MTN; Data Bundles get more expensive
MTN Zambia has increased some its data tariffs and strangely decreased a few. A comment on one of our posts led to us investigating and comparing April’s tariff to this month’s tariffs. It proved true. We missed the official announcement.
We focus on their prepaid bundles and compare the previous April pricing to the new May pricing. The table below focuses on bundles with a validity period of up to 30 days.
| Bundle | Daily (new) | Daily (old) | Weekly (new) | Weekly (old) | Monthly (new) | Monthly (old) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20MB (WhatsApp) | K3.15 | K3.15 | ||||
| 75MB | K7.00 | K5.00 | K20.00 | K20.00 | ||
| 150MB | K15.00 | K15.00 | K27.00 | K20.00 | K35.00 | K35.00 |
| 300MB | K24.00 | K20.00 | K40.00 | K35.00 | K60.00 | K50.00 |
| 500MB | K50.00 | K40.00 | K100.00 | K80.00 | ||
| 1GB | K100.00 | K80.00 | K130.00 | K104.00 | ||
| 2GB | K140.00 | K115.00 | K185.00 | K148.00 | ||
| 3GB | K262.50 | K262.50 |
The price increase has primarily affected the mid-tier bundles from 150MB to 2GB. The average price increase across the board is 20%.
For bundles with a validity of up to 60 days:
| Bundle | 60 day (new) | 60 day (old) |
|---|---|---|
| 6GB | K498.75 | K420.00 |
| 10GB | K700.00 | K560.00 |
| 20GB | K1150.00 | K960.00 |
Here we see a strange price increase to K498.75 for the 6GB bundle, surely K500 would have been better? Once again a 20% average price increase across the bundles.
For night and weekend bundles the product has become complicated. MTN has increased the amount of data it allocated and created new bundles. Here the price increase is greatest and the hardest to compare due to the change in the base product.
| Bundle | Validity | Volume | Night (old) | Night (new) | Weekend (old) | Weekend (new) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Night 1GB (old) | 1GB | K2.00 | ||||
| Night 3GB (old) | 3GB | K10.00 | ||||
| Night 10GB (old) | 10GB | K40.00 | ||||
| Sunday 4GB (old) | 4GB | K20.00 | ||||
| Weekend | 48hrs | 4.5GB | K60.00 | |||
| Sunday A | 24hrs | 1.5GB | K10.00 | |||
| Sunday B | 24hrs | 4.5GB | K30.00 | |||
| Night A | 5hrs | 1.5GB | K7.50 | |||
| Night B | 5hrs | 4.5GB | K25.00 | |||
| Night C | 7hrs | 6GB | K35.00 |
Midnight surfers are taking the biggest knock in terms of overall spent with packages moving from K2.00 to K7.50 for the smallest bundle, an increase of 266%. The largest night bundle size reduced from 10GB to 6GB, a 40% decrease. The average night and weekend bundle size is now 500MB larger. The Sunday A and B bundles run from 00:01 to 23:59 on Sunday. The night bundles are all valid from 00:01hrs to 05:00hrs.
The following bundles deserve an honourable mention because they are no longer listed on the MTN site, they had outlived their usefulness:
- Facebook K30.00
- Twitter K30.00
- Wikipedia K30.00
Sources: MTN Zambia website (April 2016 compared to May 2016)
thanx for the follow up
Thank you for the lead!
Thanks for getting this info out there. Really helpful.
Our pleasure – spread the news