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Education provider to enter South African MVNO market

Education provider to enter South African MVNO market

South Africa has no shortage of MVNOs (over 20 at the last count), but the newest addition is unusual, even by the standards of a market that has attracted banks, retailers and insurance companies. This time it's STADIO, a South African higher education provider.

STADIO has launched its own mobile network, STADIO Connect, which runs on the MTN network. One important part of this offering, in a country where the high cost of mobile data has been an issue for some time (even attracting a critical report from the country’s Competition Commission), is that STADIO students and staff are being offered some of the lowest mobile data prices in South Africa.

Indeed, STADIO suggests that the cost of data remains one of the most significant obstacles to success for South African youth, although, of course, the educational element of its offering is an incentive for the company to keep prices low to attract business.

As the company explains, with universities shifting towards blended and online learning, reliable internet access has become essential for students, not just for attending virtual classes but for submitting assignments, accessing academic resources, and staying connected to their studies. This isn’t easy when data costs are high, hence the offering from the new MVNO.

The ITWeb Africa news service reports that STADIO Connect has launched at all STADIO campuses nationwide to contact learning students and campus staff. Access will be rolled out to the company’s distance learning students in the second semester of the 2025 academic year, and then to family and friends of STADIO students and staff.

Students each receive a free SIM or eSIM upon registration. The SIM card is preloaded with non-expiry data, airtime and SMSes. Users need to register their SIM cards with their identity and residential details. They can port their existing number to the MVNO’s network, or get a new number and purchase additional SIM cards.

STADIO claims to have more than 100,000 students on its books and to be enjoying sustainable growth.

The South African MVNO market has been growing apace, helped somewhat by regulator ICASA, which mandated 'MVNO enablement' as part of its licensing agreement with mobile operators in the 2022 spectrum auction in an effort to support the expansion of the market.

MVNO network provision has so far been dominated by operators Cell C and MTN. However, Vodacom recently built an enablement platform for MVNOs and signed up its first MVNO client, while Telkom this year partnered with a mobile virtual network enabler (MVNE) platform provider.



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