MTN BlackBerry service for Pay-as-you-go customers

Posted on 20. Nov, 2009 by Nana Kwabena Owusu in News

The BlackBerry Service from RIM is now available from several cell phone companies in Ghana (MTN, Tigo, Zain) but it has always been a service available to postpaid customers.

An SMS I recevied yesterday indicates that MTN has launched (or is in the latter stages of launching) a BlackBerry Service package for prepaid customers. I do not know if the SMS went out to all customers or a selected group. I think it went out to existing BlackBerry service users.

The service will cost GHC 40.00 per month, the same as it costs on the postpaid plan. Based on this pricing it seems the plan will be similar to the postpaid and will therefore include a 2GB data plan. Let me clarify that this seems not to be a Pay-as-you-go BlackBerry service but rather a monthly BlackBerry service for prepaid customers.

Postpaid accounts deter a lot of customers because of the initial deposits required and this prepaid offering makes MTN very competitive. Compare this prepaid plan to;

MTN Postapaid BIS: Deposit (GHC 50.00) + 1 Month BIS Service Fee (GHC 40.00) = GHC 90.00
Zain Postpaid BIS: Deposit (GHC 100.00) + 1 Month BIS Service Fee (GHC 40.00) = GHC 140.00

With this offering it may not be a far stretch for MTN to launch BlackBerry Connect, which is a service which allows non-RIM devices (such as Asus, HTC, Motorola, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson) to use BlackBerry push technology for email and calendar synchronization and internet browsing.

Will update with full details when available.

Tags: blackberry, mtn, News, phone plans, RIM, telecoms, Unwired, wireless plans