Cell C sets new mobile broadband pricing standard

Over the last three years the local mobile broadband market has shown remarkable improvements in data speeds – in line with international standards.

Since 2007 both Vodacom and MTN increased their peak mobile data speeds from 1.8 Mbps to 21 Mbps, with uplink speeds increasing from 384 Kbps to around 5 Mbps.

The same can however not be said for mobile data pricing.  Since 2007 there have been a few improvements to pricing – including the introduction of in-bundle rates matching out-of-bundle and unused data rollovers – but on the whole data bundle prices stayed fairly stable.

Cell C has however smashed the previously established prepaid mobile broadband pricing models with the launch of their 21 Mbps HSPA+ services. 

The company recently launched two prepaid data packages:

1. R999 once-off for 2GB every month for 12 months
2. R1,999 once-off for 5GB per month for 12 months

This new data pricing from Cell C equates to R42 and R33 per GB respectively, slashing the previous standard of close to R200 per GB.

The following table provides an overview of prepaid data bundle prices for Vodacom, MTN, Cell C and Telkom Mobile.  Virgin Mobile currently does not have prepaid mobile data bundles.

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