How much broadband bandwidth do you need?

What is the advertised downlink speed of your broadband connection?

  • 384 Kbps

    Votes: 91 36.4%

  • 512 Kbps

    Votes: 4 1.6%

  • 1 Mbps

    Votes: 12 4.8%

  • 2.4 Mbps

    Votes: 5 2.0%

  • 3.1 Mbps

    Votes: 2 0.8%

  • 3.6 Mbps

    Votes: 12 4.8%

  • 4 Mbps

    Votes: 106 42.4%

  • 7.2 Mbps

    Votes: 8 3.2%

  • Higher than 7.2 Mbps

    Votes: 10 4.0%
  • Total voters
    250
Sure, faster Internet is cool, but to be honest, I'd rather go with a bigger cap than faster Internet. I'm using Vodacom's HSDPA, at 3.6 Mbps, which is great, except that I pay the earth for my 5 measly gigs a month, which my wife and I have to really be careful not to blow. And what do we do online? Download movies and songs? No, we just browse and do a little bit of YouTube.

Bigger caps for less please!
 
about 1 Terabyte a month... to start with!

South Africans have learned to starve themselves of Web Content. But if one fully embraces everything that is on offer on the Internet, it would be quite easy to chew through hundreds of Gigs a month. Pretty much everybody else in the world gets that for free at insanely high speeds, so why should we limit ourselves?

Free e-books, free audio books, public domain movies, streamed content, super hi-def photography, online Backup facilities, Online Collaboration, CCTV over IP, Broadcast TV over IP etc. There are hundreds of applications that can chew through a terabyte a month quite easily.
Click to expand...

I fully agree!!!!!

Line speed I would settle for 5- 10Mbps for now.
With regards to usage, no less than 1 Terabyte.

Now if only these HD manufactures can start making bigger and better HD's....
 
Drake2007 said:
Reality is that only 2GB bundles are only available and someone is sure to get caught out with going out of bundle, so your the sums would be (0.19 x 1024 x 2) + (1.2 x 1024 x 2) = R2847 for an HD movie :eek:
Click to expand...
Yup yup, the design of the out-of-bundle system is a ripoff artist's wet dream, and our Cellular providers are milking is for all it's worth, and then some.
 
paul5186 said:
This has got nothing to do with cap but has to do with your physical bandwidth. What I don't understand is why people are not complaining about their upload speed. Its shocking compared to the download link!
Click to expand...

I agree somewhat though Cap is the lowest common denomiator. For e.g. 1GB Cap over a month you essentially have a 3.2 kbps continuous connection (if my maths is correct). Upload is terrible no matter which way we slice it.
 
davemc said:
Yup yup, the design of the out-of-bundle system is a ripoff artist's wet dream, and our Cellular providers are milking is for all it's worth, and then some.
Click to expand...

Yep it's definately not in their interests to give people a fair warning sms when the data runs out. On the flip side they do warn people when the bundle time expires to make sure we buy more. I bet all the SP's giggle every day watching the $$ roll into their bank acc.
 
I would say a good 20 to 30 gig cap per month would be a good start

but to tell you the truth with a 8 or 12 meg line you would go though it very quick

I was wondering something if we all got uncapped access now would it just be a matter of a few months of extreme high usage until the novelty wares off and people forefull there hunger for bandwidth and they have everything they want then go down to a more realistic usage

Right now if you give me 30 gigs I will do my best to use it but I would think if you gave me uncapped I would still do a lot of downloading but its not really sustainable. You would also get more people being able to host content locally which would cut down on international usage.

All we need now is a local ISP willing to take a chance on this but realistically I don't see it happening its just to risky.

They could start with making local bandwidth uncapped then we can start seeing local content grow and then the need for international bandwidth will reduce over time.
 
killkom said:
I would say a good 20 to 30 gig cap per month would be a good start

but to tell you the truth with a 8 or 12 meg line you would go though it very quick

I was wondering something if we all got uncapped access now would it just be a matter of a few months of extreme high usage until the novelty wares off and people forefull there hunger for bandwidth and they have everything they want then go down to a more realistic usage

Right now if you give me 30 gigs I will do my best to use it but I would think if you gave me uncapped I would still do a lot of downloading but its not really sustainable. You would also get more people being able to host content locally which would cut down on international usage.

