A 10 cent levy on every one gigabyte of data used is a small price to pay to ensure all Fijians have access to the internet.

Attorney General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum while speaking in Parliament yesterday on the Bill to amend the Telecommunications Act notes that the levy will support several other capital projects.

“If they were to use for example, 2.8 gigabytes of data per week, they would be paying a little over 20 cents additional or the supplier will actually subsume that cost themselves so that it does not pass on to the customer and your only pay on the data that is used as opposed to the unused data.  So Mr. Speaker sir, the leveraging of the levy will go towards the Trust Fund and as we’ve seen, we’ve used the Trust Fund funding for the funding of Walesi, for the funding of the AM frequency that now covers all of Fiji.”

Meanwhile, the levy payable by a service provider will be 10 cents for every gigabyte of data used by the customer of the service provider.

The new levy will come into force on a date appointed by the AG by notice in the Gazette.