Telkom's offering gets mobile

By Candice Jones for Telkom
Johannesburg, 09 Apr 2009

Telkom's full mobile offering is expected to get off the ground in the last quarter of this year.

In just under three weeks, Telkom will shed its stake in subsidiary Vodacom. The company has been quietly rolling out its WCDMA network, which looks to have good coverage in Johannesburg, although it still seems sketchy in other parts of SA.

Telkom says it already has a significant number of users on the nomadic mobile service, which will become a full virtual mobile offering not long after Vodacom's release.

The telecoms company has released the pricing for its new Mobi service, which comes in several flavours: Mobi Prepaid, Mobi Everyday Off-peak, Mobi 200, Mobi 300 and Mobi 500. The pricing of these offerings appears competitive against other mobile operators' products.

Mobi Prepaid looks exceptionally competitive, with peak call costs coming in far lower than any of the other providers, at R1.99 for on-net calls and R2.29 to any other provider. Off-peak calls on Mobi Prepaid also take first prize in calls on-net; however, Vodacom beats the package with calls to other providers by 9c.

Most striking about these offerings from Telkom is that all, barring the prepaid offering, are bundled with free Internet data; although the top-end contract option, Mobi 500, only comes with 100MB of free data.

Currently, the real drawback of a fully inclusive deal from Telkom is that the solution is nomadic. Telkom is unable to compete in the roaming mobile arena until Vodacom has been fully sold off. This means Telkom will need to wait until 5 May before it can implement cell-to-cell roaming.

According to Telkom, the network has speeds up to 7.2Mbps, which is the current speed supported by 3G mobile handsets, data cards and USB modems available on the market. Out of bundle data rates for Telkom are fixed at R0.99.

The company's Everyday Off-Peak offering will cost a consumer around R109 per month. The Mobi 200 to 500 cost between R200 and R545 per month, depending on the solution. Consumers using those offerings will receive 200 to 500 free minutes, reflected in the name of the package.

ITWeb pits two of the lowest options from Telkom, Mobi Prepaid and Mobi 200 against similar packages from the other operators. Click here to see the comparison.