Article by www.ioltechnology.co.za

Vodacom on Monday launched Yebo4Less – a new service which offers call discounts of up to 99 percent. Yebo4Less rivals MTN Zone, which was launched earlier this year and offers MTN customers call discounts of up to 95 percent.

Yebo4Less, like MTN Zone, is only available to prepaid customers. However, while MTN Zone only offers discounts on calls made to MTN numbers, Vodacom’s service offers discounts on calls made both on and off the network.

Yebo4Less offers various discount rates, which are displayed on the subscriber’s cellphone, calculated according to the subscriber’s location, the time of day and calling patterns on the Vodacom network. The less network demand there is at that particular time in that particular area, the greater the discount, with maximum possible savings of 99 percent on calls made to Vodacom numbers and 65 percent on calls made to other networks in South Africa.

The discounts apply to all voice and video calls, but exclude premium rated calls, international calls and data calls.

According to a report published on myadsl, the Yebo4Less service has a base rate of 4c per second, or R2,60 per minute, for voice calls to Vodacom numbers and a base rate of R2,89 for calls made to other networks. A guaranteed minimum discount of 50 percent applies to all calls made during off-peak hours.

MTN Zone has no guaranteed minimum discount. The base call rate for the MTN service is R2,50 per minute for calls made to MTN numbers and ranges from R1,19 (off-peak) to R2,89 (peak) for calls made to other networks.

As is the case with MTN Zone, Vodacom prepaid customers need to actively switch to the Yebo4Less tariff option, which they can do by dialing 1181 from their handsets. The switch is free and is confirmed with an SMS. In order to see the applicable call discounts on their cellphone displays, the customer then needs to activate the Cell Broadcast or Cell Info function on their handset or dial *111*444#, which will provide the call discount for that particular area at that time.

Tags:  broadcast calling calls cell cellphone cellular customer dial discount minute mobile mtn mtn zone myadsl network new number offer per minute per second phone premium provide rate service subscriber vodacom yebo4less