South African mobile operators cannot offer truly uncapped mobile data plans

[kazeus]

Unpopular truth about uncapped mobile data in South Africa

South African mobile operators cannot offer truly uncapped mobile data plans because such packages would significantly strain the country's limited radio frequency spectrum.

Seasoned South African travellers will often relate tales about affordable uncapped data packages for their smartphones in countries like Europe, the UK, and the US.

Its fairly simple, hire a decent actuary to calculate maximum amount of users and stick to it... if economies of scale dont add up, then dont market it as uncapped and rather sell prepaid/postpaid data bundles

 

[PaulGherkin]

Its fairly simple, hire a decent actuary to calculate maximum amount of users and stick to it... if economies of scale dont add up, then dont market it as uncapped and rather sell prepaid/postpaid data bundles

That's not how it works. If you look at the history of the cartels, they were constructed from the ground up for one thing. To print money!

 

[Johnatan56]

Let's look at South Africa's allocation:

Spoiler: South Africa spectrum allocation

Global Mobile Frequencies Database by Spectrummonitoring.com

The essential mobile frequencies database for telecom professionals

www.spectrummonitoring.com

Note that not all frequency is equal, higher frequency usually results in worse penetration/signal but does mean higher throughput rates.

Most providers in the world that offer uncapped for home use are doing so on the 3-7GHz band.

Looking at above table, Vodacom has that amazing contiguous 80 MHz chunk in Band 41 (2600MHZ), would say it was worth it for them to have the more expensive cellphone data than go for home use.

Let's check frequencies a bit:
Vodacom:
40 MHz in lower bands
124 MHz in 1-3 GHz bands
10 MHz in higher bands
---
Around 174 MHz.

MTN:
40 MHz in lower bands
94 MHz in middle bands
40 MHz in higher bands
---
Around 174MHz

Telkom seems to have decent spectrum, Rain does not, so would not consider Rain a valid example.

Spoiler: Looking at Austria

Most uncapped packages are on Magenta / TMobile, though all carriers offer it.

And for Austria, they were offering uncapped via 4G ages ago already, and 5G is substantially more efficient.

Germany has 4 carriers:

Spoiler: Germany spectrum'} [ATTACH type="full

1774095[/ATTACH]

T Mobile has:
70 MHz in lower bands
165 MHz in middle bands
90 MHz in higher bands.

But then we have O2:
60 MHz in lower bands
140 MHz in middle
70 MHz in higher

So more than Vodacom, but they offered uncapped at least a decade ago on 3G phone connections. Yes, you got throttled down to like 256Kbps after a gig, but this was on 3G.

Spectral efficiency, just pulling off of Wikipedia:
3G - CDMA2000 1.3
4G LTE - 16.32
4G LTE-A - 30, but uplink is usually bad
5G 45+, but both up/down, this is from comparing figures

So that German one in 2012, who have not that much more spectrum than South Africa, could offer like 10Mbps after throttling on what was a <R150 plan for a month.

That's not to say Vodacom/MTN/Telkom/others should not complain, it's in their interest to complain and basically a duty to shareholders, but they can definitely offer uncapped on 5G with a better FUP, it's currently just upselling and there's no real competition as you don't have a proper MVNO system (basically Capitec/FNB doing their mobile data stuff), you're getting Afrihost/Axxess competing there.

This is just lifted from an IoT report: https://iot-analytics.com/benchmarking-iot-mobile-operator-pricing-mnos-vs-mvnos/

 

[PaulGherkin]

Let's look at South Africa's allocation:

Spoiler: South Africa spectrum allocation

View attachment 1774090

Global Mobile Frequencies Database by Spectrummonitoring.com

The essential mobile frequencies database for telecom professionals

www.spectrummonitoring.com

Note that not all frequency is equal, higher frequency usually results in worse penetration/signal but does mean higher throughput rates.

Most providers in the world that offer uncapped for home use are doing so on the 3-7GHz band.

