In this paper, we presented our findings from a 10-week study on enabling price transparency for mobile data with 299 participants. Our findings point to an increase in Internet usage with a decrease in credit consumption, especially among new mobile data users, and higher cost awareness among treatment users. We discussed our logistics of running a trial with new infrastructure in the wild in an emerging region context.
Price transparency is important to the access and usage of the Internet. As more lower-income user groups encounter the Internet on the phone for the first time, providing ways to be aware of and control data expenditure is important for their economic efficiency. While our trial focused on data spend on the phone, it can easily apply to bandwidth management in general. Conducting forward-looking research on technologies that are slowly but steadily rising in emerging regions can help preemptively reduce barriers to technology usage and help millions of new and existing users experience a safer, more manageable, and less erratic Internet