{"id":148481,"date":"2015-12-07T19:03:22","date_gmt":"2015-12-07T17:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=148481"},"modified":"2015-12-07T19:04:39","modified_gmt":"2015-12-07T17:04:39","slug":"whatsapp-vs-sms-how-much-a-message-costs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/148481-whatsapp-vs-sms-how-much-a-message-costs.html","title":{"rendered":"WhatsApp vs SMS: how much a message costs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mobile operators in South Africa recently complained about over-the-top players like WhatsApp using their data networks to undercut their revenue streams.<\/p>\n

The CEO of MTN South Africa called on industry regulator Icasa to look into services like WhatsApp, arguing that it has unfairly benefited from the billions of rand\u00a0of investment the operator\u00a0makes each year.<\/p>\n

To\u00a0establish\u00a0why WhatsApp has eaten away at the SMS revenues of mobile operators, we conducted price comparisons of the messaging services.<\/p>\n

In our first comparison we found that if SMS was priced like data<\/strong><\/a>, a message would cost a fraction of a cent.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t an accurate reflection of the actual costs incurred when sending messages, though.<\/p>\n

To compare how much WhatsApp costs versus the price of SMS, we calculated\u00a0the amount of data consumed to send WhatsApp messages.<\/p>\n

The cost of the data on various packages available from South Africa\u2019s mobile operators was then compared to the price of SMS. This is summarised in the table below.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Service used to send message<\/td>\nPer-MB price<\/td>\n1 message<\/td>\n351 messages<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
\n
SMS<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
SMS @ 50c per message<\/td>\n–<\/td>\nR0.50<\/td>\nR175.50<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
SMS bundle @ 21c per message<\/td>\n–<\/td>\nR0.21<\/td>\nR73.71<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\n
WhatsApp<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Vodacom prepaid ad-hoc<\/td>\nR2.00<\/td>\nR0.06<\/td>\nR10.40<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Other prepaid ad-hoc<\/td>\nR1.00<\/td>\nR0.03<\/td>\nR5.20<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Vodacom 30MB bundle<\/td>\nR0.40<\/td>\nR0.01<\/td>\nR2.08<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Telkom SIM-Sonke ad-hoc<\/td>\nR0.29<\/td>\nR0.01<\/td>\nR1.51<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Vodacom 20GB bundle<\/td>\nR0.05<\/td>\nR0.0014<\/td>\nR0.26<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
MTN 5GB+5GB Dataaa!<\/td>\nR0.04<\/td>\nR0.0011<\/td>\nR0.21<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Telkom Internet Starter Pack<\/td>\nR0.04<\/td>\nR0.0011<\/td>\nR0.21<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Cell C Giga 100<\/td>\nR0.02<\/td>\nR0.0006<\/td>\nR0.10<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

It should be noted\u00a0that data-based instant messaging services like WhatsApp consume data even when idle.<\/p>\n

To try and work this cost into the calculation, we looked at the average data usage on 351 messages of varying lengths (screenshot below).<\/p>\n

Some messages were longer than a standard 160 character SMS, while others were shorter. On the whole, WhatsApp\u2019s text messaging feature was used in much the same way as SMS might have been.<\/p>\n

To give an idea of what the worst case might be, we zeroed WhatsApp\u2019s network usage statistics and sent a single message. This consumed 13.3 kilobytes, as shown in the\u00a0\u201c1 message\u201d column above.<\/p>\n

Worth noting is that when a second 100-character message was sent, fewer than 200 bytes were consumed.<\/p>\n

Another difference between WhatsApp and SMS not explicitly indicated in the table is that WhatsApp uses data to receive messages, whereas with SMS only the sender pays.<\/p>\n

However, with SMS you pay for all 160 characters even if you don\u2019t use them all, while\u00a0with WhatsApp you only pay for the data you use.<\/p>\n

\"WhatsApp<\/a>

WhatsApp network usage stats<\/p><\/div>\n

More on WhatsApp<\/h3>\n

If SMS was priced like data, a message would cost 0.03c<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Why WhatsApp must be regulated in South Africa<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vodacom wants WhatsApp regulated in South Africa<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Why MTN hates WhatsApp<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

WhatsApp must be investigated \u2013 MTN<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While sending a WhatsApp message is far cheaper than an SMS, a WhatsApp message consumes far more data than an SMS does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":143322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[355,35,42,109,41,2594],"class_list":["post-148481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-cell-c","tag-headline","tag-mtn","tag-telkom","tag-vodacom","tag-whatsapp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148481"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148481"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148735,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148481\/revisions\/148735"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}