Author: Duncan McLeod

MTN is joining South Africa’s escalating prepaid price war, taking an axe to its One Rate plan, cutting prices from R1,75/minute to R1,20/minute, or 2c/second, on per-second billing to all networks day or night. The new tariff, which will

Just hours after MTN announced it was slashing prepaid rates on its One Rate prepaid plan, Telkom’s mobile operator, 8ta, has joined the price-cutting frenzy with new rates that it claims undercut all of its rivals. The moves by the two operators

Parliament’s joint committee on ethics and members’ interests has launched a formal probe into allegations of a conflict of interest involving communications minister Dina Pule and last May’s ICT Indaba in Cape Town. The committee, which is chaired

When major corporate brands start bashing each other over the head in public, you know that commercial rivalry between them has reached an intense level. This is exactly what’s happening in South Africa’s mobile industry, where Vodacom, MTN and Cell C have taken to sniping at each other at every

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) said on Wednesday that it sees “no reason” why mobile termination rates, the wholesale fees operators charge to carry calls between their networks, should not fall to between 15c and 25c/minute from the 40c they will

The Independent Communications Authority South Africa (Icasa) has turned down a request from mobile operator Cell C to postpone this Friday’s planned reduction in mobile termination rates, saying the cuts are part of a regulatory process that can’t be suspended. Cell C wanted

As the increasingly acrimonious dust-up between Vodacom and Cell C enters its next phase, South African consumers are enjoying a real reduction in retail mobile tariffs. But it’s difficult to separate the clutter as the big operators try to convince customers where to spend their

Mobile operator MTN has torn into Cell C, warning its smaller rival that it must “abide by the law and start competing on the merits of its products rather than obscure regulatory favours”. The attack follows Cell C’s decision to lobby the industry regulator, the

The Internet Service Providers’ Association (Ispa) has taken Telkom’s mobile arm, 8ta, to task for what it calls “false and misleading” advertising. 8ta, in turn, has said the campaign in question has run its course and won’t be flighted again. Ispa lodged the complaint against

Mobile operator Cell C is lobbying the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) to delay the reduction in wholesale mobile termination rates on 1 March so that an “urgent market review” can be done to determine the effectiveness of the regulations. “In order to