It's official: 8ta is the brand of Telkom's new mobile offering. SA's fourth mobile operator has entered the market swinging as it tonight stated its intention to not only change the rules of the game but to completely disrupt the market.
The company unveiled the 8ta brand and said its new products will be commercially available from Monday, 18 October.
8ta unveiled prepaid voice and data at the launch. "We will launch post-paid voice and data in November," said managing executive of Telkom Mobile (branded as 8ta), Amith Maharaj. "This includes one prepaid voice and one prepaid data offering. Ultimately, two prepaid, four post-paid and three data offers; same on-net and off-net rates on prepaid."
8ta also promises simple and transparent pricing. "Simplicity is key, said Maharaj. "To this end the services will be offered on a flat rate - completely abandoning the notion of peak and off-peak rates."
The company said it is hungry to compete and succeed. Maharaj said 8ta will cause a stir in the market with some unique offers and competitive pricing.
Disruptive offers
Maharaj noted that for the first time in South Africa, all prepaid customers will benefit from free talk time to any network every time they receive calls from a mobile phone - 1 free second of airtime for every 3 seconds of call received. "This benefit is available all day, every day," he explained.
Additionally, when you send 5 SMSs in a day, 8ta will give you 50 bonus SMSs at no extra cost to use that same day, continued Maharaj.
The telco earlier in the evening noted that its main objective with the mobile offering was to change the way in which consumers buy, use and think of connectivity.
Launch pricing
Maharaj also took the opportunity to reveal what he says is competitive pricing. According to Maharaj calls from them to fixed line will cost 60 % less than typical market rates for similar calls. Calls from an 8ta mobile phone to both Telkom and Neotel fixed lines will be priced at 65c per minute, independent of the time of the call (hence no peak and off-peak rates).
There will also be a flat rate of R2.50 per minute for calls from an 8ta mobile phone to over 100 international destinations.
Mobile to mobile calls will be charged at R1.50 per minute independent of which network is called or which time of the day the call is made.
Maharaj stated that both SMSs and MMSs are priced at 50c each. 8ta prepaid Internet customers will get an out-of-bundle rate of R1 per megabyte, while prepaid data bundles can be purchased for as low as 25c per megabyte.
The prepaid data bundles which will be available at launch are: 100MB for R50; 250MB for R100; 500MB for R150 and 1GB for R250.
Extensive reach
Lastly, Maharaj explained that 8ta had secured an extensive distribution channel to reach the telco's target market: everyone.
"8ta will initially only offer prepaid services through a countrywide sales network that includes the major consumer retailers and mobile wholesalers, as well as 132 Telkom Direct outlets across South Africa and the 8ta flagship stores," he stated.
"At launch we will be available at Edgars, Jet, CNA, Altech, and Smartcall. Other large retailers, such as Shoprite and Pick 'n Pay, will be rapidly brought on stream shortly," he noted.
8ta plans to introduce several tiers of devices - low-end, feature phones and smartphones from all the major manufacturers.
Maharaj said 8ta has plans to bring Android and Blackberry to the market by the end of the year, and is actively working on an iPhone introduction with its channel partners.
8ta services will be made available in November.
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