MTN, South Africa’s second-biggest mobile phone operator, announced on its Twitter page that it will soon cancel its free unlimited Twitter service. This is not the first time that MTN has stopped free unlimited Twitter service, taking us back last year in 2017, MTN stopped unlimited Twitter service due to “abuse” hence it ended up capping the usage to 100MB per day. That meant that you could still retweet, love, follow, unfollow and set your profile picture, but that was limited to 100MB per day. Once one had reached the 100MB limit, one was to be charged normal data rates.”
Last Year’s Tweet.
“After providing free Twitter to millions of subscribers for an unprecedented four years, MTN’s industry-first free Twitter service will come to an end at midnight on 25 September,” MTN said.
Below is MTN’s official statement is also sent on twitter:
MTN said it had over 13 million Twitter users on its network in August 2018, with 1.9 petabytes of data being used on the network per month.
“Overall usage trends towards video and images have determined that it is no longer feasible to offer a service like Twitter for free due to the cost and demand it places on the network.”
The cancellation of the free Twitter service follows MTN recently placing a 500MB daily usage cap on its free Twitter offering – following the exploitation of the service by hackers.
WhatsApp and Twitter bundles
MTN also announced changes to the pricing and sizing of its WhatsApp and Twitter bundles.
From 1 October 2018, MTN’s Twitter and WhatsApp bundles will be amended to the following:
- Weekly WhatsApp bundle – 100MB for R5 changes to 250MB for R10.
- Daily WhatsApp bundle – 20MB for R1 changes to 50MB for R2.
- Weekly Twitter bundle – 100MB for R5 changes to 500MB for R20.
- Daily Twitter bundle – 20MB for R1 changes to 100MB for R5.
“While our pricing has increased, we were mindful of ensuring that our offering remained competitive and affordable. In line with this, both offerings still provide great value in the market,” said MTN.
