FatBudgie rocked the market this week by announcing the lowest small business call rates in South African history - from as low as 25c per minute for calls to landline numbers and 39c per minute to mobile numbers.
The announcement eclipses similar announcements made by the mobile operators in July, effectively under-cutting its closest competitor by 11c on its "cheapest" plan.
New packages
The new FatBudgie rates range across three different plans - YellowBudgie for light users (if your staff members each make less than 10 minutes in outbound calls daily on average); GreenBudgie for average users (10-15 minutes); and BlueBudgie (more than 15 minutes).
Yellow costs R85/user/month plus a flat rate of 99c/min (mobile) and 38c/min (landline). Green costs R125/user/month plus call rates ranging from 59c to 84c/min (mobile) and 33c to 37c/min (landline), depending on user numbers. Blue costs R175/user/month plus 39c to 59c/min (mobile) and 25c to 29c/min (landline) depending on user numbers.
FatBudgie offers true per-second billing, cancellation at one month's notice, free inter-branch calls and free quality-of-service management on the Green and BlueBudgie plans. View the tariff plan here.
Choice benefits
FatBudgie MD Sacha Matulovich says the telco brings choice and flexibility to the market. "Rather than be stuck with a rigid price structure, our customers can decide which usage bracket suits them best and tailor-make their price plan accordingly."
In addition, prices are utterly reasonable. Even better, it makes fair pricing available to micro and small businesses of five to 40 users. "If you're a light user, you can go with a low fixed monthly charge of R85 and a reasonable call rate of 99c/minute. If you call more, your fixed rate goes up, but there's a built-in volume discount for calls."
The pricing policy is in strict compliance with the Department of Telecoms and Postal Services' dictum that pricing should be transparent.
Whereas other telcos often lock customers into 12-month or 24-month contracts, Fat Budgie follows a standard one-month cancellation policy.
Savings
The savings are significant. Matulovich says in the higher-usage companies (ideal for the BlueBudgie package), pay just more than half the rate Telkom charges for calls to landline numbers, and just over a third of Telkom's cost to mobile numbers.
"If you have 10 average users, you'll save about R900 per month. Annualise that and you have a significant saving!"
Mobile smoke screens
Matulovich says cellular operators' pricing concessions have certain limitations. "The new tariffs apply only to certain contract types and customer segments, while FatBudgie offers low rates to all our customers."
Connection Telecom, which acquired FatBudgie in June, recently revealed that the spate of mobile billing concessions further serves to distract the market from runaway data pricing, with Cell C in particular having increased its out-of-bundle data rates by 560% in May.
"All eyes should be on data pricing," says Rob Lith, Connection Telecom director. "As operators lose voice minutes to Voice over IP-based applications like Viber, and VOIP providers like FatBudgie and ourselves, they've begun to charge exorbitant rates for data on their networks, which may well be VOIP calls."
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FatBudgie
FatBudgie, recently acquired by Connection Telecom, began over 10 years ago as a site-based PBX distributor. As demand for costs saving grew, FatBudgie introduced VOIP as a service to clients with VOIP compatible PBXs. In 2011 FatBudgie deployed its own hosted PBX platform and began to actively market this as viable alternative to traditional site-based systems. The company converted almost all its legacy customers to its hosted platform and is now 100% focused on marketing, installing and supporting cloud PBX. FatBudgie's success is attributed to its focus on delivering cloud telecoms to small businesses over various forms of connectivity, making it affordable and accessible. The team at FatBudgie is known to go way above expectations to help customers in need, regardless of their size. In this way FatBudgie strives to be the hero for small business telecoms, and hopes to make their entire telecommunication experience a little more enjoyable every day. To learn more about what FatBudgie does and how it sees the world, please watch the short video at www.fatbudgie.co.za.
Sacha Matulovich, Chief Executive Officer
Matulovich graduated from advertising school at the end of 2001 after which he interned at Network BBDO for the summer. It was at BBDO that Sacha realised that it was unlikely that he would ever be satisfied with an 8-5 job. He turned down the junior Art Director position and immediately launched Re:public, which began as a graphic design studio, and is today a diversified private equity group employing over 100 people.
It was while deploying a call centre for one of Republic's subsidiaries that Matulovich discovered FatBudgie Cloud PBX. Matulovich realised the potential of this product for the South African business market, and took up the opportunity to invest in FatBudgie. Matulovich took up the role as CEO of FatBudgie in March 2012.
Matulovich believes in people, and is passionate about partnership, mentorship and strategy. He subscribes to the formula of finding great people first, and then embarking on the mission to deliver better value to an ever-increasing market of business owners who are in need of great products and services.
Matulovich has featured in publications like Fin Week, Financial Mail, Entrepreneur Magazine and Destiny Man, and was chosen by Mail & Guardian as one of the "300 Young South Africans you have to invite to lunch".
Connection Telecom
Connection Telecom was founded in 2004 as a pioneering, independent provider of proven carrier-grade IP PBX solutions to southern African businesses. The company's team boasts more than 150 years in collective telecommunication experience. Connection Telecom offers solutions and services based on the Telviva family of enterprise PBXs and other products aimed at enterprise customers, smaller businesses and vertical industry applications. Feature-rich, managed and open, these solutions allow freedom of choice in handsets and add-ons, a low total cost of ownership and call cost savings of up to 40%. The company has offices in Cape Town and Johannesburg with on-site support in 28 locations. Its major clients include First National Bank, Old Mutual Finance, Engen Petroleum, FNB, Lewis, RMB Asset Management, UCS and Vox Telecom. For more information please visit: www.connection-telecom.com.
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