@Genisys : MFN's service is symmetrical, all packages have the same upload and download speeds. Vuma offers 1Gb down, but only 100up - thats a tenth of the download speed. Not everyone cares as much about their Upload speeds but they are still important. That already represents a cost saving for Vuma. Bottom line is the speeds aren't symmetrical. MFN pretty much guarantees the speed of the service over cable & locally so the speeds are very good and reliable. Another difference is that MFN is both a provider, and an ISP. So MFN owns, manages and maintains the network, in addition to providing clients with internet access too. Most ISPS dont do this - they will normally just provide internet (layer 3) over the other companys fibre. The operators in turn also dont generally do both - they normally just provide the fibre and then another company (ISP) will provide the internet.
MFN does both (layer 2 & layer 3), they provide the fibre and internet to its direct clients. As a result ISPs have much less costs and responsibilities as they dont need to carry all the costs of building and maintaining a fibre network. They simply just call the fibre operator and tell him to go fix it. Its just differing models really but to simplify the ISPs can afford to offer cheaper prices because their costs are lower. If you are signed directly with MFN you also only have to deal with 1 company. Its likely to be more reliable too since with only 1 company providing the link & internet theres less chance something can go wrong. If you are signed with an open-access ISP there will be 2 companies involved...you could be affected by outages/issues on the ISP side and on the provider side...less points of failure.
As for the higher speeds its almost pointless to offer higher than 200mbps. Vast majority of the time a large chunk of a clients bandwidth goes totally unused. Do you know how much stuff you would need to be downloading constantly to exhaust a Gig of bandwidth? Most households doing streaming, downloads, gaming etc only use their full speed a fraction of the time. Its great to watch a download fly down at that speed but then what about the rest of the time when its IDLE or downloading minimal data - all that bandwidth you are paying for will be unused which is a waste of money. Its also a waste for the ISP in this regard since the more people subscribing to these high packages will ultimately cost the ISP more money since they will need to deploy a lot more equipment. i.e instead of having 60 people all connected to one OLT now you can only have 15 people on that device since there isnt enough bandwidth to go around due to port speed limitations....MFN direct packages are more expensive than other ISPs for sure, but they do also have sister companies "Gigago & Aitsa" than have cheaper pricing that is similiar to other ISPs. The reason for it being cheaper is for the same reason... those services are deployed on other operators networks i.e SADV, Vumatel etc so there is much less cost and responsibility seeing as though they dont have to build or maintain those networks but rather just provide the internet. Some of the terms of the services can be slightly different though seeing as though they are dependant on the fibre operator... for example: time taken to fix a fault, differences in DL & Upload speeds. Below is an article on MYBB about the general increases of fibre prices in south africa. Hope this info helps
Several of South Africa’s top fibre network operators have increased wholesale prices, raising the question – why are fixed-line broadband prices in South Africa increasing instead of coming down?
mybroadband.co.za
