The same day as Vodacom took the wraps off its new simplified contracts, MTN has announced steep cuts of up to 40% in its data pricing. This follows a price cut of the same percentage by Telkom for fixed-line ADSL broadband prices. It’s safe to say a price war is afoot – although it remains as hard as ever to compare cellular networks against each other.

MTN has dropped their 500 megabytes (MB) contract add-on to R49 a month, and lopped R20 off all the other bundles sizes (1GB for R79, 2GB for R99). Prepaid data starts at R29 for 75MB, while R70 was slashed to bring 300MB down to R79 and 500MB for R119, and R140 cut off 1 gigabyte (GB) for R149.

The TopUp plans from MTN have also seen a little pruning, dropping from R129 per month to R99 in the case of the 1GB TopUp package and from R189 to R149 per month for the 2GB TopUp option.

MTN SA’s Chief Marketing Officer Serame Taukobong said of the price drops “Our intention is to deliver a world-class Internet experience as well as quality services and products that meet the needs of our customers. Our contract customers are looking for a differentiated quality experience through lifestyle and value-based products and services.”