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8ta blasts BlackBerry prices down

Telkom’s mobile network service 8ta has launched its BlackBerry offering with the lowest price and most generous Internet offering yet: where other networks have offered the BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) for R57 a month with unlimited Internet access, excluding streaming services like YouTube, 8ta throws in 500MB of YouTube a month at no cost. Those buying the 8520 Curve get BIS for R47 a month, after three months.

8ta and Research In Motion have announced the availability of the BlackBerry solution for 8ta customers with free mobile YouTube streaming of up to 500MB per month. The offer will be available in 8ta and TelkomDirect outlets from 24 April 2011.

The BlackBerry solution brings together smartphones, software and services to allow easy wireless access to email, messaging, social networking, phone, calendar, web, multimedia and other business and lifestyle applications. 8ta customers will now be able to enjoy the freedom and productivity benefits of using their BlackBerry smartphone to stay connected to people and information while on the go. At launch, 8ta will offer a free BlackBerry Internet Service subscription for the first three months for customers on Contract 1 with the BlackBerry Curve 8520 smartphone. At the end of the three months, 8ta customers subscribed to the hero deal will enjoy a further discounted BlackBerry Internet Service plan of R49 (incl. VAT) per month for the remaining 21 month duration of their contract. * Amith Maharaj, Managing Executive of 8ta says: ‚It is our aim to shake up the market by offering simplicity and value to our customers. The BlackBerry solution offers the best of both worlds. We believe that the BlackBerry solution will help to ensure that our customers go beyond just using email and Internet on their smartphones. We also aim to enhance the offering with free mobile YouTube streaming, which is a first in South Africa.‚ ‚We are pleased to work with 8ta to offer the BlackBerry solution to customers in South Africa,‚ says Deon Liebenberg, Managing Director for Africa at RIM. ‚BlackBerry smartphones deliver a powerful and unique mobile experience, allowing users to stay easily connected to people and information while on the move.‚ At launch 8ta will offer the BlackBerry Curve 3G and BlackBerry Curve 8520 smartphones. Soon thereafter, the BlackBerry Bold 9780 and BlackBerry Torch 9800 smartphones will also be offered. 8ta will offer BlackBerry Enterprise Server for corporate customers and BlackBerry Internet Service for smaller businesses and individual users. BlackBerry Enterprise Server is for organizations that manage their own email servers. The BlackBerry Enterprise Server software tightly integrates with IBM Lotus Domino, Microsoft Exchange and Novell GroupWise and uses advanced security and IT policy controls to enable secure, push-based wireless access to email and other corporate data. BlackBerry Internet Service is designed for smaller businesses and individuals. It allows customers to access BlackBerry data services including Internet and access to up to 10 supported corporate and personal email accounts (including most popular ISP email accounts such as Yahoo! Mail and Google Mail) from a BlackBerry smartphone. Pricing 8ta’s special value added offering to all 8ta customers provides the choice to nominate one Telkom landline, which customers can make unlimited free calls to for 24 months: this offer is available to contract customers. 8ta Pre-paid customers receive free voice airtime for calls received on their 8ta number. 8ta further offers 50 free SMSs for every 5 SMSs sent on the same day to all customers. All BlackBerry smartphones will be available on competitive Pre-paid, Contract and Saver options. All other customers shall ascribe to the fees below in addition to the base plan fee: BlackBerry Internet Service R 59.00 incl. VAT per month BlackBerry Enterprise Server R 89.00 incl. VAT per month

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