Why Telkom Mobile offers the best value in South Africa
With Telkom’s mobile data bundles now offering extended validity periods, users being able to transfer data to one another, and a new 4G roaming agreement with Vodacom in place, Telkom offers excellent value in South Africa.
Telkom announced today that it is the first mobile network in South Africa to comply with ICASA’s End-User and Subscriber Service Charter Regulations.
The company’s mobile customers across all plans can now transfer data to other users, and subscribers will now also enjoy extended data validity periods.
The company said that 25MB to 500MB prepaid data bundles will now last 6 months. The validity period of bundles larger than 500MB is two calendar months.
In an interview with MyBroadband about the new data rules, Telkom mobile products and services executive Andrew Dawson said the move is one that will offer customers great benefits.
Data bundles
Dawson said in implementing the new data rules, Telkom looked at what ICASA wanted to accomplish – and that was providing affordable data which did not expire quickly to the mass market .
This was the reason for Telkom giving its smaller data bundles a 6-month validity period – while not changing its current data prices.
“What we did not want to do is make data more expensive, and we made sure that we give customers benefits, and enough time to use these benefits,” said Dawson.
He added that customers will not be affected in any way from a price perspective.
The extended data validity has been implemented for all “primary data” in data bundles or package bundles like FreeMe.
For FreeMe bundles, for example, the primary data in the bundle will be valid for two months. Promotional data, such as that for WhatsApp and Facebook usage, will remain valid for 31 days.
Data transfer
In terms of the data transfer service, Dawson said it will be available via multiple channels. This includes the Telkom portal, the Telkom app, and USSD menus.
Data transfers will let prepaid customers send data to both prepaid and post-paid users, and post-paid users can send data to both prepaid and post-paid users.
The only limit is on SmartBroadband plans, where SmartBroadband users can only send data to other SmartBroadband users.
There are also rules around the transfer of data, which are:
- Users can send up to 1GB per day.
- Users can send up to 10GB per month.
- Sending increments are 25MB, 50MB, 100MB, 250MB, 500MB, 1GB.
- You cannot transfer promotional data (WhatsApp, Facebook, etc).
- You cannot transfer data which was transferred to you.
- The validity period of the transferred data is linked to the original bundle it was sent from.
Best value in South Africa
The new data rules from Telkom follow a recent announcement that it had secured roaming rights on Vodacom’s 3G and 4G networks.
The terms of the agreement will allow Telkom customers to roam on Vodacom’s 2G, 3G, and 4G networks with full effect from June 2019. This will include seamless handover technology.
With its data bundles cheaper than its rivals, longer validity periods and data transfer now in place, and with support for roaming on Vodacom’s 4G network, Telkom’s value proposition in South Africa is excellent.
Dawson said that at Telkom they truly believe they lead the race in terms of data, and it is part of their strategy to be the value leader in the mobile market.
Their products are built to provide great benefits to customers and work on their network and their roaming partners’ networks, without customers having to pay a premium, he concluded.
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