How much are you paying for your mobile package every single month? If the costs, carrier terms and conditions, SMS costs and minutes are giving you a nosebleed, cast an eye in the direction of Telkom

At a rather swish launch in Hyde Park this evening, the communications parastatal fired a rather sizeable salvo in the direction of its competitors. How does R1 000 for unlimited data, free calls to any network, free messages and free WiFi grab you? Or R600 per month for 20GB of data, 1500 minutes of calls to any network and free messages and WiFi?

Telkom has announced a complete overhaul of its mobile packages, which has been bundled under the rather touchy-feely brand, #FreeMe.

According to Consumer CEO Attila Vitai, Telkom has seen customers completely change the way they use monthly data – using OTT services more to communicate both via messaging and calls made – and the parastatal has adjusted its approach towards consumers accordingly.

“Telkom FreeMe offers our customers smartphone plans that liberate them from everything they’ve ever hated about their network,” said Vitai. “Data has become the central requirement for the most smartphone users, so that is what we have prioritised.”

Vitai says from a technical perspective, these reductions in tariff have come through the re-farming of its 1800MHz spectrum.

The new FreeMe packages – which are available from next week Monday – range from R99 per month, offering 1GB of data a month, up to 50 free texts a day, 2GB FUP free IM calls and free calls to any other network in SA, to the full fat R999 package, mentioned above.

What’s more is that these packages are available to both post-paid an prepaid packages. And current Telkom mobile customers with active contracts will have the ability to switch across to the new packages this weekend, when they launch.

“This is the first step and we will build on this,” said Vitai. “We have more groundbreaking offers coming in the next few months. Hold onto your seats.”

Well, indeed.