“We are committed to developing and enhancing our products to speak to market conditions. Examples of this include MTN Zone and its subsequent spin-offs such as MTN Zone Mahala and MTN Zone SMS. This is in addition to the introduction of MTN Zone Top Up, a Hybrid equivalent to the Prepaid product” says Robert Madzonga, Chief Corporate Service Officer at MTN South Africa.

 

The MTN Zone per-second billing price plan was introduced to offer discounts of up to 95% on mobile phone calls for MTN Prepaid subscribers making calls to any local network. MTN expanded this offering to include MTN Zone SMS, which applied the same discounts to SMS and to customers on a Hybrid Top Up plan, which meant that contract subscribers could also benefit from the discounts.

 

The introduction of the MTN Zone 100% Mahala promotion saw customers receive guaranteed discounts of up to 100% for a block period, every day of the week including weekends. 

 

This provided people who have been juggling their limited budgets with an opportunity to make more free calls and send more free SMS to other MTN subscribers. With this offer, any customer on MTN Zone can now call and SMS any MTN number for free compared to the historical maximum discount of 95c, which in comparison was also competitive, allowing customers to call at a low rate of 15c per minute and send an SMS at 4c. 

 

“It is important to note that free calls for MTN-to-MTN calls have now become a permanent offer to MTN customers; however, the frequency at which customers receive the 100% discount is determined by the time of day and their location,” Madzonga adds.

 

Furthermore, MTN introduced the One Rate Prepaid price plan earlier this year. This offer lets MTN customers make calls at a flat rate available all day across all networks for less than 3c per second, compared to a historical peak rate of 5c per second.

 

With this significant reduction in retail call rates, MTN customers benefit from savings of up to 40% on calls made throughout the day, irrespective of the network they call. In addition, MTN customers on One Rate now also benefit from a significantly reduced SMS rate of only 50c compared to the historical rate of 75c per SMS during peak times to any number, at any time of the day.

 

In real terms this means MTN customers are now charged a reduced rate of R1.75 compared with the old peak rate of R2.89, the old standard rate of R1.99 and the old off-peak rate of R1.19.

 

On the data side, MTN introduced Top Up data packages last year, which allows customers to purchase smaller data packages and top them up for less. MTN was also the first mobile operator in South Africa to announce a mobile data carry-over period of up to 60 days, which meant that consumers did not lose any unused data, as was the norm with competing offers.

 

More recently, MTN unveiled new data offerings and dramatically reduced out of bundle rates to better cater for customers who rely on internet connectivity to manage their businesses and lifestyle, as well as stay in contact with family and friends.