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About two weeks ago we learned about Vodacom’s massive reduction in data prices, now it’s MTN’s turn to show the numbers.
New Data Prices
Both competitors focussed on the 1GB monthly data bundle and lowered the price from R149 down to R99.
We will charge a maximum of R99 per GB
Godfrey Motsa, MTN CEO
Motsa also said that this is another effort to make data more affordable for South Africans, as they brought down their data prices by around 76% between the months of February 2017 and February 2020.
All monthly data bundles smaller than 1GB will be affected by the price drop.
Free Lifeline Data
The Competition Commission stated that the two network giants should offer lifeline data for users.
MTN said it will provide 20MB per day to each user to use on its Ayoba instant messaging service. This will ensure connectivity to users to, for example, ask someone to load airtime or data for them.
OpenTime
The OpenTime service will supply users with access to websites and platforms that may benefit the public. An amount of 500MB will be supplied to each user for these purposes.
There are already a few websites that MTN offers with no data costs. These include universities and schools, but it will broaden this initiative to even more websites.
New websites include sectors such as health, other educational websites and employment sites.
When you add the lifeline data to the OpenTime data, you end up with about 13,3GB of free data to each user per year.
Spectrum
MTN also mentioned spectrum in their statement and had the same concerns as Vodacom.
Spectrum can be seen as a highway where signals travel. In South Africa, we don’t have enough “lanes” on that highway to lower data prices.
MTN said:
This is acutely felt in South Africa, which has among the lowest spectrum allocation in all our MTN markets
MTN
Both operators are waiting for more spectrum to be made available by the national regulatory authorities in South Africa. I explained spectrum in more detail here.
New USSD Options
MTN will roll out new options in their free of charge USSD menu. Users will be able to see their data usage and rates for the last five bundles that were bought in the current month.
There will also be an option to see data bundles and prices catered for the user according to their user profile.
To access these options, users will need to dial *136*5# or *135# to access it, free of charge.
Effective Date
All new prices will take effect on the 15th of April 2020.
Closing
The drop in data prices will be a relief for the community and will especially benefit those who are looking for jobs.
Hopefully, more spectrum can be made available to mobile providers soon, to give them more room to provide even cheaper data in the future.
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