{"id":50637,"date":"2012-05-31T10:00:48","date_gmt":"2012-05-31T08:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=50637"},"modified":"2012-05-31T10:02:37","modified_gmt":"2012-05-31T08:02:37","slug":"flat-rated-smartphone-data-packages-difficult-vodacom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/50637-flat-rated-smartphone-data-packages-difficult-vodacom.html","title":{"rendered":"Flat-rated smartphone data packages difficult: Vodacom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Vodacom\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/227063-Vodacom\">Vodacom<\/a> said that it is difficult to launch affordable flat-rated smartphone data packages on a truly unlimited basis.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"MTN\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/226943-MTN\">MTN<\/a> has recently launched smartphone data packages priced between R29 and R49 per month, but these packages are not truly flat-rated and unlimited as is the case with the popular <a title=\"BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS)\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/429993-BIS-BlackBerry-Internet-Service\">BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS)<\/a> offerings.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Nokia\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/314603-Nokia-Corporation\">Nokia<\/a> and <a title=\"Nashua Mobile\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/313921-Nashua-Mobile\">Nashua Mobile<\/a> have partnered to bring consumers a fixed cost data service (called Xtreme Data) which offers e-mail, browsing and instant messaging at R59 per month. This service does however carry a fair use policy where high-end users are throttled to protect the network.<\/p>\n<p>Vodacom was rumoured to be planning a flat-rated smartphone data service, but it seems that the company is struggling to make the business model work.<\/p>\n<p>It is understood that Vodacom is still looking at service based flat-rated products, which instead of unlimited data will offer unlimited services, such as social networking or internet messaging.<\/p>\n<p>Vodacom also said that there is &#8220;no update&#8221; on their plan to launch cheaper <a title=\"BlackBerry\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/342709-BlackBerry\">BlackBerry<\/a> packages.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Related articles<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"More Nokia phones get flat-rated data\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/49059-more-nokia-phones-get-flat-rated-data.html\"><strong>More Nokia phones get flat-rated data<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Xtreme Data versus BlackBerry Internet Service\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/45467-xtreme-data-versus-blackberry-internet-service.html\"><strong>Xtreme Data versus BlackBerry Internet Service<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Flat-rated Nokia data bundle pricing comparison\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/45213-flat-rated-nokia-data-bundle-pricing-comparison.html\"><strong>Flat-rated Nokia data bundle pricing comparison<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vodacom argues that it is challenging to offer truly unlimited smartphone data packages at an affordable rate<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27039,"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_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[35,42,40,653,41],"class_list":["post-50637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-headline","tag-mtn","tag-nashua-mobile","tag-nokia","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50637"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50637"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50907,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50637\/revisions\/50907"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}