Nigerians, who constitute the highest teledensity in Africa, pay more than their counterparts in other African countries on call charges. Investigations conducted by the Nigerian Tribune revealed that from neighouring Benin Republic to Ghana, Cote d�Voire, Egypt and South Africa, telecommunication tariffs are relatively lower than what obtains in Nigeria.
For instance, in the Republic of Benin, a minute call costs between 50 francs, which is an equivalent of N10 in Nigeria compared to the minimum of N42 for a minute call in Nigeria.
In Ghana, a minute call costs the equivalent of N25, while in Cote d�Ivoire, it costs 100 francs to make a minute call. Subscribers who spoke to the Nigerian Tribune on the issue, called on the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and various telecoms operators to consider a downward review of both voice call and SMS, saying that the issue was not only about cutting the cost of text messages as the stakeholders are currently planning to do.
They said that the population of the subscribers on each network was enough to sustain whatever call cost cuts the operators made.
�Life is a totally different thing for telecoms subscribers in Ghana unlike what we are facing in this country. You know they have done re-decimalization of their currency. So, when I bought 3.50 cedis, that is about N500 of credit on my phone, I can be on the phone to Nigeria for about 20 minutes,� said a Nigerian who just came back from Accra.
Speaking on the phone to the Nigerian Tribune from Cote d�Ivoire, a Nigerian resident in the country said, �There are about four operators here: Koz, Moov, Orange and MTN. �Koz charges about 50 francs for on-net calls, Moov charges about 75 francs, and Orange and MTN are a bit higher but they are also within that range. But honestly, we don�t pay more than an average of 100 francs for off net calls per minute, which is about N20 to N22 in Nigeria,� he stated.