MTN uncapped broadband pricing comparison (October 2011)

[jes]

MTN uncapped broadband pricing comparison (October 2011)

MTN’s uncapped mobile broadband announcement surprised many people and may have overshadowed its aggressive pricing

 

[xistenz]

Why do they have to be so draconian with the speed drop when you reach the 3GB 'limit'? 128kbps is far too slow to be useful!

They should rather drop your speed in increments:
0GB - 3GB: Full HSPA+ speed (42Mbps)
3GB - 6GB: 21Mbps
6GB - 9GB: 10Mbps
9GB - 12GB: 4Mbps
12GB - 15GB: 2Mbps
15GB - 18GB: 1Mbps
18GB - Infinity: 512kbps

That way, you'll notice the gradual slowdown and maybe ease up on your usage.

 

[elvis_presley]

Why do they have to be so draconian with the speed drop when you reach the 3GB 'limit'? 128kbps is far too slow to be useful!

You can still get email (happens in the background, so no noticeable slow-down) and casual surfing done at 128kbit. Perfect contract for a phone. I ported my number a while ago when Vodacom disasspointed everyone with their "new amazing data offerings".

I think the point of the article is, even WITHOUT that soft-cap, it's a great deal. A really nice bonus is that if you hit your cap near the end of the month with CellC or 8ta, you'll be ponying up money to do anything. With MTN you have the option to drag yourself to the end of the month slowly paying nada.

The gradual slowdown won't work, because in real life, you'll be lucky to see that 2Mbps-4Mbps on a regular basis on a mobile device (at least I am, in KZN), so they'd effectively be giving you a fullspeed 12GB contract for R299.

 

[BGE]

I wish MyBB would pioneer using the right terminology, this is definitely not uncapped, but rather softcapped! Especially in this case where the throttling thresholds are pretty low, 2GB and 10GB, depending on the package! As soon as connection speed throttling is applied on all traffic over said connection it should no longer be called uncapped! Else I can go to market with a product offering 1GB of data @ 3mbps, whereafter your connection is throttled to 56kbps, and I'd be allowed to market it as uncapped!

 

[BGE]

Why do they have to be so draconian with the speed drop when you reach the 3GB 'limit'? 128kbps is far too slow to be useful!

Agreed, speed throttling should remain within the definition of broadband, say 512kbps minimum, even better 1mbps... 128kbps certainly ain't broadband!

 

[Dolby]

They should rather drop your speed in increments:
0GB - 3GB: Full HSPA+ speed (42Mbps)
3GB - 6GB: 21Mbps
6GB - 9GB: 10Mbps
9GB - 12GB: 4Mbps
12GB - 15GB: 2Mbps
15GB - 18GB: 1Mbps
18GB - Infinity: 512kbps

... thing is with some of the networks, you'll only notice a slow down after 12GB!

 

[IceQB]

3GB then 512kbps, would be much better.

 

[oceans11]

I don’t understand how there is a fair usage policy on a product that is supposedly “uncapped”.

It is in fact a capped service. They cap you at 3gig and then give you a token 128kbps connection so they can call it an uncapped service. I mean really… that’s twice the speed of dialup, what year are we in now?

 

[gerasmus]

The cap, 3Gb p/day or 3gb p/day ? n00b question. So what is it then ? Is the fair use 3gb per day or 3Gb per month ? I asked the staff in the MTN shop and they told me it is unrestricted true broadband, if I could (and believe me, with Youtube on HD it's easy) use 100Gb p/month, I can. And the staff in the shop assured me that there would be no throttling until Jan 2012. I signed up anyway since my Vodacom contract was expiring. Due to bandwidth contraints the far out rural town in Limpopo where I live I'm lucky to even get 512k on a good day.