Chale, How Much it Cost to Browse? Results from a Mobile Data Price Transparency Trial in Ghana
Venue
Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development: Full Papers - Volume 1 (ICTD '13), ACM, New York, NY, USA (2013), pp. 13-23
Publication Year
2013
Authors
Nithya Sambasivan, Paul Lee, Greg Hecht, Paul M. Aoki, Maria-Ines Carrera, Jenny Chen, David Pablo Cohn, Pete Kruskall, Everett Wetchler, Michael Youssefmir, Astrid Twenebowa Larssen
BibTeX
Abstract
Mobile data usage is on the rise globally. In emerging regions, mobile data is
particularly expensive and suffers from the lack of price and data usage
transparency needed to make informed decisions about Internet use. To measure and
address this problem, we designed SmartBrowse, an Internet proxy system that shows
mobile data usage information and provides controls to avoid overspending. In this
paper, we discuss the results of a 10-week study with SmartBrowse, involving 299
participants in Ghana. Half the users were given SmartBrowse, and the other half
was given a regular Internet experience. Our findings suggest that, compared with
the control group, using SmartBrowse led to a significant reduction in Internet
credit spend and increased online activity among SmartBrowse users, while providing
the same or better mobile Internet user experience. Additionally, SmartBrowse users
who were prior mobile data non-users increased their webpage views while spending
less money than control users. Our discussion contributes to the understanding of
how forward-looking ICTD research in the wild can empower mobile data users, in
this case, through increased price transparency.
