All posts by Steve Esselaar

Mozilla, in collaboration with RIS, has released a review of the regulatory and tax treatment of OTTs in Africa. The report looks at the underlying causes behind the recent series of social media taxes across Africa. One of the main challenges is the lack of a common definition of OTTs and this means that issues are often conflated that can only be resolved when treated separately. Linked to the lack of a common definition is a misconceived understanding of the Internet value chain and the role of OTTs. To understand the impact of taxes and regulations targeted at social media, this report […]

The mobile business model is inevitably evolving from voice and SMS to a mobile Internet access model. The first generation of mobile phones provided voice services, the second generation brought SMS to consumers, and ever since 2.5G it has been about better and faster data. Social media applications drive broadband adoption and data consumption. Policy-makers and regulators should be more concerned with stimulating network investment into 3G+ and less with attempting to protect out-dated business models of operators. Read the full article here.

The UCC tweeted out the latest figures on the impact of the OTT taxes. The estimated number of Internet users dropped by nearly 30% between March and September 2018, indicating even more severe consequences of the OTT tax than anticipated in the RIS policy brief based on July 2018 data. The other story behind the data released by the UCC is that Internet users changed the way they use social media. People paying the OTT tax and the number of Internet users both dropped by around 15% between July and September 2018. But tax revenues from the OTT tax decreased […]