Botswana SMS cheaper than SA SMS

[kaspaas]

Hi,

Clickatell is charging less to deliver an SMS to a Botswana cellphone than a South African one.

One would expect that due to the economies of scale, it would be the other way round.

Or did I miss a reason why South Africa is more expensive than Botswana to actually deliver an SMS or are we being ripped of by the South African Cellphone companies?

This holds true for deliveries to many other peanut places like Angola.

See http://www.clickatell.com/brochure/coverage.php

 

[JStrike]

This could be due to a disparity between the currencies exchange rate the the exchange rate adjusted for PPP

 

[kaspaas]

This could be due to a disparity between the currencies exchange rate the the exchange rate adjusted for PPP

This does not justify a 20% difference.

 

[IanC]

... adjusted for PPP

Is that Packing Politicians Pockets?

 

[supersunbird]

are we being ripped of by the South African Cellphone companies?

Your question contains the answer...

It probably costs the service provider less than 1 cent to provide a sms after recouping equipment and installation costs.

 

[JStrike]

kaspaas : It most certainly could. It all depends on what the difference is

 

[kaspaas]

kaspaas : It most certainly could. It all depends on what the difference is

In ZA cents the cost is:

SMS to Botswana number 27c (which is 80% of 33c)
SMS to SA number 33c

The influence of exchange rate is already taken care of.

 

[andres101]

Your question contains the answer...

It probably costs the service provider less than 1 cent to provide a sms after recouping equipment and installation costs.

Considering that is is data to them, we should be paying:
@ R2 per MB:
200/1024 = 0.1953125 cents per Byte
0.1953125 * 160 = 31.25 cents per full length message

somehow this came to much more than I expected...

 

[kaspaas]

Considering that is is data to them, we should be paying:
@ R2 per MB:
200/1024 = 0.1953125 cents per Byte
0.1953125 * 160 = 31.25 cents per full length message

somehow this came to much more than I expected...

That is the cost for 160 kB of data...

Should be 200/1024/1024 = 0.0001907 c per byte or 0.03 c per 160 char SMS.