Yesterday I spent most of the day phoning around in Cape Town to find a MTN store that will have the iPhone 4S on 16 Decemeber 2011, but I was told by every store I phoned that they will not have the phone on launch date, shocking considering I phoned most of the bigger stores.

Both Vodacom and MTN has however told MyBroadband that users should not be concerned and that there will be stock at certain stores where customers can go to on launch date to apply for iPhone 4S contracts. These customers going into stores to take out iPhone 4S contracts will be treated on a first come, first serve basis.

Vodacom has also revealed the stores where the iPhone 4S will be available on launch date, see table below.

When Apple announced the launch of their new iPhone 4S, South Africans has been holding thumbs that just maybe the iPhone 4S would launch here. Unfortunately as with most tech products, South Africa is not always on top of the list to get things first.

Apple then announced the second launch wave of the iPhone 4S to a few additional countries and yet again South Africa was left behind, but it seems like we are in for a Christmas surprise.

Vodacom yesterday revealed in a tweet that they will be launching the iPhone 4S in South Africa on 16 December 2011. Rumors was doing the rounds that the iPhone 4S would have launched on 30 November 2011, but later industry players stated that the launch was postponed to December.

MTN has also responded and said that they will also be launching the iPhone 4S on 16 December, but pricing are yet to be confirmed.

If you are a Vodacom customer or would like to become one you can pre-register for a iPhone 4S here.

At an event in Johannesburg last night, Motorola Mobility, has launched the world’s thinnest smartphone, the Motorola RAZR, in South Africa.

The South African launch comes only a mere week after Motorola announced the Motorola RAZR to the public internationally, showing that Motorola really has put more focus on marketing and bringing their latest devices to the country.

Owning the title of the world’s thinnest smartphone one would have expected Motorola to skimp on hardware power, but this is not the case with the RAZR. The Motorola RAZR features an 1.2GHZ dual-core CPU, 1GB of RAM, an 8MP camera and a gorgeous large 4.3″ AMOLED screen.

Apart from the impressive hardware features the RAZR also comes with an array of consumer experiences which Motorola considers to of high importance, seeing as they currently have more engineers working on this then on the hardware itself.

A nice consumer experience is the smart actions that learns a users habits on the phone and then automatically adjust the phone settings according to your habits to ensure longer battery life.

The RAZR is also compatible with the Lapdock and the HD Multimedia Station Motorola introduced with the Atrix.

The Motorola RAZR will be available at Vodacom from November 2011 on a 24-month Business Call contract at R269 or at a retail price of R6999, which too be honest is a bit on the steep side.

Vodacom has been planning a price reduction of their mobile broadband offerings for a while now, and they have finally announced it with savings of up to 43%.

Vodacom recently also launched a 2GB + 2GB for R149 per month special that competes head on with the Cell C special of 2GB for R149, but this is only a promotion and does not offer any value to current Vodacom Standard broadband subscribers.

The company has now taken the wraps of their new mobile broadband data offering prices with lower in-bundle and out-of-bundle pricing, and they have also removed the 600MB, 1.2GB and 2.3GB packages, replacing them with 1GB, 1.5GB, 2GB, 2.5GB and 3GB packages. Out-of-bundle pricing has also been reduced from R2 per MB to R1 per MB.

From 1 August 2011 all Vodacom Standard data packages will be replaced by the packages bellow, all contract customers now also qualify for the Vodacom Nigh Owl service which offers customers extra bandwidth to the same amount as their bundle size during the hours of 00:00 to 05:00.

New Vodacom Mobile Broadband Pricing

Information was recently leaked about a mobile broadband promotion that Vodacom was set to run from 1 May 2011 to 31 July 2011, soon after the leak Vodacom put details up on their site and got everybody all excited.

The Red is mofaya broadband deal from Vodacom initially offered customers 2GB of bandwidth every month, with an additional 2GB of night owl bandwidth which can be used between 12 AM and 5 AM in the mornings and also included a 7.2 Mbps USB dongle at R149pm on a 12 month contract. The next day however, the terms and condition suddenly changed on the Vodacom website and made the deal part of a 24 month contract instead.

When users saw the new terms and condition they did not take lightly to it and started to vent their anger, and soon after that Vodacom pulled the deal from their website.

The reason Vodacom said they retracted the deal from their site was to rectify the issues with the terms and conditions and have since re uploaded the deal again with all new terms and conditions offering the Red is mofaya broadband deal like it was advertised in the newspapers.

The Vodacom Red is mofaya broadband promotion will be available from 1 May 2011 to 31 July 2011 on a 12 month contract offering customers 2GB of bandwidth per month, with an additional 2GB night owl bandwidth and a USB dongle for the stated price of R149 per month.

Last week MyBroadband leaked information about a broadband promotion that Vodacom was set to launch in May 2011, shortly after that Vodacom put details up on their site about the promotion.

