MTN South Africa is hiking the prices for post-paid customers from 1 February as the company pours money into building a network that is resilient to load shedding.

It also blamed crime and the weak rand for the decision to increase prices by an average of 4.3%, below the forecast by the Reserve Bank for inflation to average 5% in 2024.

“In recent years, demand for data services has grown exponentially, placing greater strain on telecoms networks. At the same time as investing to improve our extensive network infrastructure, we have had to contend with the escalating costs of ensuring resilience during load shedding, inflationary pressure, and more instances of battery theft and site vandalism,” said MTN South Africa chief consumer officer Ernst Fonternel in a statement.

Out-of-bundle voice rates will increase by 11c/minute on average, while out-of-bundle data rates increase by 4c/MB. Subscription fees will increase by an average of 8.8%. Device fees, insurance premiums and add-on voice/data bundle prices will remain unchanged.

The company said it has historically tried to keep price increases below the prevailing rate of inflation “Increments include a 4% rise in 2019 and 5% in 2022 and 5.1% in 2023, with a notable hiatus in 2020 and 2021. However, faced with current economic pressures, MTN is adopting a cautious approach for 2024 to ensure it can continue to deliver a quality network experience to customers.”