South African Uncapped... Its not cheap!

D

D34M0n7

Executive Member
Joined
Apr 7, 2008
Messages
6,680
Reaction score
20
Location
A Pharmacy
I have heard so many people saying "cheap" uncapped internet has finally made its way to South Africa.

This is not entirely true, the internet may be considerably cheaper than it was before this does not make it cheap, if you get what I'm trying to say.

Lets look at the Mweb offer (cheapest so far, if you look at the all inclusive deal) R899 for 4Mb/s uncapped. - Thats all you get... 4Mb/s Uncapped.

Then I go to www.google.co.uk and search for ISP.

Now obviously I got a list of UK ISPs but when I looked at the prices I almost began to cry...

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/broadband/top-10-broadband.html?buspart=buyat_AFF_1

Thats a 10Mb/s UNCAPPED account that is FREE for the first 3 months and £12.50 a month after the free period.

You also get FREE weekend calls to UK landlines and VirginMoblines...

£12.50 is approx. R139 (Todays Exchange rate) and we pay R899 for 4Mb/s.... Riiiiight, cheap.

And yes, thats in the UK... But internet is internet. we have a worse infrastructure in SA than they do, and slower speeds, so it stands to reason that it should be even cheaper here then in the UK.

Don't say Uncapped is cheap in South Africa, its not, in relation to what it should cost we are still paying through our teeth...
 
Spot on.

I think it is just that we have been abused for so long with hectic prices that this seems "cheap" Relative to what we were paying it is cheap, but certainly not by world standards
 
its because its a 3rd world country, and also because it has been under management with guys who sit in the dark (thanks goes to eskom for making this wonderful experience possible) . i have seen american adsl download speeds going out the roof . but what can we do ?

its sad that some people only wake up NOW. greed is also a strong word to be used. ;)
 
lol every one is hating ..anyway...look guys we are not the uk.. we are a crappy country in a crappy continent(my opinion at the very least:P) ...i think most people are excited more of the fact that we are moving in the right direction then with the actual price ...give it time and we will all be rolling around with 12mb uncapped for 100 bucks line inclusive(this is my dream and shall never rip it away:P)
 
Shoudn't we have had the below 'R100' uncapped today? If I remember correctly.
 
devdev666 said:
lol every one is hating ..anyway...look guys we are not the uk.. we are a crappy country in a crappy continent(my opinion at the very least:P) ...i think most people are excited more of the fact that we are moving in the right direction then with the actual price ...give it time and we will all be rolling around with 12mb uncapped for 100 bucks line inclusive(this is my dream and shall never rip it away:P)
Click to expand...

Yea in time it will (well, should) get better... But what is happening in SA in terms of uncapped offers should have happened way back on '05 not in 2010... Its taking tooo long!

If I compared it to a race, UK, US, Korea (other first world countries) are a galloping moose... We are a dead snail that has the same top speed as cheese and suffers from multiple cases of dementia.
 
It's sad that we always have to pay. It's sad that for a short moment last month I actually felt like I really did have uncapped...and then I was brought to my senses (I'm african and things never change that quickly here). Perhaps one day soon we will actually have true uncapped internet. Perhaps the saddest bit is that Telkom may be likely giving it to us first...or at least something closer to uncapped then what the current offerings hold in store (I do apologise if I'm coming off as a little pessimistic - you can blame my recent experiences on that).

I think most of us would be happy on an uncapped 4 meg solution for the next 1 - 3 years...meanwhile we'll probably get 10 meg lines (well those with decent copper within a stone throws distance of the exchange - which excludes me) with super packages that include all the shaping and throttling you could ever dream of!
 
There are definitely a few other issues, most importantly that we're at the end of Africa with up until recently only one cable actually connecting us to the world, compared to Britain being host to hundreds of international cables. And that we have a tiny ADSL user base which is far more spread out compared to dense areas like London where fiber on every corner can actually be a reality. It's not a totally fair comparison even though we are still paying far too much.. for the effects of Telkom's monopoly that went on far too long.

Also having never had affordable uncapped until now, we still have all of the low usage users on capped accounts, which means they can't subsidise the uncapped price, which is what happens everywhere else in the world where they can't remember what caps are. If any other country had to have only their high end users on uncapped and everyone else paying for the < 15GB or so that they use, their prices would also be far higher for uncapped.

Yet all of these factors are now changing, our broadband market just needs to mature into uncapped so it will take a while, until then we can't expect to pay similar prices to first world countries who've been through this change years ago.
 
Last edited:
can i see evidence of people saying SA internet is cheap?
 
milomak said:
can i see evidence of people saying SA internet is cheap?
Click to expand...

I think a lot of people said uncapped is finally affordable in terms of SA internet. Probably some said it is now cheap as well, and in our internet terms is really is, the same as we used to pay for 6-12GB or so.
 
D34M0n7 said:
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/broadband/top-10-broadband.html?buspart=buyat_AFF_1

Thats a 10Mb/s UNCAPPED account that is FREE for the first 3 months and £12.50 a month after the free period.
Click to expand...

Dude, before you get suckered go read more about Virgin's internet offerings in the UK. It's not all smiles and kittens

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/jan/27/virgin-media-monitor-music-piracy
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=551509>
http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/virgin-media-c12189.html

I've used a 20Mbps home connection in Germany and it was really nothing to write home about. It averaged between 1mbps and 2mbps.

Say what you want but Telkom 4Mbps with a SAIX capped account pretty much gets 4Mbps all the time.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X