Looking at above table, Vodacom has that amazing contiguous 80 MHz chunk in Band 41 (2600MHZ), would say it was worth it for them to have the more expensive cellphone data than go for home use.

Let's check frequencies a bit:
Vodacom:
40 MHz in lower bands
124 MHz in 1-3 GHz bands
10 MHz in higher bands
---
Around 174 MHz.

MTN:
40 MHz in lower bands
94 MHz in middle bands
40 MHz in higher bands
---
Around 174MHz

Telkom seems to have decent spectrum, Rain does not, so would not consider Rain a valid example.

Spoiler: Looking at Austria

View attachment 1774093
Most uncapped packages are on Magenta / TMobile, though all carriers offer it.

And for Austria, they were offering uncapped via 4G ages ago already, and 5G is substantially more efficient.

Germany has 4 carriers:

Spoiler: Germany spectrum'} [ATTACH type="full

1774095[/ATTACH]

T Mobile has:
70 MHz in lower bands
165 MHz in middle bands
90 MHz in higher bands.

But then we have O2:
60 MHz in lower bands
140 MHz in middle
70 MHz in higher

So more than Vodacom, but they offered uncapped at least a decade ago on 3G phone connections. Yes, you got throttled down to like 256Kbps after a gig, but this was on 3G.

Spectral efficiency, just pulling off of Wikipedia:
3G - CDMA2000 1.3
4G LTE - 16.32
4G LTE-A - 30, but uplink is usually bad
5G 45+, but both up/down, this is from comparing figures

So that German one in 2012, who have not that much more spectrum than South Africa, could offer like 10Mbps after throttling on what was a <R150 plan for a month.

That's not to say Vodacom/MTN/Telkom/others should not complain, it's in their interest to complain and basically a duty to shareholders, but they can definitely offer uncapped on 5G with a better FUP, it's currently just upselling and there's no real competition as you don't have a proper MVNO system (basically Capitec/FNB doing their mobile data stuff), you're getting Afrihost/Axxess competing there.

This is just lifted from an IoT report: https://iot-analytics.com/benchmarking-iot-mobile-operator-pricing-mnos-vs-mvnos/
View attachment 1774101

Appreciate all the research but this is really preaching to the choir.

 

[Johnatan56]

Appreciate all the research but this is really preaching to the choir.

I know, usually do this as it's an interest thing for me, to see if stuff has changed, was thinking of going into this industry.

Partly because got offered recommendation for a role at Vodacom when I graduated, which makes it always fun when @jannievanzyl adds a random post in the thread as a Vodacom executive in charge of innovation, he'd be the person who would spearhead any of these types of discussion. Says a lot when:

Guess this is where I say "Told you so", a decade ago

is his argument that a decade ago it was like that so should still be like that today, when advances in tech would mean 5G home net should be possible, but guess it's better to just keep prices high per MB on mobile for as long as possible, since a viable uncapped 5G package would invalidate it.

And again, interesting how Rain basically managed to reduce the higher data package pricing to more reasonable with barely any spectrum. https://static1.squarespace.com/sta...e7c4ec758fc/1621927707720/CCRED+WP+202104.pdf

The biggest issue right now for mobile operators in South Africa is that legacy spectrum stuff, stuck on 2G/3G, ICASA should probably step in and have e.g. Vodacom reserve 10MHz for 2G for IoT stuff at a "reasonable" price that matches that type of device, or if TV migration ever happens that can go to it, and the rest can all move to 4G/5G.

At least new 2G/3G devices are no longer being certified/activated, crazy that the certification didn't end earlier for 3G at least.

Good news for people with 3G smartphones in South Africa

Icasa has not yet published guidelines for South Africa’s 2G and 3G shutdown and communications minister Solly Malatsi does not believe the process should be government-driven.

mybroadband.co.za

 

[PaulGherkin]

was thinking of going into this industry

Be glad you didn't. It's not called a cartel for nothing.
Telecoms is a very dirty business indeed.

 

[PaulGherkin]

Guess this is where I say "Told you so", a decade ago

And that is very rich coming from you