8ta Telkom Mobile Pricing and Details

8ta Telkom Mobile Heita!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?


WebAfrica goes Tier-1 and need you to help test

WebAfrica will be testing their very own Tier-1 ADSL network within the next 30 days and they need you to help them test it.

WebAfrica is giving away 10GB adsl account to users willing to help test their brand new Tier-1 ADSL network. The accounts are absolutely free, but are limited to the first 5000 signups.

To sign up fo this free trial please visit http://www.webafrica.co.za/trial/. Login details will then be sent to you via email or sms as soon as the trial begins. Users can keep up to date on discussions surrounding the trail and receive customer support on the WebAfrica Trial Forum, available at http://forums.webafrica.co.za/networktrial.

For more information regarding the Trial visit the WebAfrica Blog. Please not that there is only 5000 signups available and already 1,843 has signed up, so hurry to get your free 10GB trial account.

I signed up for my account on Friday already and will be giving feedback throughout the trial right here on iGeek.

Wugging

Wugging derived from the word wugger meaning a active member of a WUG (Wireless User Group), Wugging is the act of utilising what the WUG has to offer be it filesharing, games or physically contructing highsites.

If you have not joined a wug yet go check it out, there is local WUGs all around South Africa, Im an old timer on CTWUG been with them for almost 3 years now.

Wugging

Motivational courtesy of Toady on CTWUG network.

Check out your local WUG site for more details:

Afrigator SA Topsites ::