New MTN Data rates

[FireTelkom]

Hi All

See the link below, it contains the new data rates from MTN.

http://www.mtn.co.za/?pid=327485

It is clear that MTN just decided to match the offering from Vodacom and not create a new price war.

Regards

FireTelkom

 

[redarrow]

Not very daring are they?

Kind of hoped for something better.. still the 1GB bundle is quite welcome..

I see the 10MB and 100MB bundle price's have not changed at all..

The 350MB might be useful for some people as it now drops the price per MB below Virgin Mobile's 50c ...

 

[DragonLogos]

it might be a bit cheaper, but it does not roll-over - the big dudes like their pound of flesh

 

[CellBel]

Looks good, well done MTN.
Now you can surprise us all (and VC) with roll-over.

R169.00 350MB R0.48 R1.50
R189.00 500MB R0.38 R1.20

 

[Skeptik]

Agreed. The tricky thing is knowing how much data you will use.

$ Use too much and you have to buy another bundle at expensive rates.
$ Use too little and MTN/Voda grabs your money.

They win all the time.

I say get rid of data bundles & introduce rollover.

 

[Yotch]

Clearly there is no competition between the big two SA cell networks. Take a look at 3 UK's latest data prices. A few months ago data prices in the UK were higher than in SA. Look at them now - 10GBP for 1GB, 15GBP for 3GB, 25GBP for 7GB etc.

http://www.three.co.uk/personal/products_services_/mobile_broadband_/index.omp

 

[rpm]

Hi Yotch

I disagree on the lack of competition between MTN and Vodacom in the data space. I think the price war earlier this year was a good indication that they are willing to engage in competitive pricing, but the question now is whether they can afford to drop the rates further.

These are very competitive rates when compared with priced in Australia, NZ and even the UK (Vodafone etc), despite the fact that our local and international bandwidth prices are very high. There are strong suggestions that VC and MTN may be selling data below cost at this stage (CellC CEO said this is why they are not interested in 3G/HSDPA) which is obviously difficult to justify to the CFO of a company.

Don’t get me wrong…I would love to see another price war, but one has top consider international benchmarking when dealing with these prices.

Regards,

RPM

 

[Skeptik]

Hi Yotch

I disagree on the lack of competition between MTN and Vodacom in the data space. I think the price war earlier this year was a good indication that they are willing to engage in competitive pricing, but the question now is whether they can afford to drop the rates further.

These are very competitive rates when compared with priced in Australia, NZ and even the UK (Vodafone etc), despite the fact that our local and international bandwidth prices are very high. There are strong suggestions that VC and MTN may be selling data below cost at this stage (CellC CEO said this is why they are not interested in 3G/HSDPA) which is obviously difficult to justify to the CFO of a company.

Don’t get me wrong…I would love to see another price war, but one has top consider international benchmarking when dealing with these prices.

Regards,

RPM

Arguably you cannot compare Vodacom and Vodafone. People don't use mobile broadband in Eurpope as much because their home ADSL is far cheaper, hence the higher prices for Vodafone. Virtually all the competition is in the wireless sector because of the existing SA monopoly.

 

[CellBel]

Agreed. The tricky thing is knowing how much data you will use.

The only way to handle this effectively is to keep a VM sim active for the last mile.

 

[Prometheus]

I disagree with the competing comment. I don't think they are competing here and are simply dropping and matching prices to keep in touch with the established dsl pricing. I wouldn't really compare these with international offers when you can get 7GB for 25GBP (R300?). That's 3.5 times as much data and you still pay less and can even get it cheaper with some searching. This is welcome but disappointing for anyone waiting to get some value for what we pay for and they are certainly not running at a loss not even marginally.

And oh yes, even with the price drop I can still get it for cheaper.

 

[AirWolf]

Can Top Up amounts be used to purchase bundles? This seems like a very half hearted attempt at a price decrease

And oh yes, even with the price drop I can still get it for cheaper.

The connection keeps on going after your balance hits zero

 

[ic]

Interesting that MTN has a 350MB [searchforum]PPDB[/searchforum] for R169.00, whereas Vodacom still doesn't have any PPDBs smaller than 500MB, and Vodacom's 250MB [searchforum]CDB[/searchforum]s [Ad-Hoc and Bolt-On] cost R160.00, so for an additional R9.00 it is cheaper to get a 350MB data bundle from MTN...

 

[Csnoopy]

Hi All

See the link below, it contains the new data rates from MTN.

http://www.mtn.co.za/?pid=327485

It is clear that MTN just decided to match the offering from Vodacom and not create a new price war.

Regards

FireTelkom

I would say they went on a bosberaad and colluded on the pricing structures so the winner in this race will be who gives the best uptime stats on 3G/HSDPA.

 

[Skeptik]

Interesting that MTN has a 350MB [searchforum]PPDB[/searchforum] for R169.00, whereas Vodacom still doesn't have any PPDBs smaller than 500MB, and Vodacom's 250MB [searchforum]CDB[/searchforum]s [Ad-Hoc and Bolt-On] cost R160.00, so for an additional R9.00 it is cheaper to get a 350MB data bundle from MTN...

