Virgin Mobile hardly better

[supersunbird]

VM is by far the cheapest (due to per second billing you have) compared to the rigid Vodacom costs for daytime calling, only actually beaten in off peak costs a bit by 4UPrepaid at R.1.05/1.30(depending on networks where call ends) per minute and Vodagos Vodacom to Vodacom/Telkom (Off-Peak) R1.40 (not billed per second like VM) and all the other prices are equal or much more.

The fact of the matter is most South Africans are prepaid cause they don't qualify for contracts anyway, thus prepaid prices are very important.

 

[biltonguy]

4U Prepaid:
Vodacom to Anywhere (Peak) R2.99
(5 cents per second)
(per second billing)

Is that from the first second though? I'm pretty sure it isnt.

 

[supersunbird]

Yes, the VM is from first second.

http://www.virginmobile.co.za/virginDiff.shtml

No Stealing Seconds
We don’t get a kick or a kickback out of stealing people’s seconds. Why should you pay for unused airtime? We give everybody true per second billing. From the first second.

 

[br34k]

what a poorly written article... sigh. no mention of call savings on calls less than 1 min, no mention of the BIG difference which is the cots per mb of data. no mention of the V REWARDS. very disappointing comparison

 

[supersunbird]

Yea, RPM should do a article that corrects all the misconceptions she has...

 

[bwana]

Is that from the first second though? I'm pretty sure it isnt.

With Vodacom? Yes, it would seem so

Per second billing from the first second with 4U

 

[supersunbird]

And not per second for any of the other Vodacom packages, and 4U is most expensive package around (for daytime calls).

 

[bwana]

And not per second for any of the other Vodacom packages, and 4U is most expensive package around (for daytime calls).

lol - it does seem that while you can in fact find all the advantages of the virgin account at vodacom they're just not all available in one package. Vodacom does offer per second (4U) and they have the second tariff structure (SmartStep).

 

[supersunbird]

Where are all the people complaining that VM isn't good value now?

 

[Abe]

I thought it was quite revealing to reveal the TRUE cost of using the service. They've taken the smoke & mirrors away and revealed what the provider is doing to try and APPEAR cheaper. i.e. giving with one hand and taking away with another.

Actually I think the article missed the boat. It made no comparison for middle usage users which I am sure make up a large portion of the client base. I am on a Procall 300 and I can get the equivilent deal from Virgin for about 20% less.

A normal business user should get roughly 310 minutes for the R500 deal. That means it is substantially cheaper then the MTN offering of roughly R600 for the same deal. And calls are between 80c and 60c cheaper per minute once you have used up the free minutes.

I will be switching when my contract expires.