Reducing ADSL and broadband costs

TheRoDent said:
It's always good to know a little bit about the market before you make a daft comment.

Kenya has thus far only been served by Satellite. Thus slashing prices by 90% is quite simple when you move over to high capacity fibre, because Satellite bandwidth is exorbitantly expensive. It's not at all the same situation as here.
Click to expand...

IS satellite prices for ADSL prior to access of sat-3 has matched saix.
 
Gatecrasher said:
It does amaze me that for years we have been told by ISPs that the reason for broadband in SA being multiple times more expensive than broadband overseas is due to high international bandwidth costs. And yet with international prices being slashed by over 60% in the past two years, retail broadband prices are still very much the same as they were.

We are now being told by ISPs that international bandwidth is actually only a small part of the cost.

This is so incredibly disingenuous:



But there is a massive difference between, for example, iBurst's 1Gig cap @ 1Mbps, or Telkom's Do1 @ 384kbps, and, say, the vanilla UK offering of 8Mbps uncapped. Yet they go for the same price.

Most people are happy to pay R200 to R300 per month. That is not the issue. The big issue is the miserable, tiny, paltry rations we get for our hard earned money.

I think we have to stop placing the emphasis on price alone and start placing it on value for money. Price is as long as a piece of string (i.e. any length). It is value for money that matters. And in terms of value for money, South African broadband users continue to get a very raw deal.

And industry leaders, judging by this article, clearly don't... give... a hoot*.


*feel free to substitute with your favourite expletive.
Click to expand...

+1
 
Gaz{M} said:
I can't believe they are still playing the "Redundancy" card as an excuse. We all know that SAT3 and SEACOM now cost the same.

Another thing, pointed out already - noone is asking for a broadband service costing less than R200 a month. We are asking for more cap and speed for that R200 or more per month.
Click to expand...

+1

I am just too tired to argue anymore. :(
 
krycor said:
IS satellite prices for ADSL prior to access of sat-3 has matched saix.
Click to expand...

You're looking at $6000 - $8000 per Mbps in Africa for a decent SCPC connection. IS South African satellite capacity is "one way", and was extorted from a national operator who didn't have a clue what they were selling.
 
With each press release that appears trying to temper our expectations it seems to me that ISPs are digging themselves a deeper hole. What they are trying to do is muddy the difference between the physical access layer service and the data transfer component.

Local backhaul can't be that expensive if ISPs are able to market local data at under R20 per GB. Now while I understand there is a substantial amount of infrastructure involved in routing a packet internationally as opposed to locally, does this really cost twice (or more) as much as a locally routed packet considering where SA's major peering points are? I see no reason why our international caps can't be increased to something similar to the 'free' local caps included with most services these days.

While I understand that Telkom's iron grip on the majority of an ADSL service does constrain ISPs, I do think guys like Neotel, iBurst and the cellular operators have now got a lot of scope to start dropping prices or at a minimum increasing caps. That's not to say that there isn't room for ADSL services to have their caps increased. The international backhaul portion of an internet service is where Seacom is intended to have an effect. Judging by all the reports Seacom has had the desired effect not only by providing cheaper bandwidth but by also forcing SAT3 to reduce its prices. The SAT3 price reduction is also not a recent occurrence yet there has been no visible change in the market.

I do think it is unrealistic to suddenly expect huge price decreases on all the components that make up an internet service but where there have been upstream reductions in cost, these must be passed on.
 
The Kenya read was a very interesting one. I'd like to see the same happen here, but I guess we will have to wait and see how things unfold.

I don't mind to may for the connectivity, but like the rest of you, I want value for money.

In the meantime, I joined the Pretoria Wireless User Group and it's distracting me a bit from the pressing issues of international connectivity. It's a welcome change for me :)
 
Gaz{M} said:
I can't believe they are still playing the "Redundancy" card as an excuse. We all know that SAT3 and SEACOM now cost the same.

Another thing, pointed out already - noone is asking for a broadband service costing less than R200 a month. We are asking for more cap and speed for that R200 or more per month.
Click to expand...

Good point but does telkom or any one else pay for the amount of GB's used I don't think so, they are more likely to pay for the throughput that they bought. So I would agree on low pricing to cover line rental and access but I would try to do away with a cap and have line speeds increased.
 
We already pay for the dsl access and by that alone Telkom should be making a groot profit, paying for a cap is just extra profit.
 
