MTN steps up price war with 60c per minute call rate
MTN has launched an aggressive pre-paid voice call promotion – charging 1c per second, or 60 cents per minute – placing further pressure on its competitors in the race for the lowest call rate.
The new 1 cent Per Second Price Plan promotion will run from 1 June 2014 to 31 August 2014, according to MTN.
The MTN website states that the MTN 1 cent Per Second price plan allows an all-day flat rate of 1 cent per second (or R0.60 per minute), on per second billing on all local calls to any local network, at any time of the day.
The price plan is available to MTN PayAsYouGo and MTN TopUp customers who migrate into the price plan, but is not available to MTN Contract or My MTNChoice customers.
The new plan comes with standard benefits, including 10 free daily CallBacks, and 1 free daily SMS once the customer has made a billable call of 60 seconds or more in a day.
The standard rate for Internet/data usage is R0.99 (ninety nine cents) per megabyte.
Heating up the competition
This new promotion from MTN intensifies the competition between network operators to reduce call rates, following the mobile termination rate cuts implemented in April.
More directly, the MTN promotion undercuts Cell C’s latest “lowest call rate” offering, and again smirks at the latter’s right to claim it has the most affordable rates.
At the start of June, Cell C launched a new pre-paid tariff plan offering a call rate of 66 cents per minute, billed per second. This was in response to a move by MTN to permanently reduce its pre-paid call rate to 79 cents per minute.
Cell C and MTN have been locked in a heated marketing battle, with both companies coming out guns-blazing in accusatory and counter-accusatory claims.
And while Vodacom and Telkom Mobile have largely stayed out of the media spotlight, both companies have reacted with price cuts of their own.
In May, Vodacom launched its own 79 cents per minute pre-paid call promotion, while Telkom Mobile has remained confident in its Sim Sonke product, which offers 29 cents per minute on-net calls and 75 cents per minute off-net calls.
Cell C CEO Jose Dos Santos recently told journalists that, if it wasn’t for Cell C, Vodacom and MTN would not have cut their prices to the levels they are now.
The Cell C head said that it took the incumbents the best part of two years to respond to its “99c for real” call rate offering pricing of 99c per minute, billed per second.
MTN was asked about its new 1c Per Second price plan, but the company did not respond by the time of publication.
More on call rates
Cell C accuses Vodacom of market abuse
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