Finweek lifts lid on cell costs

Of course they'd want to make it impossible to make direct comparisons. Those interconnect fees are a killer and need some serious regs placed on them.

I also think its disgraceful the way we're penalized for not upgrading our phones and signing on for a further 24 months - after all we're still paying the same amount in month 26 that we were in month 6.
 
bwana v.5 said:
I also think its disgraceful the way we're penalized for not upgrading our phones and signing on for a further 24 months
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"Forcing" contract users to upgrade their phones every 2 years is a nifty way of achieving two things: (1) the customer gets 'hooked' to the provider for another 24 months, and more importantly (2) thousands of two-year old (usually network-locked) phones are continually entering the second-hand cellphone market as contract users upgrade. This latter point allows the poorer (i.e. generally non-contract) market segment (for whom the initial cost of a brand new phone would typically be a major obstacle) to be able to afford phones and thus become new customers for the service provider (or those phones get given to e.g. relatives or friends, who also become new customers). It's a pretty clever strategy actually: Contract users don't really get a "free" phone because the cost of the phone is built into the contract, yet they *think* they're getting great deals because the cost is so well-hidden (i.e. it's "add a penalty if you don't upgrade" and NOT "get a discount if you do upgrade" - big difference), and to top it off, they are continually buying phones for everyone else in the country, increasing the user base for the network!

Imagine you were Vodacom or MTN in the early days - one of the biggest problems to solve must surely have been 'how can we get the average rather poor South African to be able to afford the handset, which is the biggest initial obstacle cost-wise' ... I think this was their solution.

The fact that Cell-C is the only network against "subsidised" handsets seems to back this idea up, as this strategy favours the bigger already-dominant players.
 
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Turtle said:
The fact that Cell-C is the only network against "subsidised" handsets seems to back this idea up, as this strategy favours the bigger already-dominant players.
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Maybe they are agianst it but they also do it.It is the cheapest way to get a R3000 cellphone.If they don't do it they will lose out.
 
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