Attempts by ICASA to regulate the prices and expiry dates of mobile data bundles may hurt the poor, not help them.<\/p>\n
This is according to\u00a0the head of Telkom\u2019s consumer and mobile division, Attila Vitai, and the CEO of MTN South Africa, Godfrey Motsa.<\/p>\n
ICASA’s second draft of its amended End-User and Subscriber Service Charter aims to do away with the concept of daily, weekly, or monthly data bundles.<\/p>\n
In its first draft<\/strong><\/a>, ICASA proposed a minimum data bundle validity period of 10 days for 1MB\u201350MB bundles.<\/p>\n In its second draft, however, it raised this to a minimum expiry period<\/strong><\/a> of three years.<\/p>\n Vitai told MyBroadband that such regulations could affect its FreeMe bundles, which offer value-added services on the basis of month-to-month validity.<\/p>\n Telkom\u2019s FreeMe Bundles include free WhatsApp usage, with a 500MB fair use limit on prepaid and 2GB on contract. It also includes free Telkom-to-Telkom calls.<\/p>\n With the introduction of LIT Music and LIT Video, certain FreeMe contract packages also include free data for media streaming.<\/p>\n If ICASA decides to regulate how long bundles must be valid for, it may compromise Telkom\u2019s ability to offer its FreeMe bundles in their current form, said Vitai.<\/p>\n Motsa told MyBroadband that their weekly data bundles, which expire after seven days, are their best-selling bundles<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Motsa said they believe their weekly bundles are popular because many people get paid per week.<\/p>\n \u201cA day bundle is too short for them, but a month too long,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Should ICASA ban these types of bundles, it will block a large portion of consumers from buying them.<\/p>\n Vodacom offered a similar warning, saying that ICASA\u2019s proposed regulations would dramatically limit consumer choice<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n The majority of the data bundles it sold in 2017 were smaller and micro-bundles, including its daily and weekly offers.<\/p>\n Vodacom suggested an analysis of customer behaviour is needed before making a final decision on data bundles.<\/p>\n Attempts by ICASA to regulate the expiry dates of data bundles may hurt the poor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":230585,"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":[17444,35061,35,41],"class_list":["post-241994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-attila-vitai","tag-godfrey-motsa","tag-headline","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241994"}],"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=241994"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":243138,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241994\/revisions\/243138"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Impact on bundles<\/h3>\n
Now read: #SocialMediaBlackout had no impact on data traffic or bundle purchases \u2013 MTN<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"