BUSINESS NEWS - Vodacom’s revamped Smart+ and Red+ integrated packages have seen increases in data, voice and SMS allocations across the board.
And, in the case of its Smart packages (ranging from the R199 (200MB) to R699 (1GB) level), this additional ‘value’ has come with monthly subscription price increases of at least 30%. But how do these stack up to offers from competitors?
Key to this analysis are two vectors: price per month excluding a handset (and the below comparisons try to cluster these within a narrow band in each segment) and data allocation (after all, these integrated plans are targeted squarely at smartphone users).
Entry-level
On entry-level packages (Smart XS+ with a paltry 200MB per month bundled is excluded), Vodacom now at least compares more favourably with rivals and offers better value than Cell C’s Pinnacle 250 (double the data with almost the same amount of minutes and SMSes).
If one excludes Telkom’s FreeMe contracts, which typically make the competition look laughable, MTN shines in this segment. Its My MTNChoice+ S package offers four times the amount of data as Vodacom (and eight times that of Cell C), and even compares reasonably favourably with Telkom.
It must be noted that, with the exception of the two top-end plans, Telkom’s FreeMe contracts do not come with bundled voice minutes. If you add the price of 200 minutes (or 100 in the case of MTN) of calling (at 69c per minute) to the FreeMe 2GB subscription price, it still compares favourably with both Vodacom and MTN’s plans.
