Only a couple of years ago (1993), he formed Vodacom South Africa. Now he is waging a price war against it – as the CEO of Cell C, the third mobile operator. He joined the board on the 1st of April, 2012 after the announcement which was made on the 19th of January 2012.
Cell C recently slashed its data prices, halving them in some cases. And now it has followed up with a new voice deal for its prepaid customers. The company is releasing a new prepaid voice product and tariff plan called “99 Cents For Real” that cuts off-network tariffs to 99c/minute with per-second billing from the first second. The rate applies at any time of the day, including peak hours, and will be available from Sunday, 20 May, as part of a new starter pack. Existing prepaid customers can port to the 99c plan.
“This new [voice] tariff gives Cell C’s prepaid customers the best rate in the market, making it — in most cases — even cheaper to call from Cell C to other networks than it is for our competitors’ own prepaid customers to make on-net calls,” says Knott-Craig. “Customers can phone who they want, when they want. They do not have to worry about peak or off-peak times, to which network the call is being made or in which zone they are. This is by far the most competitive, fair and transparent rate in the market today,” he says.
Cell C has about 13 percent of the South African market compared with 45 percent for Vodacom and MTN’s 40 percent. Cell C plans to secure 25 percent of South Africa’s mobile phone market by acquiring customers from MTN and Vodacom due to market saturation, says Allan Knott-Craig.