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Uncapped 3G, Capped Disappointment

May 18, 2010 Uncategorized

MTN have announced the availability of their uncapped data packages from 1 June 2010.  I think this is significant as this is the first of its kind among the cellular network providers. While I welcome the arrival of an uncapped data from a cellular provider it has to be asked, whom is this product for ? I can’t help but ask given the R749 and R1 999 price points !

The other question is,  why two prices ? Well in South Africa like most things, a historical context may help explain things.

For a long time now, South Africans have looked upon their international counterparts (read Europe, S.Korea and USA) with gleaming eyes.  What with their unlimited internet access and generous definition of broadband upwards of 8MBps. While in contrast, our broadband packages have been on the rather puny and  limited 3 Gigabyte  Telkom ADSL account;  their flagship at the time later revised upwards to 5 Gigabytes. The awareness of this vast difference in broadband experience has incubated a pent-up and insatiable demand for MORE DATA among South Africans.

Since our service providers have limited experience in supplying uncapped data  it is understandable that MTN would immediately seek to put some limits in order to manage expectations of performance. They need only look back t0  the Afrihost experience which was handled fairly reasonably i think.

So the two prices relate to the two levels of usage; 3 Gigabytes at R749 and 10 Gigabytes at R1 999.

Why the dissapointment ?

1. Well first of all the price. R749 is high; one can get away with an unlimited package under R500 per month, at far higher thresholds; granted at much slower speed.
2. Marketers must learn to use words that require less qualification when advertising their product. Granted, I have not seen any marketing campaign for the product but unlimited must mean unlimited experience. Not fast experience for the first 3 gigabytes then a slow down.

On the other hand, the product is here.  I think  given the fact that MTN have had trouble with DATA BUNDLE BILLING in the past, the innovations they have made on their data offering since fixing those billing issues are enough to get me thinking about returning to MTN to suppliment my  data appetite.

Welldone MTN