You can't guarantee that. I said years ago we can have fibre for under R300 and now it is finally happening so I know a bit about this. The 10 Mbps connection is actually 1000 Mbps local. Show any other provider offering that. Not that they can't as there's really nothing preventing that but they just don't care to. If you go with the 10 Mbps local option it's R449. In time there will be custom options and I hope these will be in between the free and paid options as I'm looking for something along the lines of R250.
No, Vumatel lost the free usage front because they had no option that suited everybody's needs. If it's between free and expensive internet most people will choose free. From the looks of it 123net at least know this and has options to suit more people.
My point on the usage was that once people get fibre or adsl their usage increases. It may not be across the board but it happens often. So you have people on a cap and they have to keep upgrading. Soon the value proposition is no longer there and this is when people choose between free and expensive internet with no option in between. Caps just confuse things and we are one of the few countries that still have them for fibre and adsl.
Fibre is competitive from 10 Mbps up, below 10 Mbps prices are much closer to ADSL. I'm not sure how someone can sell a service for R300 if just the line portion of that costs them the entire R300. Then they are selling a service at a loss. I also don't know where you get those packages from 123Net from. The packages I can see on their website is 10 Mbps for R800, or 5 Mbps free for at least 2 years. Again nothing in between, a big gap. I have been in contact with 22 fibre providers for the Lynnwood Fibre Initiative, and 123Net has been on the more expensive side of those 22. Vumatel has packages from R200 and up, so that bridges the gap very nicely countering your own argument against their free option.
The cost of service boils down to 3 portions.
1. The cost of installing the infrastructure (this is the largest part) and their repayments on that cost.
2. The cost of data on this line.
3. The cost of connecting to a exchange (Terraco, whatever) at a certain speed through the backhaul.
Now if item 1 is the majority of those 3 components (notice how there is no data, and no speed associated with that), then that is the absolute minimum they can charge. I will say again, from my talks with the fibre providers in our area, they claim that cost to their company to be at the very least R200 p/m, sometimes R300 p/m. That is without data. The line speed here is what they limit you to on their network, which cost exactly the same to install weather everyone has a 1 Gbps fibre to their home of a 4 Mbps fibre to their home (because the fibre is the same fibre, and the cost is in getting that fibre to your door).
I'm not sure what is so amazing about the local option but if that is what you want then great. It is still not for everyone. Sure people's usage increases over time, however it does not start out that way when they move to fibre, and to get them to fibre you have to compete with what they are currently using and paying for, not what they will be using in 2 years time. Their pockets are aligned with what they are spending right now, they don't know what the future will hold.
No you misunderstood. A personal message gets me about 2-3 signups for 30-40 invitations. Someone on here posted that going around talking to people yields exactly that. It may be dependent on the area but it seems a 10% response rate is more or less the norm. Now if I have to chat to 40 people to get 3 signups I would rather spend 10 minutes distributing flyers to get the same.
I don't think there's any superior option unless you are specifically targeting people that are interested. It's hard to gauge interest and some people are still coming late to the party like the 4 who registered last week without me doing anything. If I had a ward councilor send emails I would have counted those towards the responses. Here and there a few people are interested in promoting it to their friends but it takes time to filter through. Interest picks up by itself as it goes along. It's false to attribute that to the options you used last.
I did not misunderstand anything, I'm telling you what we are experiencing in my suburb. The point I'm making is that you will not get the same from flyers as talking or via email, not by a long shot. In my experience email and talking to people were way superior to flyers. This is my experience, don't use it if you don't want to. I'm trying to save you money, why I don't know.
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