Mobile price war ahoy as Telkom ups the ante

This week Telkom unveiled its FreeMe packages, which is pretty much an all-you-can-eat buffet of calls, data and text messages. As other operators already have similar products, how does Telkom’s offering sit in the market?

Antony Seeff, chief executive of mobile package analysis company Tariffic, said the product range from Telkom will be pretty hard to beat — especially because it endorses overthe-top services such as WhatsApp, Skype and FaceTime.

“It’s great to see cellphone contracts finally moving in the right direction,” he said i n a media statement.

“While the other operators are complaining about over-the-top usage on their network — services that use networks’ data but don’t pay them for the pleasure — Telkom is going in the opposite direction and endorsing them, offering packages where the network won’t even make a cent off these services.”

Vodacom makes 7.5 times more money from data and calls than from mobile messaging, so it really is no surprise that Telkom has also decided to go data-heavy in its package.

Telkom’s data packages range from one gigabyte for R99 to an unlimited package for R999.

“Data is also the man of the hour and Telkom knows it. Consumers around the world are making fewer voice calls on their phones and using exponentially more data every year,” said Seeff.

“It’s great to see a mobile operator who gets this and is making data the focal point of a new set of tariffs, while still catering for certain voice usage.”

In terms of out-of-bundle rates, it is competitively priced at 29c/MB for data, 69c/minute for voice and 30c/SMS.

Said Seeff: “It’s refreshing to see Telkom look out for the consumer, and offer a cool 29c out-of-bundle for data. Yes, this is no way as cheap as adding a bundle, but it’s much cheaper than other operators’ comparable rates.”

So looking at everything the company is offering, is Telkom’s FreeMe package worth getting? Well, Seeff certainly seems to think it is good value for its money.

“This is an aggressive offering by a hungry player who is nipping at the heels of the big dogs. It will be interesting to see how the market reacts to this.

“MTN is set to launch a new, flexible package in the near future, and Vodacom doesn’t seem to have any interest in competing when it comes to the prices of their offerings,” he said.— htxt.co.za