MTN is cutting the cost of international roaming for both voice and data for its contract customers. The most notable cuts come for those travelling to certain European countries, where they will now pay R10,66/minute for international calls or calls to SA and 35c/25KB of data.
The eligible European countries are the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the UK. For the rest of Europe, customers will pay R23,50 for international calls – including calls to SA – and R2,70/25KB for data.
Asia and North America remain the most expensive regions for data, where MTN users will pay R3,50/25KB. For international voice calls, Asia and South America are the most expensive at R25,50/minute and R38/minute respectively.
“One of the biggest challenges to consumers when they travel abroad is the cost of roaming services and an overwhelming phone bill when they return back home,” says Serame Taukobong, MTN SA’s chief marketing officer.
Taukobong says MTN has worked with Southern African and European operators, in particular, to bring down roaming rates in those regions.
MTN customers roaming in Africa are not charged for receiving calls while roaming in other countries where MTN has a presence and are able to recharge using foreign currency while using an MTN SA Sim card.
Though MTN’s contract customers will benefit from both the new call and data rates, those on its top-up package, MTN PayAsYouGo TopUp, will only benefit from reduced call rates. More in the MTN-supplied table below. — (c) 2012 NewsCentral Media