Telkom hikes prices

Telkom has announced it will hike its mobile, DSL, and voice product prices from 1 April 2023 and increase fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) prices on 1 May 2023.

The telecoms company said South Africa’s high inflation rate meant that price increases were “necessary and unavoidable” to ensure long-term business sustainability.

Its announcement comes shortly after MTN hiked the prices of its contract subscription fees.

“Like many other South African companies and enterprises, Telkom has been impacted by the pressures driven by prevailing macroeconomic dynamics,” the company said.

“The imminent price increases across fixed voice, ADSL, FTTH and mobile offerings will ensure continued quality service to Telkom’s customers, including small and medium businesses, whilst maintaining competitiveness.”

The average price increases across the impacted products will be as follows:

• FTTH — 11% increase
• Fixed-voice line rental and voice calling plans —  8.8% increase
• DSL and voice combined — 8.4% increase
• DSL-only and DSL bundles — 8% increase
• Yep! products — 7% increase
• SmartBroadband mobile plan subscriptions — 5% increase

In addition to the above, several mobile data bundles and out-of-bundle rates for mobile voice, SMS, and data services will also be increased.

“Voice rates for out-of-bundle consumption will increase from R0.75 to R0.80 per minute, and data rates will increase from R0.32 to R0.35 per MB on most plans,” Telkom said.

Telkom consumer and small business CEO Lunga Siyo said the operator had done “everything possible” to minimise the impact of the price increases.

“The price increase also comes with continued improvement of our products, even in challenging times,” said Siyo.

One example is its FTTH price increases that come with a speed increase.

Telkom said the hikes on its FTTH packages were mainly due to its wholesale network operator, Openserve, increasing its fees.

Openserve previously announced the new speeds for its FTTH packages, effective from 1 April 2023.

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Now read: Openserve destroyed in South Africa’s 2023 fibre price war