Broadband price, reliability and speed

Rudolph Muller

Rudolph Muller is the editor at MyBroadband and covers telecoms and broadband news. Rudolph comes from an academic background, but left the University of...

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In the Broadband Survey conducted by MyBroadband in September 2009 broadband consumers ranked ‘price’ as the most important component when deciding which broadband service to purchase.  Price was followed by ‘download speed’, ‘reliability’, ‘latency’, ‘support’ and ‘upload speed’. 

A comparable survey in the United Kingdom conducted by ISPreview.co.uk showed that UK consumers ranked broadband reliability before speed and price.  The results from 1043 respondents reveal that 42% of Brits rated ‘reliability’ as the most important factor when picking a new broadband ISP, which is closely followed by ‘speed’ (37%).

“Interestingly ‘Price’ is no longer seen as being the key factor, with just 15% voting for that. Both ‘Support’ (3.6%) and ‘Services [email etc.]‘ (2%) came bottom,” ISPreview said in a press statement. 

“Despite Price being considered less important than Reliability and Speed, some 30% of respondents still pay around £20 per month for their broadband service, 25% paid around £15 and a surprising 21% are paying more than £25+. Furthermore 16% pay roughly £10 per month and 8% just £5 per month.”

ISPreview.co.uk’s Editor and Founder, Mark Jackson, said: “There was a time when price would have been considered more important but, in the age of growing demand for new media, content and a greater quality of service, this appears to be changing.”

South Africa and broadband pricing

For price to take a back seat in the decision-making process of South African consumers local broadband services will first have to become far more affordable.  South African broadband pricing is directly linked to speed and usage limits which means that cost, speed and cap sizes are typically related, making price the most prominent consideration for many consumers when selecting a broadband service.

This is however slowly starting to change with a few more affordable uncapped ADSL services entering the market.  DigiChilli, Screamer Telecoms and SAOL have all launched uncapped services for under R500 per month, and online discussions indicated that there is a strong focus on quality of service and speed.

More ADSL Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are also launching their own ADSL services using Telkom’s IPConnect product, which means that service levels and speed will become an increasingly important aspect of an ADSL account. 

Telkom and Internet Solutions previously dominated the ADSL ISP wholesale arena where most ISPs merely resold their products, but providers like Web Africa, Cybersmart and iBurst (soon) are now using their own bandwidth to serve their subscribers.

So while South Africa is very far behind the international broadband curve, things are slowly starting to change and the behavior of local consumers is likely to follow that of their international counterparts.

Broadband components – which is the most important to you?