JOHANNESBURG - South Africa’s MTN Group today made an announcement on data prices in the country.
MTN SA CEO Godfrey Motsa was joined by the Minister of the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies, Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams.
Motsa announced that MTN will be slashing some of their data prices by 50%.
Motsa said, "From 1 April the price of monthly bundles of 1GB and below will be cut by 25-50% and the 1GB monthly bundle will decrease by 33% to R99."
MTN also announced that through their instant messaging service, Ayoba, the service provider will give their customers 20MB a day, or 600MB a month for free.
MTN offers access to zero rated data access and from 1 April, the group annonced that they will be extending the amount of websites that customers will have access to, which will include, health, public universities, vocational colleges, educational resources as well as employment sites.
The group also stated that there will be an 'open time' service that they will be offering. This will allow for free access to public benefit services. 500MB will be granted monthly to customers which amounts to 6GB per month.
The announcement comes after their competitor, Vodacom said earlier this month that it would put R2.7 billion back into the hands of consumers after slashing its data prices following an agreement with the Competition Commission.
The first mobile network provider in South Africa to reduce data prices said the initiatives, which would come into effect at the beginning of next month, included cutting its 30-day bundles by up to 40 percent in the next two years. The group said it would reduce its 1GB of data by 34 percent to R99 from R149 on all channels and would provide further discounts on all 30-day bundles. Further decreases would be effected on April 1, 2021.