iBurst Pricing Madness

[regardtv]

iBurst Pricing Madness

Having been paying for iBurst service {cough} for more than a year now I thought it prudent to review what the service is actually costing compared to other options out there.

I realise that iBurst will immediately say that they have costs other ISP's do not such as self provisioning etc.

To eliminate any skew that such incurred costs would create I will ignore the base cost and line charges associated with adsl and iBurst. Let's look ONLY at what additional bandwdith costs.

Doing so should effectively eliminate the base cost required to provide a service...

We know that SAIX charges around R 60.00 per gig to their resellers (on low volume). Let's mark that up 20% odd percent and we get R75.00 per gig. Fair enough, everyone needs to make money somewhere. On higher traffic volumes the cost to ISP's fall quite nicely.

Using this R 75.00 as a base price I then decided to have a look at what a few ISP's charge for the additional bandwidth:

Axxess 3GB Shaped____R 66.33 per additional GB *
DataPro______________R 75.00 per additional GB
inX 3GB______________R 76.33 per additional GB *
iBurst gig 9___________R 139.00 per additional GB
iBurst gig 6___________R 149.00 per additional GB
iBurst gig 3___________R 159.00 per additional GB
iBurst gig 1___________R 179.00 per additional GB
iBurst iGo____________R 229.00 per additional GB

* Since most other ISP's charge their additional GB at the same price as the initial 3GB I will use that pricing for comparison


Taking the SAIX base rate of R60 per GB (which I'm sure is much more than WBS pays per GIG) it's almost a 56% markup (using x/(1-%))... Guess that pays for something ...

If one looks at this pricing one can see just how unreasonable iBurst's current pricing strategy is.

Sure, being mobile is convenient but this is daylight robbery.

Thoughts? Comments?

 

[P0tenc]

I consider R66.33 to be daylight robbery.....R229 is just crazy!

 

[Daveogg]

And how about R600 - R2000 for that extra GB and Vodacom / MTN

 

[GRES]

56% is wrong.

100% x ( R139-R60) / R60 = 131% !!!!!

 

[regardtv]

GRES ... As indicated ... i'm using a MARKUP policy so that if you DISCOUNT by 56% you'd get back to the same value ...

The guys in retails always use this model so that they can offer discounting models ... Please read my post completely...

 

[arf9999]

Markup is 131%, Margin is 56%

 

[guest2013-1]

btw, regardtv, web africa charges R75 per gig extra, which is the cheapest I've seen per gig so far. So I think R75 is best to work off of if you're ignoring the base packages (like 199 for 3 gig and access for a month)

 

[kaspaas]

Vodacom:

500MB R350
1GB R499

that gives R159 for 500MB or R318 per GB.

 

[regardtv]

Sorry guys .. I'm trying to highlight the horrific pricing of iBurst ... not trying to justify daylight robbery by comparing it to the profit mungering of the cellular providers!

Thanks Acid ... you're quite correct... it's not my field.. I just know how to mark the buggers up for resale ;-) grin

 

[kingrob]

I wish we had a STRONG consumer association that could advertise & highlight this on TV, then you'll see how low prices really can go....

It think in the States the consumer watchdog organizations advertise & boycott a shop if any prices goes up with 1c and there's not a good reason for it (like increased fuel prices, weaker dollar, etc)!

Ag, but Telkom belongs to the government and why would they want to let go of their biggest cashcow?

The sad thing is, the ministers all get allowances + huge rebates from Telkom & Vodacom, so they can't understand why the peasants are unhappy with Telkom - it's their best friend!

Only when they step back into the real world, that they realise what telecoms actually cost in this country - and then it's too late.

Sad, but unfortunately true, it makes me depressed to type this....

 

[TheRoDent]

Just to add to the DSL portion of the mix:

http://www.x-dsl.co.za/

R63.00 per Gig. From the FIRST gig!

 

[fishfly]

well if you take those figures and add Teleskums phone line +-R80 ADSL line +-R300 and your ISP fees...

Iburst is just a little less expensive than say teleskums adsl... least you still have 64k for the time being... but more media reports show that teleskum's adsl is uncapped after their cap limit...

 

[Clipse]

iBurst Pricing Madness
Axxess 3GB Shaped____R 66.33 per additional GB *
DataPro______________R 75.00 per additional GB
inX 3GB______________R 76.33 per additional GB *
iBurst gig 9___________R 139.00 per additional GB
iBurst gig 6___________R 149.00 per additional GB
iBurst gig 3___________R 159.00 per additional GB
iBurst gig 1___________R 179.00 per additional GB
iBurst iGo____________R 229.00 per additional GB

I notice one flaw here tho.

Working on AXXESS 3GIG package it would be, 1mbit line rental = R680 + R90(phoneline) + Axxess 3GIG of R199 = 3GIG access and from there on you can use the axxess R66.33 comparison.

This would leave initial 3gig ADSL Access using AXXESS on 1MBIT adsl at R969

Thus, 1GIG Access would cost you.. R323 with above example.

I know u said look at the additional usage cost, but I just dont think that is a fair way

Motto of the story? Both services, Iburst and ADSL is rediculously expensive.