Bandwidth, why prices differ so much?

J

James

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Just curious as why bandwidth prices differ so much.

Hetzner -> 0.19c Per/Mb or R190 Per/Gb
Web Africa -> 0.50c Per/Mb or R500 Per/Gb
Web Online -> 0.29c Per/Mb or R290 Per/Gb
MWEB -> 0.50c Per/Mb or R500 Per/Gb
TelkomSA -> Not advertised (not a good sign)

What I am getting at is price per meg is pretty deciving. When u look at the bigger picture there is a R310 deference per gig between top and bottom. Telkom on the other hand recons if you exceed 150meg u need a dedicated server :/

*All prices are based on hosting options being hosted on local servers
 
You'll find the same internationally James. In my search for hosting in the US I came across quite a few very expensive ISP's. I guess they market to the uninformed and/or those not willing to do some research.
 
Perdition said:
You'll find the same internationally James. In my search for hosting in the US I came across quite a few very expensive ISP's. I guess they market to the uninformed and/or those not willing to do some research.
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All true I'm afraid. I had some bad hosting in the states until I found my current host. Under $8 (r50) per month for 5gb disk space, 10gb data transfer per day, 650 email accounts and all the usual bells and whistles. I'd hate to guess what that would cost me here.

Its always best to shop around and get references.
 
Disk space is another funny! If you think about if, in SA bandwidth is costly and it appears many hosting companies make money off this. If you give users more disk space (which is cheap, any one who says different is a liar) the odds are they will end up using more bandwidth hence making more money but instead SA ISP's seem to think we are naive and charge more per Mb of disk space than for bandwidth but the fact remains that disk space is a once off cost. It is like Telkom charging for ADSL, they want to cover the cost of the hardware quickly and then make loads of profit.
 
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That's true James. You do find some providers that offer "unlimited" space and/or bandwidth however I don't trust them as ALL of them have some kind of High Usage policy. I'd rather know the exact limit of the package I'm purchasing so the provider can't say you're abusing the system. These days you can get loads of disk space and bandwidth in the US for cheap so it isn't really an issue.
 
Come to think of it, 1 August didn't Telkom drop the price of Interntions circuits by about 20 odd %. Strange that means all these companies are making about 20% more profit cause I havn't seen any price decreases bar those in the adsl field!
 
The 20% drop was only for IPNet services which are International only. Most of the providers are colocated at UUNET or IS so that is not an issue.

One reason you may see the price differences is that companies like Hetzner are a colo and hosting provider. Several providers (including ISP's) are renting half, full or several racks from the colo provider such as Hetzner. for server hosting to save precious expensive bw on lease lines. They then need to have some profit margin built in, so there is an added amount. It will also depend on how much traffic you prepay for when hosting or in colo. If you get 1GB of traffic included, you will most likely see a higher per meg fee than if you prepay for 100GB.
 
James - you are wrong about disk space being a "once-off" expense for HSP's eg. data tapes for back-ups (and the back-up solution) cost money - the more disk space you are using the more tape and time involved in back-ups. - unless you are referring to "hobby hosts" that don't do proper back-ups?
 
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