The Red is mofoya promotion initially promised users 2GB of mobile broadband data, a 7.2Mbps USB modem and an additional 2GB of night owl data that users could use between 12AM and 5AM in the morning, on a 12 month contract for R149pm.

The promotion that was set to compete head on with the Cell C’s SpeedStick offering has since seen a turn for the worst. Yesterday I and many other users noticed that Vodacom have amended the Terms and Conditions of the promotion and now the deal has been removed from the Vodacom website.

Vodacom has not made any official statement regarding the matter but the removal either suggests that Vodacom has decided not to offer the Red is mofoya broadband promotion anymore, or they have taken it down to finalise the Terms and Conditions.

Vodacom, Saturday opened up its new 43.2 Mbps network for business by enabling more than a 1000 base stations with the new technology.

Vodacom’s new SuperMobile network is a dual carrier double speed HSPA+ network offering speeds of up to 43.2 Mbps.

Speaking about this new technology, CEO Pieter Uys said: “If something half the speed was already fast, this we should call this new technology superfast.  Having said that, the SuperMobile experience isn’t about theoretical peak speeds only achievable in laboratories.  We’re much more interested in how this technology increases network capacity and supports our goal of giving a decent connection speed to everyone in South Africa.”

Uys added: “We’ve actually had the technology up and running for some time but we wanted to have a critical mass of at least 1000 base stations before flipping the switch to allow consumers access at up to double the speed.  We wanted to make sure that we had the service available in more than just one city.”

Users wanting to make use of the new SuperMobile 43.2 Mbps network can obtain compatible modems from Vodashops for under R1400 or alternatively get them for free on certain data contracts.

Vodacom will continue to roll out the new double speed HSPA+ network aggressively across South Africa, with the expected enabled base stations to double in the coming months.

Last week Vodacom introduced their new Red is mofoya promotion to compete directly with Cell C’s Speedstick offering, giving clients access to 2GB of data plus another 2GB of night owl data for only R149pm for 12 month.

At first glance the Vodacom data promotion set to look allot cheaper than the similar offering from Cell C, but upon further investigation I actually found out that the promotion is not that cheap after all.

The R149 per month fee is applicable to 12 months, which makes it the same as the Cell C offering, but what was hidden a bit was the fact the after that 12 months you had to pay normal MyGig 2 data contract prices of R349pm and the Night Owl data is only applicable to the first 12 months.

The Red is mofoya data promotion from Vodacom is in fact a 24 month contract with reduced rates for the first 12 months, bringing the cost per megabyte up substantially from the initial 3.6c per MB as reported by MyBroadband, to 8c per MB or R83 per GB over the period of 24 months.

The fine print does state that you can cancel the contract after 13 months without a penalty, but you still have to pay R349 for the 1 month additional bandwidth.

[UPDATE]
Seems like Vodacom took down the promotion on their website.

[UPDATE]
Vodacom clarified Red is mofaya broadband deal for R149pm

Vodacom CEO, Peter Uys, once noted that the Cell C promotional data offering, giving clients access to either 2GB or 5GB of bandwidth for a year at a very low price, was not sustainable in the long run, yet Cell C have been continuing to offer clients the special promotional data offerings.

Seems like Vodacom has had a change of heart since it re-branded and are now offering clients a similar product to that of the Cell C 2GB Speedstick offer, with prices as low as 3.6c per megabyte.

The new promotional data offering by Vodacom is a “2GB + 2GB” offering, giving clients a 7.2Mbps HSPA capable modem, 2GB of bandwidth per month, and an additional 2GB of “Night Owl” bandwidth which can be used between 12AM and 5AM, all for only R149 pm. The offering also includes free technical support and a mailbox with 5GB of storage.

Vodacom has just become the most affordable mobile broadband provider in South Africa again, and I would like to see what MTN will do about the new price reduction seeing as they still charge users R389 pm for a 2GB offering.

Vodacom recently unveiled their new branding with a big focus on Red, the new colour of Vodacom.

Vodacom is spending more than R200 million on the new Red branding but Vodacom CEO Pieter Uys said that the re-branding is not only a once of change from Blue to Red and in the coming months consumers can expect more from the new Vodacom.

Cell C is however not letting Vodacom take all the shine with its new Red Vodafone centric brand, the cellular operator who recently changed their own brand from Red to Black is targeting all Vodacom Red advertisements on Google through ads.

The new advertisement campaign handled by Trigger, the social media company handling all the Cell C social media account, takes aim at searches related to Vodacom and then warns users to “Stay out of the Red” with another advertisement reading “Red means Stop”.

To view the advertisements simply search for Vodacom Red or Vodacom Broadband on Google.

Cell C, who’s brand was previously also Red, clearly are trying to win over users through the Vodacom Red campaign, my concern is just can Cell C handle more users on their broadband network with so many users already complaining about connectivity issues.