Cell C and Telkom have emerged as the winners in new research into which of South Africa’s operators offer the best contract plans for four pre-defined and distinct customer types.

Tariffic, which specialises in helping companies and individuals manage their mobile spend by analysing the vast array of options available from the operators, has launched its first Perfect Package Tracker index to show which networks offer the best deals.

“The South African cellular market is incredibly complex and the fact is that most people are spending far more than they should on costly cellphone contracts that generally don’t suit their needs,” Tariffic says in a statement.

“Between Vodacom, Cell C, MTN and Telkom, there are over 10 000 different combinations of cellphone contracts and add-on bundles and its almost impossible for ordinary South African cell phone users to choose the contracts and bundles that actually suit their needs … and their pockets.

Tariffic focused on four unique users with their own unique usage patterns in developing the tracker. It then calculated which packages would be best for them and how much those packages would cost.

“We show the best options for each user on each network, with the first column indicating the most cost-effective package and bundle for each user. Columns two through four show the second, third and fourth best packages and bundles respectively,” the company says. (Click on the table below to see a full-sized version of the research.)

“Going forward, we will optimise these exact same users every quarter, utilising the exact same parameters that we have used here. This tracker will thereby function as a gauge of the South African cellular landscape, identifying how the cellular market is improving or deteriorating for consumers over time,” Tariffic said.

“We hope that this tracking index will shine some light on the complex cellular market and inform consumers how they should be saving money and selecting their packages.”

In the tracker, the company has created four characters. They are, in Tariffic’s words:

— Chris has a BlackBerry and works in financial services. He calls his wife a few times every day and uses his phone for a handful of business and personal calls during the week. He’s an inconsistent data user, some months using almost nothing and other months using up to 600MB. Chris spends on average R1 200/month.

— Susanne works in public relations and is constantly attached to her Samsung smartphone. She’s always on the phone with her clients and friends and uses quite a lot of data, especially when she’s travelling around the country to meet her clients. Susanne is pretty good at keeping it in bundle. She spends around R2 100/month.

— Tshepo is a student at a prestigious Johannesburg high school and, like most teenagers, can’t be separated from his top-of-the-range iPhone. Tshepo doesn’t make many calls, but he does use a fortune of data, hooked as he is to social media and the latest apps. Tshepo’s parents spend around R1 100/month.

— Maleek is a university student who relies on his tablet and data Sim contract for his Internet access. He uses his tablet to do research, submit assignments and watch some sporting highlights. Maleek spends around R500/month.

Tariffic’s optimisations tests what a person’s bill would look like on all the different packages and bundle combinations out there and in this way is able to calculate exactly what a cellphone bill would come to each month, taking into account the costs of subscriptions and bundles, as well as the cost of usage over and above subscription (out-of-bundle spend).

Its optimisations do not expect a person to change how they use their phone, as it is based on their own actual historical usage patterns.

It optimises without a cellphone in mind so that it matches a person’s usage to the most cost-effective contracts, taking all complex call rates and tariffs into account.

In this tracker, it shows the total monthly cost of each recommended package and assumes that on each package, users would be taking a phone that does not require any additional pay in.

It must be noted that when a person takes a more expensive phone, not automatically supported by a package, this increases the monthly subscriptions, it says. In order to make the recommendations as comparable as possible, Tariffic has excluded all handset subsidies from its calculations to ensure that we’re analysing packages on a like-for-like basis.