I think it's time we get a government in place who have the interest of the people as it's priority. A government FOR the people, something we don't have at the moment.

Regardless of the technical explanations, the excuses that are provided and the "just for show" competition we have, the fact is we still today have NO fixed line coomunications competition in SA. Years (10 years now?) after the market was "opened" for the so-called "managed librilisation" the Gov / ICASA / DoT are doing extremely little to change this. There seems to be no urgency over LLU, etc.

We have taken for a ride for so long now, we are forgetting that what we are recieving is NOT all it should be, or can be.
 
Maybe they are scared that if they sign up too many new customers too quickly they won't be able to service all of them?

... I mean besides the greed factor.
 
Besides the greed factor - you don't design a service or infrastructure to only services the basic need you build a network as if you were going to host double or even tripple what you projected. It's better to over compensate.
 
The Basic ADSL price can for sure go lower than R200 - R220. That is if TELKOM will start to reduce their price.
To say that R200-R220 is the lowest, is to ensure an unreasonable big basic profit, when the ADSL prices will start to fall.
 
I am not interested in what any of these people have to say until everybody in SA is able to afford a fast, reliable, uncapped connection to their home. Anything else is irrelevant.
 
In Uganda its unbelievable

Gatecrasher said:
It does amaze me that for years we have been told by ISPs that the reason for broadband in SA being multiple times more expensive than broadband overseas is due to high international bandwidth costs. And yet with international prices being slashed by over 60% in the past two years, retail broadband prices are still very much the same as they were.

We are now being told by ISPs that international bandwidth is actually only a small part of the cost.

This is so incredibly disingenuous:



But there is a massive difference between, for example, iBurst's 1Gig cap @ 1Mbps, or Telkom's Do1 @ 384kbps, and, say, the vanilla UK offering of 8Mbps uncapped. Yet they go for the same price.

Most people are happy to pay R200 to R300 per month. That is not the issue. The big issue is the miserable, tiny, paltry rations we get for our hard earned money.

I think we have to stop placing the emphasis on price alone and start placing it on value for money. Price is as long as a piece of string (i.e. any length). It is value for money that matters. And in terms of value for money, South African broadband users continue to get a very raw deal.

And industry leaders, judging by this article, clearly don't... give... a hoot*.


*feel free to substitute with your favourite expletive.
Click to expand...

If you though you are paying a big chunck of your money to ISPs, this is what we are paying in Uganda as a new price from Seacom anchor tenant INFOCOM. This is the retail price as of yesterday.

New pricing

The below prices include $1400 as connection fees

64/64kbps Monthly Subscription $300
128/128kbps Monthly Subscription $600
256/256kbps Monthly Subscription $1200
512/512kbps Monthly Subscription $2400

So from the information in the public domain we see that a 64kbps link "ISPs call it 128kbps if symentric" the cost has dropped from $963 to $300 dollars which is a significant drop in price but still expensive since seacom prices in the public domain go for $300 per 1Mbps which is more than 200% profit for Infocom.

What about if you wanted to get 1Mbps (512kbps) link from them, this will be the initial cost
Connection fee = $1400
Monthly Subscription $2400 X 3 = $7200 since you must pay quarterly
Total cost = 7200+1400 = $8600
 
wasubire said:
If you though you are paying a big chunck of your money to ISPs, this is what we are paying in Uganda as a new price from Seacom anchor tenant INFOCOM. This is the retail price as of yesterday.

New pricing

The below prices include $1400 as connection fees

64/64kbps Monthly Subscription $300
128/128kbps Monthly Subscription $600
256/256kbps Monthly Subscription $1200
512/512kbps Monthly Subscription $2400

So from the information in the public domain we see that a 64kbps link "ISPs call it 128kbps if symentric" the cost has dropped from $963 to $300 dollars which is a significant drop in price but still expensive since seacom prices in the public domain go for $300 per 1Mbps which is more than 200% profit for Infocom.

What about if you wanted to get 1Mbps (512kbps) link from them, this will be the initial cost
Connection fee = $1400
Monthly Subscription $2400 X 3 = $7200 since you must pay quarterly
Total cost = 7200+1400 = $8600
Click to expand...

You only pay for a monthly subscription fee? No Caps? No shaping? Awesome. And you saw a more than 60% drop in pricing. Wow
 
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