MTN uncapped broadband pricing compared « Broadband « MyBroadband Tech and IT News

Rudolph Muller

July 10, 2011

MTN recently slashed the pricing of their uncapped mobile broadband packages. This is how they stack up against competing offerings

Cell C stunned the market in September 2010 with their aggressively priced mobile broadband products, but consumers had to wait until April 2011 for Vodacom and MTN to respond.

What followed was a multitude of broadband specials which included Vodacom and MTN’s 2GB for R149 promotions, 8ta’s R199 for 10GB special, and Telkom’s data bonus to their ADSL ISP subscribers.

MTN has now added to the list of competitively priced broadband products by slashing the prices of its uncapped mobile broadband packages.

MTN last week announced that it reduced the pricing for its Broadband Uncapped Lite package from R749 to R299, and cut the price of the MTN Broadband Uncapped Profrom R1,999 to R899.

The two packages are subject to a fair usage policy of 3GB and 10GB respectively. Once the 3GB or 10GB fair use limit has been reached, the connection speed will be reduced to 128kbps for the user for the remainder of the month.

Pricing compared

MTN’s pricing compares favourably with non-promotional pricing for competing offerings in the market. If you include promotional offerings however, 8ta’s R199 for 10GB special blows the competition out of the water.

The table below provides a basic pricing comparison for some of the prominent mobile broadband packages and promotions available in South Africa.

2GB/3GB mobile data prices
Service	Data (GB)	After-hours data (GB)	Monthly Cost	Best Cost/MB	Basic Cost/MB
Vodacom 2GB + 2GB	2	2	R149	0.04	0.07
Cell C Contract Promotion	2	0	R149	0.07	0.07
MTN 2GB Promotion	2	0	R149	0.07	0.07
MTN 3GB Uncapped	3	40	R299	0.01*	0.10
Cell C Smartdata 3GB	3	0	R400	0.13	0.13
8ta 3.2GB	3.2	0	R500	0.15	0.15
Vodacom 3GB	3	0	R565	0.18	0.18

High end mobile data prices
Service	Data (GB)	After-hours data (GB)	Monthly Cost	Best Cost/MB	Basic Cost/MB
8ta Promotion	10	0	R199	0.02	0.02
8ta Promotion	10	10	R299	0.01	0.03
Cell C (Prepaid)	5	0	R250	0.05	0.05
Cell C (Contract)	5	0	R299	0.06	0.06
MTN 10GB Uncapped	10	40	R899	0.02*	0.09
Vodacom 10GB	10	0	R1,845	0.18	0.18

*We used the theoretical download maximum of 16 bytes per second over a 30 day period to calculate MTN’s lowest possible per-MB pricing.