MWEB, Cell C offer data deal
2013-01-07 12:41
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Cape Town - MWEB announced on Monday that it had partnered with Cell C to deliver reduced mobile data offerings for subscribers.
The ISP and mobile operator are offering a 2GB data package at R89 per month and MWEB customers who sign up for the contract are also eligible for 5GB, 10GB and 20GB data deals at R499, R899, R1 799 respectively.
Mobile prices have declined rapidly, but the cost is still a barrier to entry and Cell C CEO Alan Knott-Craig has argued that costs need to decrease if the industry is going to expand to lower economic groups.
"South Africa's the 98th most expensive country out of 150 in the world. The only countries more expensive than us are countries I've never been to.
"We've built this incredible industry in this country, and I think we have, but we've kind of missed the boat. Somewhere along the line, in round about the last six years, the last seven years, we screwed up as a country and I was part of that screw up," Knott-Craig told News24.
Stumbling block
As the CEO of Vodacom, he drove expansion of mobile networks, but said that his new role at the helm of Cell C was focussed on reducing the cost of services.
"You have to get the market open so that people can compete properly. You can't just put them in a market and hope for competition, that just does not happen in telecoms - it doesn't even happen when you sell bread," he said in reference to the bread price fixing scandal.
While mobile data speeds increase, fixed line broadband offers better throughput for rich media services such as gaming and video streaming.
However, the fact that Telkom owns a virtual monopoly on so-called last mile hardware into homes remains a stumbling block for ISPs.
"In the fixed line space, we're still heavily dependent on Telkom in terms of investing in infrastructure and then the way they commercially model and price it for either ISPs like ourselves or directly to the consumer," Derek Hershaw, CEO of MWEB ISP told News24 recently.
The deal is open to new and existing MWEB customers.
- News24 is part of 24.com, a subsidiary of Media24, which is in the Naspers stable. MWEB is a subsidiary of Naspers.
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