Cell C customers will benefit from significantly reduced call rates to more than 227 countries from 1 September.

Following the launch of its 99c per minute call rate to 50 countries in recent months, Cell C has now reduced the call rates to an additional 177 countries.

“We have spent a great deal of time negotiating better termination rates with our international partners.  The termination rates, or rates charged by other operators to carry calls on their networks, remain the highest input cost both locally and abroad, when determining call rates,” says Alan Knott-Craig, Cell C CEO.

He says the savings negotiated will be passed on to consumers through reduced international call tariffs.  In addition to the reduced tariffs, Cell C has also simplified its price plan to ensure more transparency when making calls abroad.

Countries have been grouped into five different zones according to the new call rates and will be available to prepaid, hybrid and postpaid customers as default rates from 1 September.  Calls will be billed on a per second basis and the new rates will be applicable to fixed line and mobile numbers in the respective countries.

Zone 1 includes 50 countries at a call rate of 99c per minute. Calling destinations in Zone 1 include Angola, Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, India, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, the UK and USA.

At R1.99 per minute, Zone 2 includes 53 countries including Argentina, Botswana, Israel, Japan, Mozambique, Namibia, Saudi Arabia, Swaziland, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates.

Zone 3, at R2.99 per minute covers 66 countries including Cameroon, Denmark, Ethiopia, Ghana, Lebanon, Lesotho, Mexico, Switzerland and Qatar.

He adds that the remaining 58 countries will be added to Zone 4 and Zone 5 at R3.99 and R8.99 per minute respectively.  Zone 4 includes countries such as Albania, Bulgaria, Chile, Liberia, Sudan and Zimbabwe.  Zone 5 includes Cuba, Djibouti, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Tunisia.

‘We will continue to negotiate better rates and where we are able to further reduce rates, we will make amendments,” says Knott-Craig.

All international calls are pure circuit-switched calls (non-VoIP) ensuring the best quality possible.

A full list of countries per zone is listed below: