LTE Data Price (ISP's are Welcome)

[Napalm]

Hi All

Not sure if there is a thread similar to this. I just thought maybe this is a topic close to your heart(and your wallet)

There are a couple of nice LTE Modems out there and a lot of ISP's investing in LTE. (Vodacom, MTN, Telkom Mobile/8ta, Cell-C and others)


At the moment a lot of people go for ADSL which offers good speeds (stable speeds) and good latency's and obviously the price per gig for data. (the price per gig is fairly low on ADSL being about R50 for 10gigs of data. Depending on where you buy and the amount of data you purchase).

Most people still stick to their ADSL lines because they have uncapped accounts(or higher amount of Capped Accounts) and the data price is Fairly low. Which then has an effect that any other solution is not worth it.


Saying that, LTE offers fairly good pings and compares well with ADSL in that respect. LTE offers much higher speed in certain area's. So LTE is definitely a good contender.




Now here is the big one, LTE data prices is extremely high. It's the same as GPRS/Edge/3G/HSPA data prices, It's just faster with much better ping(less latency, due to the technology)


Surely if the LTE Data price was more inline with ADSL Data prices, they would win over a lot of users. (LTE being a good competitor to give you similar results to ADSL)


I wish the LTE ISP's will have a look at much Higher capped accounts (This way they can bring the Price per gig down and compete with ADSL data prices)



All your views and comments are welcome.

 

[MKFrost]

Would like to see it too but I doubt whether any of the service providers will be able to cope with the additional load they will have to carry should they drop their prices to be close or in line with ADSL. The birthday special thing of Vodacom is a good example of how quickly the network can go tits up and that was with a measly special of 1GB iirc.

Guess there will be a very large number of people who will switch [if not all] when pricing is no longer a barrier.

 

[Napalm]

True, but they must upgrade to a 100mbit per tower, that should handle most data used at that point.

I would switch today if the data was around r10 per gig, which is reasonable. As DSL is more like r2 to r5 per gig.


You have to take into account that the tower and line has to be maintained and optimized. So we will never be truly inline with DSL price per gig.

 

[RichardG]

Every operator pay a rental agreement every month to the land lord - who owns the premises where the operator decides to erect the base station ranging from (R2,000 - R100,000 +/-) per month. To erect another base station next to it doesn't happen overnight if it did happen overnight then we wouldn't struggle with weak/non-existent signal. .

Back haul & equipment expenses - if mother nature decides to visit(lightning), equipment has to be replaced which cost money - ain't cheap..

You did mention you would switch if data was around R10 per gig with CELL C Giganite 200 equates to R9 per gig but CELL C doesn't offer LTE yet.

 

[Crystal Web]

There are technical limitations to LTE as a DSL alternative, but there will be price reductions soon. And some evolution on the "technical" limitations soon as well.

 

[RichardG]

There are technical limitations to LTE as a DSL alternative, but there will be price reductions soon. And some evolution on the "technical" limitations soon as well.

Looking forward to LTE-A(hopefully by then DSL will be a cheaper alternative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_Advanced

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/business/2014/01/20/25/0501000000AEN20140120002500320F.html

The 3band LTE-A service will enable mobile devices to download a 800-megabyte movie in 22 seconds, faster than the 1 minute and 25 seconds using the existing LTE services, and 43 seconds with the LTE-A services, according to the company.

 

[Azimuth]

In before Afrihost makes the news again.