Telkom is re-introducing its R7 cap for weekend calls immediately, but this time weekday off-peak calls are included, and the service is here to stay. "It is now a product instead of a promotion," says Amanda Singleton, group executive of corporate communication.
To make use of the product, customers have to pay an extra R43.42 on top of the standard R55.58 rental fee. Any call then made after 7pm or during the weekend will be capped at a maximum of R7.
The R7 weekend promotion last year was extended by three months due to its popularity. When the promotion ended, the company was inundated with complaints. "The communications department received more than a thousand petitions for the extension of the R7 weekend," says senior media manager Andrew Weldrick.
The capped calls are a boon for dial-up Internet users, many of whom complain bitterly about the expense of making long calls while surfing the Web. Users say that during the previous R7 promotion they often established a dial-up connection on a Friday night and disconnected only in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Telkom says the service is not available to customers using its prepaid service or in areas still served by manual exchanges, because of technical constraints. International calls, payphones and calls to the cellular networks are also excluded.
The company says its flexible billing capability makes the R7 product possible, and other promotions and services are expected to flow from the new system. It has also not excluded the possibility of bundling special pricing with the use of its recently launched Internet service provision (ISP) division TelkomInternet. The ISP is operational in the Western Cape and is to be rolled out to other areas of the country soon.
Related stories:
Share