Lower ADSL prices

ADSL South Africa (Broadband South Africa), 15 October 2006

Fierce competition among smaller ISPs in the ADSL arena is pushing down ADSL prices. Even more good news will follow if Telkom’s stranglehold on the market can be broken.

Smaller ISPs are leading the way to lower ADSL prices by offering much better packages than MWeb and TelkomInternet in terms of pricing and in many cases customer service. This proves beyond reasonable doubt that the big shots are out to milk ADSL users dry. In other words, it’s not as such a matter of survival for them as with the smaller ISPs. If smaller ISPs can lower their ADSL prices why can’t the big shots? Both Telkom and MWeb’s offerings in regard to standard SAIX ADSL accounts for instance leaves much room for improvement when compared to the offerings of smaller ISPs such as Axxess, Cybersmart and WebAfrica.

Standard Shaped 2GB Accounts

TelkomInternet R199 per month, MWeb R219 per month, Axxess R119 per month.

Standard Shaped 3GB Accounts

TelkomInternet R249 per month, MWeb R299 per month, Axxess R179 per month, Cybersmart R125 per month and WebAfrica R199 per month.

Higher Cap Accounts

WebAfrica 10Gb account R499 per month.

Unshaped ADSLper GB

Axxess R99 per GB.

2GB Unshaped ADSL Accounts

TelkomInternet R679 per month.

3GB Unshaped ADSL Accounts

VerizonBusiness R290 per month.

Lo cal ADSL access

OpenWeb R99 per month (1GB international usage + 10GB local usage).

It’s evident from the above that smaller ISPs offer much better packages at least in terms of pricing. Axxess for instance can provide a standard shaped 2GB account that’s R80 cheaper than Telkom’s offering and a massive R100 cheaper than MWeb’s offering. Just imagine what you can do with an extra R100 per month or R1 200 per year.

It’s ridiculous for one that a ‘spoiled brat’ like TelkomInternet can’t come up with something better. ‘Daddy’ Telkom makes sure its ‘brat’ enjoys an unfair advantage by the way ADSL products are structured. At the moment one is forced to purchase both a standard line rental and ADSL access from Telkom if you want to subscribe to an ADSL service. In other words, competition only occurs in the ADSL ISP portion although even in this portion Telkom is calling the shots because most ISPs are resellers of Telkom SAIX bandwidth (MyADSL ).

It’s great to see that ADSL prices are starting to come down although it’s clear from the above that big shots like Telkom needs to be reigned in rather sooner than later.