South African households are facing an onslaught of price increases from today, as several tariff and subscription fee changes announced weeks ago come into effect.
The most significant is Eskom’s annual price adjustment for its direct customers.
The National Energy Regulator of South Africa granted Eskom an effective 13.29% increase for key industrial and urban tariffs.
Even subsidised home users face a 12.74% price hike.
While Eskom Direct customers are paying more from today, municipal electricity tariffs will only increase on 1 July by 12.72%.
Vodacom announced in February that it would implement price increases across its postpaid product portfolio.
While it said that the average contract customer’s bill would increase by roughly 4.6%, this is only true when factoring in other products and services to the overall increase.
MyBroadband’s analysis showed that contract subscription prices on their own increased by an average of 8%.
According to Vodacom, it cushioned customers by keeping insurance premiums, hardware and device costs, valued added services, and out-of-bundle rates unchanged.
Vodacom blamed various challenges on higher operational costs for mobile operators — such as base station vandalism, battery theft, load-shedding, currency weakness, and high inflation.
Another major price increase coming this week is fuel.
The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy announced that the price of petrol would increase by between 58 cents and 67 cents per litre.
Mercifully, diesel will remain relatively stable with the wholesale price change ranging from a 9 cents per litre decrease to a 3 cents per litre increase.
Telkom also announced substantial price increases last week that kicks in today.
Fibre-to-the-home prices will increase by an average of 10%, DSL prices by 15%, and business voice prices by 12.5%.
Out-of-bundle voice rates are increasing by 11.25%, while out-of-bundle data and SMS rates will increase by 11.42%.
Telkom said there would be no increases to ad-hoc or recurring prepaid bundles.
Its announcement comes after Telkom’s wholesale and networks division Openserve notified Internet service providers last month that it would be increasing its fibre line prices from today.
An industry source told MyBroadband that Openserve was hiking the price of fibre lines by between R30 and R50 per month, excluding VAT, with lower-speed lines receiving the largest increase.
Openserve is not the only fibre network operator to increase prices.
Frogfoot hiked its fees on 1 February, Octotel on 1 March (read more), and Metrofibre implemented substantial pricing changes towards the end of last year. Vumatel implemented a price increase in May.
In addition to electricity, telecommunications, and fuel price increases, MultiChoice’s annual DStv price hikes kicked in today.
These range by between 3.1% and 7.8%, with DStv Access and DStv Compact Plus receiving the largest increases.
To compensate for the large increases, MultiChoice said it would offer greater value on these packages.
Compact Plus was increased by 6.9%, and subscribers will get a revamped set of channels that includes the best of Showmax’s original content.
DStv Access received the biggest increase but also got an upgrade to its sports offering in the form of SuperSport’s La Liga football channel.
The DStv Access sports lineup now includes ESPN, La Liga, SuperSport Variety 4, and SuperSport Blitz.
The table below summarises all the price increases kicking in this week.
| Service provider | Price increase |
|---|---|
| Eskom Direct | 12.74%–13.29% |
| Vodacom contract | 8% (average) |
| Telkom / Openserve | 5%–12.5% |
| DStv | 3.1%–7.8% |
| Petrol | R0.58–R0.67 per litre |
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