telecommunications companies in Barbados, like the robber barons of the first industrial revolution, continue to reap outlandish profits. Having failed to meter telephone usage because of a forward-thinking flat-rate policy, they meter internet data on smartphones, as more and more people rely on the Internet for research, education, entertainment communication and social intercourse.

Just as we have suggested to Government on the airline industry, we believe we can do more by paying less and that firms providing the service will reap even greater profits.

But we submit that our current path to these new worlds of technological advancement and economic enfranchisement is but a mere strip of a rocky road for an elite rather than the broad democratic highways of information sharing and wealth creation.

There are already impediments to the growth of the green and blue economies, where widely accessible services and products elsewhere attract prices akin to luxury goods here.

That way madness lies with a profound divide of digital haves and have-nots.

We are also concerned that our burgeoning financial technology industry is also being retarded by the high cost of data.

From the earliest days of the data industry here came the constant complaint of being forced to pay premium prices for even the most basic access.

The gimmickry, slick public relations and marketing sleight-of-hand do nothing in the long run to dispel the reality of high costs.

In the 21st century, data is king. From the fishermen to the artisan to the attorney, in school rooms, lecture theatres, cinemas and concert venues, it will become essential to click, create, share and like – once access is affordable.

Daily forays to coffee shops will not do if we are serious about creating an economy that liberates the enormous creative potential of our people, especially our children and youth.

The cost of data influences the consumption of data and content. It also has an effect on our ability to produce content. There is so much that remains untold and unknown in the digital realm, as it relates to this country, its history, geography, people and culture.

A Marshall Plan for the digital economy must include rationalisation of internet access prices. Data should be as ubiquitous, plentiful and cheap as water is to beer. We will be fooling none but ourselves to think that we can fashion a new digital Barbados with pricing structures more reminiscent of a predatory market found in a plantation’s company store.