It’s sort of ridiculous that you use up so much airtime when you have to make a phone call.

South Africa’s popular mobile networks can swallow up your digital moolah even if the call doesn’t last two minutes – poof, it’s gone before you even miss it.

Vodacom has a helluva high cellular call rate. It costs a hectic R1,23 per minute at Vodacom to make cellular calls, and it doesn’t matter if you’re on contract or pay-as-you-go. On the other hand, cellular calls cost 99c at MTN, 70c at Telkom, and 66c at CellC.

But you can save as much as R3 if you make a three-minute call over WhatsApp, depending on which service provider you use.

Hell yes, folks, a whole R3! How amazing is that? Go wild.

Of course, the quality of the WhatsApp call really depends on network strength. Plus, the average WhatsApp call uses anything from 0,15 MB to 0,47 Mb per minute. So you better hope and pray that your network signal is strong wherever you are.

Nobody has time to struggle through a terrible quality call, so if you’re going to WhatsApp call be an adult about it.

Compiling a handy graph, Business Insider South Africa worked with 0,47 MB per minute to cost a WhatsApp call on the country’s four biggest cellular providers:

By making a three-minute call on WhatsApp at Vodacom, rather than cellular, you’d save a WHOPPING R3,48. Meanwhile, the cost difference between a WhatsApp and cellular call is the smallest at Cell C, while data packages at Telkom were consistently the cheapest.

That’s assuming you’re not connected to your home WiFi, because then it’s free – mahala.

Looks like WhatsApp really stepped up to save the airtime-strapped soul.

[source:businessinsidersa]