Anyone else noticed the ‘twitchy’ behaviour of South African Mobile Phone Operators (specifically MTN and Vodacom) They’re on the offensive with adverts around their cheap calls if you use your phone betwen 17:00 – 20:00. Who uses their phone during this time? Dinner, kids, TV. Give me a break. Anyway, there are three interesting movements in the industry that I think has them behaving like this:
1) They’re (network providers) being investigated by government for high call rates. Their main argument has been that they haven’t raised their call rates for several year. All this argument does for me, is clarify that they’ve been ripping their users off for so long they haven’t needed to change their rates. There are also threats from government that they might release more licenses to force more competition.
2) Hopefully very soon we’ll be able to take our numbers and migrate to whichever provider we want to. We’re currently restricted because changing your provider has meant losing your number. This however should all change within the next few months. Aparently the biggest losers in this change, according to global research, will be the big guys (Vodacom in this case).
3) Richard Branson is coming to town. Cell C and Virgin are in talks. I know little about Branson, but I’m told this… Virgin looks for opportunities in industries where rot has set in. Where big, fat, slow, innefective companies dominate. That Virgin is talking to Cell C confirms what I’ve always felt about out telcoms industry. Mobile included.
Twitchy Mobile Networks
