Is Cell C’s free calls enough?
Last month Cell C let its 3 million customers call each other for free over weekends. To qualify, prepaid customers had to recharge for as little as R5, but contract users first had to finish their off-peak minutes.
Now Cell C has lifted the minimum recharge voucher to R10, citing "tremendous positive response", despite several complaints that subscribers were unable to make calls because of traffic on the network.
We all love freebies, especially when we pay so much to call. As Cell C put it, the demand "shows how cost sensitive cellphone users are".
Lifting the recharge minimum is a smart way to grow those sales figures by as much as 25 percent.
But the complaints have fuelled talk that Cell C cannot cope with the demand for talk time.
It seems the network was so tired that some customers could not make calls even on Monday. Cell C must solve this problem or it will lose clients, which it cannot afford to do.
The operator has had rough times in the past six years. Its debt ratings have been downgraded and its base is growing at a snail's pace compared with Vodacom and MTN.
But Cell C is staying positive that it will break even and double subscriber numbers by 2010. It has shifted its focus to the lower end of the market, because high-end users need more than voice and text messages: they also need high-speed internet access, and Cell C will have to invest heavily to offer that service.
A month of Sundays is a start, but it is a long, hard road and people are wondering whether Jeffrey Hedberg and his team will make it.
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