It's all been analysed carefully by the beancounters. To give an example, according to international studies, most phone calls last under 1 minute, and people genrally use only a few minutes every day. So why does Virgin mobile start by offering a discount AFTER 5 minutes of calls? Because they know this will SOUND attractive to customers, but not actually get taken up.

Similarly, other networks offer a large bundle that is difficult to use up - and it will appear attractive by the calculation R/Mb, but is unrealistic for the average consumer (the full plate/eat-as-much-as-you-like enticement).

Perhaps MTN's bundle is more realistic to customer usage.

 

[Csnoopy]

Can Top Up amounts be used to purchase bundles? This seems like a very half hearted attempt at a price decrease



The connection keeps on going after your balance hits zero

If you have credit in your account I am sure they are going to take it at R2/MB

 

[ic]

It's all been analysed carefully by the beancounters. To give an example, according to international studies, most phone calls last under 1 minute, and people genrally use only a few minutes every day. So why does Virgin mobile start by offering a discount AFTER 5 minutes of calls? Because they know this will SOUND attractive to customers, but not actually get taken up.

Similarly, other networks offer a large bundle that is difficult to use up - and it will appear attractive by the calculation R/Mb, but is unrealistic for the average consumer (the full plate/eat-as-much-as-you-like enticement).

Perhaps MTN's bundle is more realistic to customer usage.

Not sure where you posted it, but I remember you mentioned in one of your posts that it is not easy to predict the volume of data that you [or myself or anyone else] needs in any given time period [e.g. 1 calendar month or 30 days, or longer - currently inconsequential], which means that data consumers are at a disadvantage - a fixed per MB rate is preferable, such as what Virgin Mobile offers, but at R0.50/MB combined with say 2GB of data, it is less expensive to go for a data bundle from either MTN or Vodacom, the catch-22 is that very few data consumers can predict what their usage is going to be over the next 30 days without seriously limiting their usage on a daily basis - which contradicts the spirit of broadband.

Personally I would prefer data bundle rollover, unfortunately neither MTN nor Vodacom seem to be interested in what customers really want, and the use-it-or-lose-it policy that both MTN and Vodacom have, is particularly unfair when there are network problems - like Vodacom over the last 5..6 weeks or the usual month-end congestion that customers experience. If there was a silver bullet that I could use to force either Vodacom or MTN to implement data bundle rollover, the round would have left the barrel long ago - IOW I'm getting really tired of having to beg for data bundle rollover, I'm sure sky.akash feels the same way as do many others.

 

[Csnoopy]

Not sure where you posted it, but I remember you mentioned in one of your posts that it is not easy to predict the volume of data that you [or myself or anyone else] needs in any given time period [e.g. 1 calendar month or 30 days, or longer - currently inconsequential], which means that data consumers are at a disadvantage - a fixed per MB rate is preferable, such as what Virgin Mobile offers, but at R0.50/MB combined with say 2GB of data, it is less expensive to go for a data bundle from either MTN or Vodacom, the catch-22 is that very few data consumers can predict what their usage is going to be over the next 30 days without seriously limiting their usage on a daily basis - which contradicts the spirit of broadband.

Personally I would prefer data bundle rollover, unfortunately neither MTN nor Vodacom seem to be interested in what customers really want, and the use-it-or-lose-it policy that both MTN and Vodacom have, is particularly unfair when there are network problems - like Vodacom over the last 5..6 weeks or the usual month-end congestion that customers experience. If there was a silver bullet that I could use to force either Vodacom or MTN to implement data bundle rollover, the round would have left the barrel long ago - IOW I'm getting really tired of having to beg for data bundle rollover, I'm sure sky.akash feels the same way as do many others.

Aren't there institutions like icasa etc that could be approached with the rollover issue's ??. Can rpm not investigate & find another avenue to try & resolve the rollover issue sooner?

 

[AirWolf]

Yep ic, it is really frustrating having to go around in circles having to keep on making the same points about why rollover is a good idea. On the issue of MTN's pricing: R169 for 350 MB and R189 for 500 MB so obviously they want you buy the 500MB bundle so their is a better chance of you losing out

 

[ic]

Yep ic, it is really frustrating having to go around in circles having to keep on making the same points about why rollover is a good idea. On the issue of MTN's pricing: R169 for 350 MB and R189 for 500 MB so obviously they want you buy the 500MB bundle so their is a better chance of you losing out

The sad thing is that no one should struggle to find 500MB [or less] worth of stuff to deplete one's data bundle on: 500MB is actually a tiny amount of data in the context of broadband, so a few visits to youtube and one would be well on one's way to using up one's data bundle - provided the network is actually working at the time.

@Csnoopy, while I don't have any confidence in !CASA's ability to regulate anything at all - just have a look at what happened to the ADSL Regulations, I'm sure individual consumers can complain about the lack of data rollover, and see what !CASA has to say about it.

 

[Beri]

Can Top Up amounts be used to purchase bundles? This seems like a very half hearted attempt at a price decrease



The connection keeps on going after your balance hits zero

Yes you can. if you are on topup 300 you can convert it to a 1gig bundle and have some change for sms. An get a new phone every 2 years