MTN South Africa has yesterday said that it is cutting out-of-bundle
data charges for prepaid customers by as much as 75% and launching a new
“double your bundle” promotion.
“Prepaid
customers currently not making use of data bundles will pay just 29c/MB for
their data usage, while customers that do purchase data bundles will pay 49c/MB
for their out-of-bundle data usage,” MTN said in a statement.
CEO
Godrey Motsa said the “imminent release of much-needed spectrum” is an
“important milestone in South Africa’s telecommunications history and is reason
for optimism”.
More
spectrum will be an important contributor to helping further drive down the
cost to communicate and by slashing our out-of-bundle pricing…
“We are
greatly encouraged by the steps being taken by both government and our
regulator (Icasa) to progress the release of spectrum,” he said. “More spectrum
will be an important contributor to helping further drive down the cost to
communicate and by slashing our out-of-bundle pricing…”
MTN said
data bundles remain the most cost-effective way to use data, so the new
out-of-bundle pricing is “structured to encourage customers to stay in-bundle”.
“For
those customers that have never used data bundles, the pricing has been set at
29c to still allow for well-priced use of the Internet, despite not using a
data bundle,” it said.
New
customers that have just activated their Sim cards and customers that have
ported to MTN, along with active MTN subscribers that have migrated from
contract or hybrid packages to prepaid, will all be allocated the 29c rate.
This rate will only change once they start making use of data bundles.
MTN is
one of the most used service providers in Africa mainly used in South Africa,
Zambia, Nigeria, Ghana just to mention a few.
