New mobile service providers 8ta has announced the availability of BlackBerry Prepaid Blackberry Internet Services (BIS) vouchers.

The new prepaid BIS vouchers from 8ta will give you access to Blackberry Internet Services and free Airtime for the period of 6 months for only R600 once off.

BlackBerry Internet Services is a easy to use and low cost solutions for those wanting access to internet, email and social networking, making it ideal for the youth of today that needs to constantly connected. With the new prepaid BIS vouchers parents can be rest assured that their children will not run out of airtime while surfing the net and there is no need to take out a contract, ensuring no bill shocks at the end of each month.

The prepaid BlackBerry Internet Services vouchers from 8ta is valid for 6 months and will give you R600 worth of airtime, free BIS subscription valued at R59pm, 500mb of free YouTube streaming, and the ability to get 50 free sms message each day when you send 5 sms messages. You will also earn free minutes after the first 3 seconds of each received call.

The BlackBerry prepaid BIS vouchers is obtainable from any 8ta flagship stores, Telkom Direct stores, Edcon and Altech Autopage, and can be used in conjuction with a Prepaid tariff and any other active bundle, be it SMS, data or other. Once the voucher expire you’ll have the option to migrate to another Prepaid tariff plan and to keep your existing BIS.

8ta, South Africa’s newest cellular operator has just dropped the bomb on rival cellphone network operators by introducing the cheapest mobile broadband package available in South Africa.

The new 8ta deal called Internet 5 will give subscribers access to 10GB of bandwidth at only R199 per month, and for an additional R100 users can get another 10GB that can be used between 12AM and 5AM.

This new deal from 8ta undercuts the current deals by Cell C, MTN and Vodacom that offers customers a mere 2GB of bandwidth per month for R149, by a large margin.

The 10GB package from 8ta for R199 per month will be available at all 8ta flagship stores from 26 June 2011, users will need to sign a 24 month contract and the deal is only applicable on 8ta base stations and not where 8ta uses MTN coverage to serve its customers.

To see if you are covered for the 8ta 10GB package see the Internet 5 coverage map.

Last night in a hanger at Lanseria airport, Telkom launched South Africa’s fourth mobile network operator 8ta. The past couple of months we saw numerous advertisements about Heita!, although rumor had it that Telkom was behind it no one was certain until now.

Telkom certainly means business with its new 8ta mobile network by offering prices that undercuts competitors by a large margin, and making it really affordable to phone to landlines from mobile phones.

8ta already has 800 base station constructed across the country and plans to add another 3200 over time to improve its network coverage. And although 8ta only has 800 base station it already has full national coverage thanks to its roaming agreement with MTN.

When it comes to broadband the Telkom 8ta network supports HSPA and is capable of download speeds of up to 7.2Mbps and can be upgraded to support 21Mbps in future.

Now for the pricing everybody has been waiting for. 8ta will initially only launch a prepaid offering to the market with a post paid offering to follow withing the next few months with low-end, feature phones and smartphones from all the major manufacturers.

Calls from 8ta to Telkom and Neotel landline phones will cost the consumer 65c per minute while calls to cellular phones on any other local cellphone networks will cost R1.50 per minute. In addition to the lower rates, 8ta will offer consumers 1 second free airtime for every 3 seconds they talk. Also calls from 8ta to over 100 international destinations will cost consumers a flat rate of R2.50 per minute.

Good news for SMS fanatics is that SMS messages from the 8ta network will cost 50c per message but for the first 5 SMS messages you send on a day you will receive 50 free additional SMS messages to use for that day.

Internet on the 8ta network will cost R1 per megabyte for out of bundle data with prepaid data bundles available from as low as 25c per megabyte. Prepaid data bundles available at launch are as follows:

1. 100MB for R50
2. 250MB for R100
3. 500MB for R150
4. 1GB for R250

Things are looking good for Telkom with their 8ta mobile offering, but if consumers will switch over only time will tell. Telkom does not have a great reputation when it comes to customer service and this may be held against them.

What do you think? Will you be giving 8ta a try?