WhatsApp data bundles are a practice I don’t agree with, however, no matter what I think they are a part of our lives. One thing I have noticed though is that whenever I am in a group with ordinary non-tech Zimbabweans in South Africa, the South African based people there seem to always whine about expensive data bundles when someone shares a video or audio message.
This has left me to wonder: is data really that expensive in South Africa-specifically WhatsApp bundle data? Or are these people just being cry babies? I mean anecdotal evidence has always seemed to suggest that data is more expensive in Zimbabwe compared to other Southern African nations. So which is it? Today we find out.
We will compare the prices of daily, weekly and monthly WhatsApp bundles. Unfortunately, the data allocations don’t seem to be the same among all the six networks (three Zimbabwean versus three South African) we will look at. I will simply ignore this. I am not going to complicate things by trying to looking at price per MB or price per GB. As will become clearer later on that will not even be necessary.
So let’s start with daily bundles
| MNO | Data Allocation | Price in Local currency | USD Equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Econet | 45MB | ZWL$ 55.00 | $0.42 |
| NetOne | 40MB | ZWL$ 40.00 | $0.31 |
| Telecel | 40MB | ZWL$ 40.00 | $0.31 |
| MTN | 50MB | R2 | $0.14 |
| Vodacom | 50MB | R3 | $0.21 |
| Cell-C | 300MB | R10 | $0.69 |
N.B. Cell-C doesn’t seem like it has a daily bundle so we used a weekly bundle instead hence the discrepancy.
Weekly data bundle comparison
| MNO | Data Allocation | Price in Local currency | USD Equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Econet | 140MB | ZWL$ 164.00 | $1.26 |
| NetOne | 150MB | ZWL$ 140.00 | $1.08 |
| Telecel | 155MB | ZWL$ 135.00 | $1.04 |
| MTN | 250MB | R10 | $0.69 |
| Vodacom | 250MB | R12 | $0.83 |
| Cell-C | 300MB | R10 | $0.69 |
Monthly data bundle comparison
| MNO | Data Allocation | Price in Local currency | USD Equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Econet | 400MB | ZWL$ 445.00 | $3.42 |
| NetOne | 750MB | ZWL$ 450.00 | $3.46 |
| Telecel | 500MB | ZWL$ 360.00 | $2.77 |
| MTN | 1GB | R30 | $2.07 |
| Vodacom | 1GB | R35 | $2.41 |
| Cell-C | 1GB | R30 | $2.07 |
As I already stated I am not even going to waste time calculating the price per MB or GB because there is frankly no need to even do that. From above we can clearly see that Zimbabwean mobile network operators charge more for less.
So we can scientifically conclude that those in South Africa pay less for their WhatsApp bundles compared to those in Zimbabwe. They just like to whine.
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What’s your take?