Which service provider is cheaper?

Bombarded with data bundle specials and discounts, yet you still end up paying a fortune for your smart phone or tablet? We feel your pain.

Which is why we’ve tried our best to give you a break down of some of the best deals available at the moment from South African service providers. There are all sorts of different packages available, each differing in price and dependent on the amount of data you will actually use. It can be confusing to know where to start and what works for you might not necessarily work for someone else.

It’s because of this that we love the table that offers a mobile data comparison. It breaks down the best bundles available, highlighting the cheapest price depending on what you are looking for specifically. For example, it shows that for 5MB of data bundles, 10MB of data bundles, 20MB of data bundles, 50 MB of data bundles, 100MB of data bundles and 500MB of data bundles, the cheapest bundle you can buy is the NeoConnect Lite Prepaid. For these smaller amounts of data, below 500MB, Virgin Mobile is shown to have the next cheapest available bundles while Cell C Prepaid Smartdata SIM offer 3GB follows with a couple of examples behind.

For larger amounts of date like 1024MB, the Cell C Prepaid Smartdata SIM Offer 12GB is your best option while for 2048MB, it’s a tie between the MTN 2GB (24m contract and modem) and the 8.ta 2GIG + 1GIG Night Surfer Promo. While the table was last updated on 23 January 2012, it is interesting to note that Vodacom’s bundle offerings do not feature much at all in terms of best bundles. The only time they are highlighted on the table is for the 5MB and 10MB bundles, where the Vodacom Standard Prepraid MyMeg 10 bundle and Vodacom Standard Contract MyMeg10 bundle gives you the third cheapest option.

In a comparison between MTN and Vodacom however, Vodacom has some of the cheapest options when it comes to smaller amounts of data. However in the larger brackets, from 3072MB to 20480MB, it is the MTN Uncapped Lite (24m contract and modem) that is the cheaper option. For smaller packages like 50MB and 100MB, the Vodacom Standard Contract MyMeg 100 and Vodacom Standard Prepaid MyMeg 100 are shown to be cheaper however if you only want 20MB of data, then the MTN 10MB is the better way to go.

The great thing about this graph is that you can see what the best deals are from each service provider, if you don’t have the option of switching and changing service providers for each device, depending on what is cheaper. For example some of the best deals from MTN include the MTN 75MB and MTN 10MB for smaller amounts of data, the MTN 2GB (24m contract and modem) for medium amounts of data and the MTN Uncapped Lite (24m contract and modem) for larger amounts of data.

For Vodacom, the best options differ depending on the amount of data you are going to be using, but you can see a comparison between Prepaid, Top Up and Once-off bundle options which may make it a lot easier to decide for yourself if you’re a Vodacom customer. Cell C, Neotel Mobile and 8.ta Mobile are very similar in this regard, with prices dependent on the type of data bundle you are looking for.

These are rough ideas of prices but there often regular new deals and specials on from different service providers. Go to your service provider directly too to find out if they have anything special on and compare it with the table linked here. It’s easy to cut some costs on your data bundles if you know how.