Affordable airtime for prepaid cellphones can be found at almost any shop in South Africa. From petrol station shops, to super stores such as Checkers and Pick n Pay, now anyone can buy minutes with which to call their loved ones no matter which service provider they use. The three biggest cellular service providers in South Africa are Vodacom, Cell C and MTN and these organisations have tailored packages to meet the need of every South African. So now, no matter what you are looking for, you can get your talk bundles or sms bundles from any number of stores countrywide. This however is not only restricted to cellular telephones, but also applies to your Telkom phone as you can now purchase prepaid airtime for your landline as well.
The new kid on the block, Virgin Mobile, also has affordable airtime for prepaid cellphones. However their main draw card in South Africa is the fact that if you get a cellular contract through them, you get a certain amount of free sms’s every month. For example, if you get a contract through them and pay R149 per month, you get 149 talking minutes and 1000 free sms’s a month. This type of package is ideal for children and the youth who are seemingly addicted to text messaging their friends. This means that cellular services providers such as Cell C are losing market share and therefore have had to attempt to ensure that they have products and packages to try and effectively compete against Virgin Mobile.
Another competitor to the likes of Vodacom and MTN are landline phones. Before where you would have to pay a monthly phone bill and sometimes dread the bill arriving in the mailbox, you can now purchase airtime for a Telkom phone. This means that you can budget effectively for the month by allocating certain amounts of money a week or month for your home phone. With the increase in the numbers of competitive activity in the market, there is a significant increase in the service providers trying to outdo their counterparts with special offers on talk bundles, sms bundles and much more. Therefore there is a definite trend in South Africa to try and keep prices low and by offering packages that suit the needs of every South African.