Cheaper broadband pricing from Vodacom
Vodacom has come under fire from consumers for not reducing their mobile data pricing, especially after Cell C entered the market with aggressively priced promotional data products.
Vodacom and MTN’s mobile data bundle pricing have not changed much since early 2007, and despite giving data a longer lifetime and dropping out-of-bundle rates consumers feel that it is time for another big price cut.
Vodacom has previously indicated that they are looking at lower data prices, but also said that they cannot simply drop their broadband pricing by a large margin as this may cause a significant rise in data traffic which may negatively impact the overall customer experience.
The company has however started to show signs of dropping their data rates. As part of the company’s rebranding exercise it launched 24-month ‘device-free’ broadband advanced data bundles which are more affordable than their current broadband advanced pricing.
This promotion essentially reduces Vodacom’s mobile data pricing as follows for subscribers using their own devices:
- 500MB – R149 (down from R185)
- 1GB – R249 (down from R285)
- 2GB – R339 (down from R385)
- 3GB – R529 (down from R565)
Vodacom’s device-free broadband advanced pricing is more competitive, but still not the cheapest in the market as the table below shows.
|
Mobile data prices
|
||||
| Data bundle | Vodacom | MTN | Cell C (Prepaid) | 8ta (includes modem) |
| 500MB | R149 | R189 | R150 | R195 (650MB) |
| 1GB | R249 | R289 | R250 (1.2GB) | — |
| 2GB | R339 | R389 | — | — |
| 3GB | R529 | — | R400 | R500 (3.2GB) |
Vodacom spokesperson Nomsa Thusi explained that this data pricing is their “data bundle pricing which exclude the device”, and can be used with any device.
Strange pricing continues
What has become a (perplexing) standard scenario with Vodacom is that high end users get the short end of the stick.
The cost of a 2GB data bundle translates into 16.6c per MB while the cost of a 3GB data bundle is 17.2c per MB.
It is not clear why these anomalies continue to slip into Vodacom’s data pricing when it is standard practice to reward high end users with cheaper per-MB rates.
Cheaper Vodacom broadband pricing << Comments and views
Loading ...