Best ADSL deals

Over the last few months there have been many ADSL ISP price cuts. Here are some of the best deals in the market today

When Telkom announced in June this year that its monthly subscription charges for ADSL, Do Broadband and TelkomInternet would remain unchanged many consumers voiced their disappointment, saying that it was high time for ADSL access charges to decrease.

Telkom did however increase the monthly usage allowances (aka caps) on some of their ADSL accounts.  TelkomInternet all access 2GB and 3GB customers saw their monthly usage limits increase to 3GB and 5GB respectively. This was only the start of better value for money in the ADSL ISP market. 

Over the last few months there have been significant price cuts from both old and new ADSL service providers.  The most significant price cut came from Afrihost who offered ADSL data bundles at R29.00 per GB, well below the standard wholesale cost price of the service.

While Afrihost’s price is unlikely to be beaten by competing service providers any time soon, many other ADSL ISPs have also unveiled improved value propositions on their ADSL products.  Here are some of the best deals available in the market today.

Standard month-to-month ADSL data bundles

For month-to-month ADSL data bundles, where unused data is typically lost at the end of the month, consumers will be hard pressed to find a more affordable option than Afrihost’s ADSL offerings.  At R29 per GB for shaped Internet Solutions’ (IS) bandwidth it is currently the most affordable blended bandwidth service in the country. 

Gridhost recently launched its R44 per GB offering using shaped SAIX blended bandwidth.  This is one of the most competitive rates for SAIX based bandwidth, and according to Gridhost consumers can look forward to unshaped data bundles in the near future.

Vox Telepreneur’s R50 per GB is slightly higher than other low-cost offerings, but the service has one big advantage:  you only pay for what you use.  Here users set their own cap, but only have to pay for the number of GBs used.  If you therefore have a monthly cap of 10GB, but only use 3.6GB, you will only be billed for 4GB and not 10GB.

Telkom Internet’s R239 for a 5GB blended data account and 30GB of local bandwidth provides good value for money in the local ADSL market, while Cybersmart’s R259 for DSL 384 Access and 3GB data and Nashua Mobile’s R199 for DSL 384 access and 2GB of data are leading the low end all-in-one services.

For local-only accounts Openweb’s R131 for 30GB for IS based data and Web Africa’s R130 for the same type of account remains popular among ADSL users looking for local bandwidth.  For local-only SAIX data Axxess’ R10 per GB is difficult to beat.

Prepaid ADSL data bundles

Web Africa’s R70 per GB and Axxess’ R69 per GB for prepaid data bundles, which typically have a long lifetime and hence don’t expire at month’s end, have set the standard in ease of use and pricing in the ADSL market.  The good service levels and strong trustworthy brands of Web Africa and Axxess means that they remain the preferred provider for many ADSL subscribers, but there are a few ISPs who have cut their rates to take on the more established players.

G-Connect’s prepaid ADSL rate of 4.9c per MB – with a ‘happy-hour’ rate of 4.5c per MB – is currently one of most affordable rates in the ADSL market.  The further advantage of being able to use the data bundle for 3G and Wi-Fi access makes this a popular choice among travelers and mobile workers.

Afrihost is also targeting the prepaid market with its prepaid price of R49 per GB for non-expiring data bundles.  This is slightly less than Gridhost’s prepaid price of R56 per GB and Telkom Internet’s R64.79 per GB.

Uncapped ADSL

Uncapped ADSL is becoming more affordable and hence more widely adopted than a few years ago.  Here Axxess’s R899 for IS’s 384 Kbps uncapped express – which offers full line speed after 8pm on weekdays and the weekend – is one of the more affordable offerings around.

SAOL’s 384 Kbps fixed IP service, priced at R499 per month, provides users with always available, flat-rated internet access.  The company’s 512 Kbps fixed IP service at R749 per month is also aggressively priced.

For a high-end, uncapped ADSL service Openweb’s Vodacom Business 4096k all-hours Uncapped ADSL account for R2,699 per month is priced well below similar offerings in the market.

Best ADSL offerings – do you know of any other great ADSL deals?