in other words, suppose a telecom company comes to Cameroon and builds all the towers and so on. However, let’s say only 5% of the locals can afford to buy the prepaid cards, even if they are (hypothetically) given the phones themselves for free.
So here we have a situation where the infrastructure apparently is “under-loaded” and under-utilized compared to what it was designed to handle. Unless maybe they use some sort of cheaper antennas expecting low usage?
Well, so in such a situation what is the marginal cost of adding another user, or maybe adding another 20% of the population as users? The reason I ask is, perhaps there would be a way to use price discrimination and service quality downgrade principles in this situation in order to keep the richer group keep on paying their current high rates while also providing a worse and much cheaper service to a bigger, poorer user base?
E.g. in particular suppose the poorer users are literate and we offer them only the sms service without the ability to talk. Would that allow for service fees much lower than what is normal for cellphone use? Is this or similar approach already used in Africa as part of product/service design by the telecom companies?