ADSL or 3G HSDPA

[Mervin Adams]

Hi guys need advise on deciding urgently.

I currently have 3G HSDPA 3.6MB/S 1GIG from Vodacom, my contract is up for renewal end of this month.The new buzz in town is ADSL, but since i don't have a landline that option is out for me.

Vodacom speed is incredible but their GIG packages a bit too expensive.
ADSL on the other hand starts with a 384K line, that seems very slow compared to what i have now (or am i wrong).

Question, do i upgrade for another 2years with speed vs a small cap, or do i join ADSL with a slow line speed (384K) with a big cap. I recently saw Afrihost have a Silver Package 20gig capped unshaped for R380, + Telkom 384k line R152 + Line rental R133 = R 665, that would still be cheaper than a 2gig cap from Vodacom.

Can anyone who has a ADSL 384k line tell me how long a 10mb song would take to download, maybe 50sec or 2mins.

Last question , what is the fuss about line speed 384k, 512k, 3.6mb, 7.2mb, 10mb, 21mb, because whenever i download something my download manager shows between 24kb/s and 220kb/s , its always the same for music, movies or photos, so why do we need to pay so much for line speed then?

Thanks in advance.

My equipment:
Apple Mac Mini V2 Snow leopard
Vodafone Huawei E272
Billion 3G/ADSL 2+ Wireless Router BiPac 7402GX
Xtreamer 1080p FullHD Media Player & Streamer
Sony PS3D V3.50 60GIG
Yamaha RX-V567 ARC 3D
TEAC 37'' FULL HD LCD (Panasonic 3D Plasma soon)

 

[Scooby_Doo]

Get the cellc thing 5gigs per month for 12 months, 21mbit connection R3000 once off including modem or R2000 once off for just the data.

 

[Mervin Adams]

i saw their add in the paper, are you saying R3000 once off, 5gig data per month with no monthly repayments for a whole year? sounds good, but now i need to find out if my area is covered by their internet network, also if i take their USB modem it will not be compatible with my Billion router, i can use it directly into my Mac, but then i can't get my PS3 or media player on the net.

Thanks

 

[Scooby_Doo]

Yes to all the above, they currently have coverage in most of the major centers, where you at?

 

[Mervin Adams]

I am in Cape Town near Eerste River and i saw on their coverage map my area is well covered. are you using Cell C data service, is it working well, do you know if they have software for my Apple Mac computer, once you buy and your not happy you can't take it back.

 

[Dan C]

Cell C working pretty well at the moment. But the question is how much bandwidth do you anticipate using in the future ? ADSL will work out cheaper if say you need 20gb a month. But I see you are only on 1gb at the moment so the 5gb per month or even 2gb will most likely suffice for your needs.
But I use about 20-25gb a month (just on online gaming) and data on adsl will drop more and more, it's just the damn line rental killing us

 

[HavocXphere]

Unless you need the mobility, definitely ADSL. Even with the fairly good CellC offers, price wise ADSL still wins hands down.

Also, you can't compare the speeds listed w/ adsl & wireless options directly. The adsl is way more stable so the experience is better. Obviously it depends on the quality of the signal. Hell, I've had people tell me the 384k line here feels faster than their MTN wireless which has a listed speed 10x as fast.

10MB * 1024 = 10 240 kilobyte /39.8 = 257 seconds. Thats assuming you're using stable data.

 

[Mervin Adams]

Thanks guys, i'm also leaning towards ADSL, because i was advised the latency is much lower then 3G HSDPA especially for online gaming and HD Video downloads. Gonna apply for a Telkom line, just hope i don't suffer the same fate as many others on this site. Njoy!!