A new report by Research ICT Africa shows that while mobile data prices are on a steep decline in most African countries, they have remained steady in South Africa at R149 for 1GB in 2014.<\/p>\n
The research firm tracked the price of 1GB of mobile data across 21 African countries, finding that local mobile data prices are not declining as rapidly as many other countries on the continent.<\/p>\n
It also found that dynamic bundling in other countries such as Namibia has not yet been offered by South African operators.<\/p>\n
MTC in Namibia offers a prepaid product, Aweh Aweh Gig, that requires a weekly activation fee of R30 for which the user gets 700 minutes, 700 SMS messages, and 1 GB of data.<\/p>\n
This translates to R120 per month for 2,800 minutes, 2,800 SMS messages, and 4GB of data, which is less than what South Africans pay for 1GB of data.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe model is quite simple: MTC is profitable at a price of R120 per user and does not care about how many minutes its customers use, or how many SMSes they send,\u201d said Research ICT Africa.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis gets close to the flat-rate pricing which is becoming more and more common in other markets.\u201d<\/p>\n
Comparing SA operators<\/strong><\/p>\n The report showed that Telkom Mobile offers\u00a0the most affordable prepaid cellular product in South Africa.<\/p>\n RIA used the OECD\u2019s methodology and product information from the operators to find the cheapest prepaid mobile products in the country.<\/p>\n The research firm calculated the affordability using the OECD 40 calls and 60 SMS basket metric. The rates are split between on-net and off-net, peak and off-peak, and different times of the day and weekend.<\/p>\n Telkom was found to have the cheapest prepaid call and SMS pricing combination on the market, while Vodacom had the most expensive pricing combination, followed by Virgin Mobile, MTN, and Cell C.<\/p>\n Government eyes Vodacom sale, MTN mulls Telkom buy: report<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Neotel deal to make life tougher for Telkom: Vodacom CEO<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\nMore on mobile operators<\/h3>\n