After being dominated by two big players for so long, the South African mobile telephony market is suddenly experiencing some long-expected excitement, with the rebranding of Cell C and the launch of Telkom’s mobile offering, 8ta.
It’s been hard to miss Cell C’s rebranding over the past two months, with Trevor Noah and the new Cell C logo featuring prominently on pretty much every medium out there. Time will still tell whether their Tell Trevor customer service campaign has had the desired impact of turning perception around, but initial reports about their data speeds and pricing are sounding promising.
More recently, the 8ta launch has been the talk of the town after a teaser campaign that had most people wondering what Heita was. And it’s clear from the outset that Telkom’s push is for the prepaid market, with lower call costs leading the way.
The 8ta prepaid service was introduced on 18 October and offers flat rates and free airtime rewards for every call received. 8ta contract packages are due to be available in November and corporate services are scheduled to launch within six months.
8ta has already promised massive saving with their call rates. Calls from 8ta mobile phones to fixed lines cost 65c per minute (almost 60% less than most current rates) and calls to other mobile phones cost R1.50 per minute. International calls to over 100 destinations will be charged at a flat rate of R2.50 per minute.
8ta are also offering free airtime for every call received on the network at a 3:1 ratio. So for every 30 seconds spent speaking on the phone, you will get 10 free seconds of call time to any local network. Another enticing benefit is that for every 5 SMSes sent in a day you will receive 50 free SMSes to use before midnight that day. Internet junkies can also get an out-of-bundle data rate of R1 a megabyte and in-bundle data rates will be as low as 25c a megabyte.
MTN has already responded by re-introducing the MTN Zone100% Mahala Calls and SMSes promotion. Essentially, calls and SMSes in areas or during times with lower traffic will be discounted, which is likely to benefit users at weekends and off-peak times. Vodacom, Cell C and Virgin Mobile are likely to launch similar counter packages in the near future, leading to more competitive call rates and greater savings for consumers.
Of course with more affordable data packages, another alternative for cost effective communication is the new Skype version 5.0 for Windows. The latest upgrade now includes a Facebook tab and integrates Facebook’s news feed and phonebook into Skype. Skype users can call Facebook friends directly on mobile or landline phones, send SMS messages or make free Skype-to-Skype calls to Facebook friends who are also Skype users.
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Telkom,
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Vodacom by using the feedback forms on the getclosure website. We will publish positive feedback and send complaints directly to the relevant company to give them the chance to respond and resolve your particular issue. You can also keep an eye on our
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