Telkom and Cell C offer the best-value contract packages for consumers, Tariffic’s latest quarterly tracker shows.
The company’s second “Perfect Package Tracker” of 2015 measures the real effects of price and package changes in South Africa’s post-paid cellular market.
It does this by using proprietary tariff optimisation software to look at the perfect packages for four distinct users each quarter.
The tracker focuses on four unique theoretical users — Chris, Susanne, Dineo and Howard — each with their own usage patterns.
Tariffic is able to calculate which packages would be best for each user and how much those packages would cost.
Key findings of the latest tracker are that price increases in recent months by both Vodacom and MTN have hit consumers’ wallets.
“In the past few months we’ve seen both Vodacom and MTN hike their rates for many post-paid contracts (by an average 3% to 5%), and this is reflected when comparing how much more all users would end up paying for their contracts on those two networks (where the recommended contracts were the same),” Tariffic said in a statement.
“Given that MTN also increased the prices of some its data bundles (Vodacom did not), the overall effect of its rate hikes seem to generally be more impactful to users than Vodacom’s,” the company said.
“It is also interesting to observe that because of the flexibility of MTN’s My MTNChoice packages, the price changes often result in consumers having to realign their entire package (including the base tariff and certain bundles) in order to ensure they’re on the optimal package,” it said.
“This can be clearly seen in Dineo’s MTN recommendation, which changed from a My MTNChoice 500 package with a 200 SMS bundle and a 50MB data bundle in the first quarter, to a My MTNChoice 350 package with a 200 SMS bundle, 100MB data bundle and 100-minute on-net voice bundle in the second quarter.”
Meanwhile, Cell C is offering less value on its Straight Up 800 contract. Where previously this plan offered Susanne the best value for money that most suited her needs, now the more expensive Cell C Infinity Select comes out on top.
The Cell C recommendation for Howard also changed from a Straight Up 200 to a ChatMore 200. The reason for this is that Cell C decreased the amount of data they offer with their Straight Up packages by half. This came after the operator initially increased its prices in December last year and then offered double the data from February (a seeming win for consumers).
“It’s worth noting that Cell C did not actually refer to the doubling of Straight Up data as a promotion.”
The company said that previously the Straight Up packages were Cell C’s simplest and best, but with the price increase and halving of data, its ChatMore is often offering the best value to consumers. — © 2015 NewsCentral Media
