Cell C has fired a new salvo in the mobile rates price war, slashing its per minute rate to an unprecedented 66 cents for its pre-paid customers.

The announcement has just been made at a press conference currently underway at the company’s headquarters in Woodmead

Both MTN and Vodacom have cut their prices recently, apparently as a response to Cell C’s aggressive campaigning as the users’ champion.

MTN, for example, offers a flat rate of 79 cents per minute on all networks.

Some sceptics expressed surprise, however, that Cell C had not followed suit following a court ruling that the ICASA-mandated mobile termination rates should stand for six months before being reconsidered. The new MTR rates favour the smaller operators like Cell C and Telkom Mobile at the expense of the giants Vodacom and MTN.

Today, though, Cell C has made those cuts, and their new rates could herald a no-holds-barred price war in the market.

“We will continue to be the consumer champion, and will continue to offer the lowest call rate,” says Jose dos Santos, CEO of Cell C.

“From 1 June, we will cut the prepaid rate to 66 cents per minute, on per second billing. This means we maintain our position as the provider offering the lowest, guaranteed call rate for prepaid users.”

Importantly, Cell C has also launched new products for the post-paid market. “We have been working hard to target the SME and the high net worth customer,” Dos Santos says. “We have a strategic intent to take this war and this price war to a new level.”

Cell C has launched three new post-paid packages that offer these customers a 79 cent rate.

The entry level ChatMore package comes in with no contract, but operates on a month by month basis. There is no subscription for this package, but users pay for what they use.

The ChatMore 200 has a R159 subscription, and offers 200 call minutes and 150Mb data, with a SMS rate of 50 cents.

The ChatMore 400 is a R319 per month subscription and users get 400 calls on any-net as well as 300Mb data and SMSs at R0.50.

“We intend to cement the position of consumer champion,” Dos Santos says. “But we are now taking the fight to the next level – the SME and high net worth individual.”

Dos Santos points out that Cell C’s SupaCharge is still the most cost-effective package for prepaid users, at a an effective rate of 37 cents per minute. The new 66 cent deal relates to voice-only users as a response to the 79-cent offers from other networks.

Cell C has seen significant growth in its user base over the last few months – in fact, the last four months of 2013 saw more subscribers signing up than for the rest of the year.

The company has also addressed network challenges, with 439 new sites built between September and December 2013, and a further 318 planned for 2014, taking the company’s total number of sites to 4 494 by the end of September.

In Gauteng, the network swap to Huawei technology is underway, with the northern area already completed, the eastern and southern areas scheduled for end-September and the western areas by the end of November.

“There has been a lot of effort put into the network,” Dos Santos says.