All we need now is a local ISP willing to take a chance on this but realistically I don't see it happening its just to risky.

They could start with making local bandwidth uncapped then we can start seeing local content grow and then the need for international bandwidth will reduce over time.
Click to expand...


IF ONLY
 
I went through a crapload of connections and ISPs the lat 6 months and must say this article illustrates the issue when comparing "384 uncapped" vs. "4 MB/s paying p/GB" ...and why you'd pick the one over the other.

I had 384 uncapped, great, i got me 60GB a month, but it was all "while i'm not in front of the PC or not INTERACTING with the internet" . If i wanted to watch youtube or stream or browse the 384-uncapped solution very quickly started to become a MASSIVE frustration. Now ignoring the ISPs own issues, 384 is simply too slow to pop into a site, watch a 5 minute clip, browse somewhere else, listen to a radio station, pop over to an interactive "live score" site and get an update on some sport event.....end result?

You just don't want or feel like doing those activities on a 384 line, uncapped or not. So suddenly if you have nothing to download [during the night] your usage WILL plummet and after 2 months you're going to wonder why have uncapped?

Now i upgraded to 4 Mbit/s [only getting 2 Mbit/s due to exchange] and i'm actually digging up the sites i used to visit on Vodacom 3G, the sites with the streaming content, i actually feel i can sit in front of the PC and just "consume content on demand" vs. "making coffee while a clip buffers" .


I'm willing to say 384 in this day and age is "behind", someone on 384 will rarely join the "digital evolution" of interactive content...whether they have 100GB or 1GB...they won't.
 
@diabolus You've hit the nail on the head there and it's the exact reason why I use HSDPA though I never knew it before hand. Nowdays I Kringe if I sit behind a 384. The Net has moved on and Telkom is not keeping pace and never will.
 
i would say around 400 gigs would be enough for me , but would still settle for around 200 ( dream on though) TIA
 
I also agree with diabolus.
Speed is more important than amount of data when it comes to experiencing the power of the internet. There should never be a reason to WAIT for a wiki page to load for crying out loud, or a movie trailer to buffer (unless it's 1080p).

But you can have best of both worlds. I have a 4MB Line with an uncapped fibre+ account. It is dog slow during the day, even for the most menial tasks while it's throttled. So, to work around this, I use a separate "work" account, which allows me to connect at full 4Mb during the day for work purposes on my laptop.
So although my downloading machine still carries on at the slow speed, my laptop can work at 4MB, remote sessions, etc.

This works really well for me, I can get the speed when I need it, but have unlimited bandwidth for when I need that.

It does incur extra cost, but you get best of both worlds in this confusing market of ours.
 
I'd be as happy as a pig in mud with a 4Mb line and an 8 to 10Gb account for the R389 I currently pay for Do Broadband Level 3.
That would make downloading large files less tedious. I am satisfied with the speed at which I can browse and rarely frequent Youtube.
 
Last edited:
Garyvdh said:
about 1 Terabyte a month... to start with! :D

South Africans have learned to starve themselves of Web Content. But if one fully embraces everything that is on offer on the Internet, it would be quite easy to chew through hundreds of Gigs a month. Pretty much everybody else in the world gets that for free at insanely high speeds, so why should we limit ourselves?

Free e-books, free audio books, public domain movies, streamed content, super hi-def photography, online Backup facilities, Online Collaboration, CCTV over IP, Broadcast TV over IP etc. There are hundreds of applications that can chew through a terabyte a month quite easily.
Click to expand...

You are correct ! I think that because bandwith is so expensive the far majority of S-African iternet users have no idea of what one can achieve with a 8mb or faster link.

Another thing, I think a very small percentage of people actualy live in range for 4Mb ADSL. Most have to make do for expensive HSDPA, which is too expensive (and in most cases, too slow) to use for video/multimedia. Myself, I have a static wireless from Screamer because we live on a farm and we are out of ADSL range.
 
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