Telkom’s new mobile business, 8ta, is stepping up the fight with rivals Vodacom, MTN and Cell C with the launch this week of five contract packages, all offering aggressive tariffs.

In a move clearly aimed at taking market share from its rivals, the company is giving the first 100 000 contract subscribers free calls to a Telkom land-line number of their choosing for two years.

8ta entered the market last month with prepaid packages only, promising to introduce postpaid options in early November.

Amith Maharaj, who heads the 8ta business for Telkom, had promised to keep the packages simple and the five new offerings appear to live up to that.

The options range from a R90/month contract at the low end, to a R500 product for high-end users.

The entry-level product, called Contract One, provides 90 minutes of bundled on-net calls and calls to national landline numbers. It offers 15 minutes of calls to other networks and includes 25MB of data.

The R500 offering, called Contract 4, provides 500 minutes of bundled on-net calls and fixed-line calls. It also offers 200 minutes for calls to other mobile operators and 50MB of data.

No SMSes are included in the contracts. However, as with 8ta’s prepaid plans, subscribers get 50 free SMSes each day, provided they pay for five at 50c each.

Only one contract package offered by 8ta will provide per-second billing, a move that is likely to cause much dismay. The other packages and the prepaid plans are all billed per minute.

The company’s Contract 3s costs R230/month and gives users 13 800 seconds (230 minutes) of on-net or fixed-line calls. It includes 3 600 seconds (60 minutes) of airtime for calls to other mobile networks. Included data is 25MB.

Out-of-bundle rates are a mixed bag. 8ta charges R1,75/minute to other mobile operators during peak times and 95c/minute off peak, compared to R1,50/minute on its prepaid service day and night. Ad hoc data rates are R1/MB once in-bundle data is exhausted.

At the same time, 8ta has unveiled three new post-paid data contract packages. Internet One costs R195/month and comes with 650MB of data; Internet Two offers 1,5GB of data for R280/month; and Internet Three, at R500/month, includes 3,2GB. The out-0f-bundle rate is 30c/MB. — Candice Jones, TechCentral