REVEALING THE ACTUAL COST OF TELECOMMUNICATION TO MOBILE USERS The title of my project is : REVEALING THE ACTUAL COST OF TELECOMMUNICATION TO MOBILE USERS Supervisorvised by professor tucker. By: Ghirish Chibba Supervisor: Professor Tucker

Price Plan Overview Services offered by Telecommunication companies providers SIM cards registered to specific Prepaid price plan Each price plan is unique: Call rate SMS date Data rates Promotions 4 main telecommunication providers in SA : MTN, Vodacom, Cell C & Telkom mobile Prepaid Price plans are services offered by telecommuncation companies. Within SA there are 4 main tele companies : name them . Each telecom has its own range of pre paid price plans that differ in terms of what they offer for a particular price. Each prepaid price plan consists of its own rates : call , SMS and data rates and promotions. Give an example of a promotion: buy a certain amount of data and get a certain amount for free

The Problem Users are unaware of: How much they are spending. Which price plan they are on. How to save What their price plan entails( promotions , rates etc) The problem arises when users are unaware of : -how much they are spending -which price plan they are on How to save money and What there price plan entails. This problem arises as customers are not informed of which price plan their sim card is on. when customers walk into a store they assume a SIM card is just a sim card and they all are the same. However each price plan has its own rates. This image shows the package insert of a purchased Vodacom SIM card, the package insert gives a very short promotion included in the price plan. No rates for call, SMS or data are included therefore the customer is unknown of howmuch they are spending.

The Problem Users may be unaware of where to find more information Once accessing the Vodacom website this is all the extra info that can be seen by the user. All rates are displayed as well as promotions. Not all users are aware that find this here and some may not have access to the internet to find further information.

Vodacom prepaid price plans comparison Power Bonus Vodacom 4 Less Anytime per second Call rate: R1.50 to Vodacom and other networks SMS rate: 50c local R1.50 and international Call rate: R2.60 to Vodacom and R2.89 to other networks SMS rate: 80c (on peak) 35c ( off peak) International: R1.74 Call rate: R1.20 to Vodacom and other networks SMS rate: 60c local and International: R1.74 This is an example of 3 prepaid price plans offered by Vodacom. As you can see the prices between them vary quite a lot in terms of rates. Especially between 1 and 3 compared to 2. Users may be unaware of which price plan they are on as when they buy a sim card the sim card may be registered to any of these price plans above. If users are informed of their price plan and howmuch they are spending, they could switch to a cheaper option if they wish to.

The Solution Create an application that : informs users of their price plans, Informs users of data and call costs Push notifications and info of promotions, how to save calculates the cost of each call

Requirements Analysis

Project Plan : Term 2 Download the MAMP, which makes my PC a local server to be able to send the SMS. Figure out how to send an SMS without be living on the web. Collect all data for database: All price plans for Vodacom, MTN, Cell C and Telkom Mobile. Get the following data: Call rate, SMS rates, data rates and promotions Collect all USSD codes Find a way that a can send an sms with a clickable link in. To be able to send SMS, will have to purchase some SMS credits. Create a prototype of the web application Complete term 2 documentation and presentation

(1) Cellphone Contracts — Prepaid deals — Vodacom2017, 2017. (2) R2K and L. C. R. Project, The Lived Costs of Communications, 2014. (3) Mtn store site2 017, 2017. (4) Call cost application, 2017. (5) Ussd application, 2017. (6) Appmagazine.com, ZimCodes. (7) Pushover application, 2017. Bibliography