In a move which brings the cost of telecommunications in South Africa in the limelight yet again, a R175 million marketing campaign was launched by Cell C on Monday; with the mobile network operator challenging consumers to check the real cost of making calls from their networks.

As a part of the new marketing campaign, Cell C is requesting consumers to ask from their respective operators about the exact amount which is being paid by them for their telecom requirements. The campaign launched by Cell C not only intends enlightening the consumers about the cost of calls in South Africa, but also aims at winning them over to its 99c offering.

According to Jose dos Santos, COO of Cell C, the key focus on the campaign is to educate the South African consumers about call costs, as well as to give them the power to select their network on the basis of the running costs of communicating, instead of the cost of the device.

Cell C's new marketing campaign comes close on the heels of its unveiling of the Supacharge product, which give the prepaid and top-up customers the advantage of 1,000 free SMSs, talk time and 1GB of data, when they recharge with a sum of R500 or more.

Noting that the key objective of the campaign is to make the consumers aware about what they actually pay on their networks, dos Santos said: "Consumers still don't know what they're paying on their networks."