Fibre and fixed wireless showdown

[Daniel Puchert]

Fibre and fixed wireless battle in South Africa

While fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) provides South Africans with stable and affordable uncapped Internet, the technology is not always feasible to deploy, opening the door to competing wireless technologies.

These competing technologies, called fixed wireless access (FWA), rely on radio networks for the last-mile connection instead of a wired connection, such as a fibre cable.

 

[The_MAC]

Affordability is a huge factor, look at the steady increase in FTTH packages, many households cannot afford it

 

[callvm]

Anyone got experience with the Afrihost LTE (https://www.afrihost.com/lte) ? Would be interested in checking it out for some family members who are not heavy users, but are getting reamed on fibre

 

[Bad Ballie]

While affordability is going to be an issue, I personally see things as being simple, if you have access to fiber you silly not to be using it, wireless is for people who can't get fiber in their areas, its to expensive and restrictive by comparison to be a serious alternative to heavy fiber use.

 

[deweyzeph]

Affordability is a huge factor, look at the steady increase in FTTH packages, many households cannot afford it

R600 a month for an uncapped entry-level fibre connection is pretty reasonable. There's no fixed wireless package in the world that would give you that much value for money.

 

[The_MAC]

R600 a month for an uncapped entry-level fibre connection is pretty reasonable. There's no fixed wireless package in the world that would give you that much value for money.

We talking about people who for example struggle to scrounge R300 as a fixed monthly cost, they are very price sensitive.

For me and you, it's a no-brainer..

It's more about the money, and less about the value

 

[deweyzeph]

We talking about people who for example struggle to scrounge R300 as a fixed monthly cost, they are very price sensitive.

For me and you, it's a no-brainer..

It's more about the money, and less about the value

Fair enough, and it's an unfortunate reality that people who can least afford it are the ones who pay the most per GB of data because they tend to buy small mobile data bundles at a time at exorbitant per-MB costs.

 

[The_MAC]

While affordability is going to be an issue, I personally see things as being simple, if you have access to fiber you silly not to be using it, wireless is for people who can't get fiber in their areas, its to expensive and restrictive by comparison to be a serious alternative to heavy fiber use.

Affordability is probably the single biggest factor, otherwise the uptake would be so much higher.

Not to mention people renting properties and not wanting the recurring cost.

 

[Swa]

Regarding fibre rollouts, of the 3.2 million addressable homes in the upper-income South African market, 3.1 million have access to at least one fibre network operator (FNO).

This is according to BMIT’s South African Broadband Report for 2024, which said 48.7% homes have been connected.

However, BMIT’s research shows that these figures rapidly drop for the middle and lower income brackets.

Only 2.2 million of the 4.3 million addressable middle-income homes have been passed, and 16.5% have been connected.

The discrepancy should be an indication it costs too much. Charging less would also be an incentive to roll out to more low income areas with lower expectations.

 

[Swa]

R600 a month for an uncapped entry-level fibre connection is pretty reasonable. There's no fixed wireless package in the world that would give you that much value for money.

No but most other countries have wired access for around half of that or less.

We talking about people who for example struggle to scrounge R300 as a fixed monthly cost, they are very price sensitive.

For me and you, it's a no-brainer..

It's more about the money, and less about the value

Someone who gets it. I currently pay about R100 a month which gets me around 30-40GB to use. I would be willing to pay R100 more for uncapped but nobody wants to provide it. SA operators are shortsighted and greedy and R600 is not reasonable in the SA context when even countries that can afford it pay less. People have been conditioned from the Telkom days to have low standards but as someone who could never afford to pay more than R300 I am not one of those.

 

[deweyzeph]

No but most other countries have wired access for around half of that or less.

Entry level fibre packages in the UK are about £25 to £30 per month AND you get locked into a 12 or 24 month contract. In the US entry level is anywhere from $40 to $50 per month. Pricing at entry level is pretty much the same as South Africa.

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

Those data caps on the wireless packages are deal-breakers. Can't even download Call of Duty on some of those.

 

[Swa]

Entry level fibre packages in the UK are about £25 to £30 per month AND you get locked into a 12 or 24 month contract. In the US entry level is anywhere from $40 to $50 per month. Pricing at entry level is pretty much the same as South Africa.

With people also earning about double. Now include for instance Sky who gives you free broadband, think they still do, with their sports package. The value is just so much more that it justifies spending more to actually get a saving at the end of the day.

I checked and Afrihost has 50Mbps 5G for R399. I'm not in a coverage area though.