Cell C, which for years has tried to entice customers away from other service providers with its competitive prices, has announced widespread price increases for both contract and prepaid customers.
The price of data bundles will be hiked by between 10% and 25% next month, while out-of-bundle call rates will increase by between 10% and 19% per minute as of 1 February.
In a letter to customers, Cell C says towards the end of 2016 the mobile operator assessed its entire product offering and decided that certain pricing and product changes would come into effect at the beginning of February 2017.
The full list of price changes was announced via a notice on the Cell C Website, which shows a 25MB bundle now costs 25% more (from R8 to R10); 50MB of data has increased in cost by 23% (from R13 to R16); 100MB has
increased 16% (from R25 to R29); 300MB is up almost 7% (from R60.79 to R65); and 500MB of data now costs 10% more (from R90 to R99).
Cell C's Daily Data Bundles have increased in cost by between 7.7% and 33%, while WhatsApp bundles now cost 60% more – up to R12 from the previous R7.50.
SmartData contract prices include a 15% increase for the SmartData 500MB contract, from R39 per month to R45. The SmartData 1GB contract now costs R75, up almost 9% from R69, but the SmartData 10GB contract has dropped
14% from R349 to R299.
Some of the biggest price hikes come from the Prepaid Broadband Once-Off Allocation products, which are once-off bulk data purchases that are valid for one year. The cost of 100GB of data used to be R999, but has now increased
by 50% to R1 499. Buying 200GB of data has also increased by 25%, from R1 599 to R1 999.
Out-of-bundle data rates for all SmartData TopUp plans will increase 11% per MB, from R0.99 to R1.10, while prepaid customers' out-of-bundle call rates will also increase by 11%, to R1.10 per minute.
Prepaid out-of-bundle data rates have also all been adjusted to R1.10 per MB, which is a 10% increase for those on the MegaBonus package (from R1 to R1.10); an 11% increase on SUPACHARGE, Sharks Mobile, Trace Mobile,
Bhansela Data, and AVBOB plans (from R0.99 to R1.10); and a 39% rise for the EasyChat package (from R0.79 to R1.10).
The only prepaid package that has seen a price drop for the out-of-bundle data rate is the 66c package, which has dropped by 45% from R2 to R1.10.
© ITWeb
