Telkom, Cell C and MTN have all announced that they will help South African university students who cannot access academic materials due to the ongoing #FeesMustFall student protests across the country.
The three mobile operators will zero-rate university Web site access in a bid to assist students with accessing course material necessary to complete the year.
Telkom's reverse bill URL service allows students using a Telkom Mobile prepaid or postpaid SIM card to access content on a university website without paying for data consumption. Normally the cost of the data used would be reverse billed back to the institution. However, the company said in a statement it would waive this cost until the end of the academic year.
Cell C will implement a similar reverse bill system and will also absorb the cost to allow students to access academic content for free. This means that even if students are off campus, they will be able to access the university Web site at no cost, until the end of the academic year.
Both telecoms operators are reaching out to academic institutions throughout SA to implement the solutions.
MTN has also come to the party offering the same free service to students. MTN says so far students from the University of Cape Town and the University of Pretoria will benefit from this initiative. MTN is appealing to other institutions of higher learning to tap into this initiative by providing their URL addresses to the telco.
Telkom group CEO, Sipho Maseko, says the group believes it is essential that students are able to continue their studies despite the current political climate.
"Our universities and institutions are key to empowering South Africans and creating growth in this country," he says.
"We know students are facing a tough time at the moment, and many need to gain access to course material through their university's online portal in order to complete their academic year. Zero-rating access is our way of assisting students," says Cell C CEO, Jose Dos Santos.
MTN South Africa CEO, Mteto Nyati, says the company is mindful of the backlog that students and academic institutions are facing.
"As a responsible corporate citizen, MTN took the decision to provide free access to online educational content in order to complement existing classroom training, leverage the benefits of online training and assist the students and academic institutions to salvage the 2016 academic year," he adds.
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