Telecommunications operator Neotel is back for another stab at the consumer market, relaunching its offerings in voice and entry level broadband.

The company, which has struggled to make a meaningful impact in the consumer telecoms space in SA, has introduced a high-speed data service for R99/month that includes 500MB of data and 500 free SMSes.

It’s also done away with differences in tariffs between prepaid and post-paid products and launched prepaid offerings for both voice and data services. Free on-network (Neotel-to-Neotel) calls have also been introduced between 6pm and 7am daily to entice customers.

There’s a new home phone offering at R399 and an increase in bundled minutes and data allowances on most existing packages. An additional 500MB of data has been added to most data products. Whether this will be enough to keep consumers sweet remains to be seen. Many have been lured by relatively cheap uncapped offerings available from service providers using Telkom’s broadband lines.

At the same time, Neotel has introduced a larger range of recharge vouchers — R25, R50, R100 and R200 — which can be purchased at Sasol forecourts and Neotel outlets.

Talks are taking place with “leading financial institutions” interested in selling Neotel airtime.

Though it’s introducing new products, Neotel is also scrapping some of its higher-end data products. It’s NeoConnect Prime 10G, 15G and Unlimited packages, as well as NeoFlex Data 10G and 15G, have been done away with. In their place, Neotel is hoping to sell solutions based on WiMax technology, a concession that it’s code division multiple access, or CDMA, network was not suited to high-end data users.

“There remains a significant portion of the population who need entry level products,” says Neotel MD Ajay Pandey in a statement. “We see a gap for differentiated, affordably priced voice and data offerings, and we believe we are best placed to satisfy this demand as we continue to grow our network.”

Pandey says Neotel has “taken heed” of customer and market feedback

The company promises it will soon address the billing problems that have plagued it. These will “soon be a thing of the past as a result of a new best-of-breed billing system that has dramatically improved billing accuracy and information,” it says.

“Customers have already begun experiencing quicker turnarounds in query and complaint resolution following a total overhaul of the systems and processes in the customer call centre.” — Staff reporter, TechCentral