Wireless home phone pricing comparison
Neotel launched its home phone service in October last year, which is positioned as a direct competitor to Telkom’s residential fixed line voice offering. This offering has a strong focus on voice services, but also offers basic data connectivity at a flat rate of 8c per MB. Neotel’s NeoConnect Lite 199 service provides users with 1000 free on net minutes, 200 free SMSs to all networks and includes the cost of the device on a 24 month contract.
One of the key differentiators of the Neotel home phone service is the price of its call rates. “At 34 cents per minute for local peak landline calls, and 17 cents per minute for local off peak landline calls communicating will become more affordable for the consumer,” said Mukul Sharma, Executive Head of the Consumer Business Unit at Neotel. There is no differentiation between Neotel-to-Neotel peak and off peak rates, which are charged at 17 cents per minute for local calls at all times.
One of the major advantages of a wireless desktop phone service, like Neotel’s Home Phone offering, is that cable theft is not a risk factor in terms of service interruptions. Cable theft has become a thorn in Telkom’s side in recent years, and it is not surprising that the company launched its own wireless desktop phone.
Telkom’s Wireless Voice Service provides clients with a wireless service at standard Telkom landline rates. Customers also have the option to select one of the Closer budget calling plans that come with free calls, free voice minutes and discounted call rates. It should be noted that Telkom is waiving the setup cost and is supplying the desktop device free of charge to customers signing a 24 month Closer contract.
Vodacom followed suit in February this year with its PhonePlus home phone service – a wireless desktop phone offering subscribers voice, data and SMS services. The service costs R 289.00 per month on a weekend everyday cellphone package and includes 500 MB of data and 50 SMSs.
The following table provides an overview of how these three fixed wireless voice services stack up against each other.
| Neoconnect Lite | Telkom Wireless | Vodacom PhonePlus | |
| Connection fee | Free | 425.50 | 202.00 |
| Monthly fee | 99.00 | 124.20 | 289.00 |
| Device Cost | |||
| Free voice minutes | R 25.00 | None | 120 off-peak minutes |
| Free SMSs | None | None | 50 |
| Included data | None | None | 500 MB |
| On-net Peak | 0.43 | 0.65 | 1.80 |
| On-net Off-Peak | 0.43 | 0.33 | 0.95 |
| Telkom Peak | 0.57 | 0.65 | 2.75 |
| Telkom Off-Peak | 0.33 | 0.33 | 2.75 |
| Neotel Peak | 0.43 | 0.65 | 2.75 |
| Neotel Off-Peak | 0.43 | 0.65 | 2.75 |
| Mobile Peak | 1.76 | 1.89 | 2.75 |
| Mobile Off-Peak | 1.09 | 1.17 | 0.95 |
| SMS on-net | 0.10 | 0.50 | 0.80 / 0.35 |
| SMS other networks | 0.35 | 0.50 | 0.80 / 0.35 |
| Out-of-bundle data | 0.08 | 0.30 | 2.00 |
Wireless Home Phone discussion
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