Sentech punts wireless broadband

MyWireless provider Sentech says that regulatory issues, advertising and technological changes may obscure consumers from the important message that wireless offerings are generally more cost effective than dial-up or ADSL.

“Consumers need to realise that dial-up is dead. It’s just too expensive and the speed of connectivity is very slow,” says Winston Smith, Sentech Portfolio Manager: Broadband Wireless.

Consumers using dial-up services have to pay for an ISP account, line rental and local call costs, making it a costly Internet connection option for those people frequently accessing the Internet.

With the slow speeds and high costs it may surprise many people that dial-up access remains the most popular method to access the Internet, but the reasons are simpler than one may think.

Most dial-up users can either not get broadband or not afford it. So while people can afford a basic telephone line for voice calls, it is easy and moderately affordable to get an ISP account and go online when needed.

While international trends may indicate that dial-up is dead, the high cost of local broadband and the general unavailability of these services outside cities means that dial-up is still very much alive in South Africa.

Wireless versus ADSL

Smith further claims that ‘wireless broadband services are the cheapest, fastest connection for the average Internet users.’ This is a however dubious statement at best.

While wireless broadband services do offer mobility and a variety of low usage packages, even with packages of 500 MB or 1 GB the wireless offerings are more expensive than low-end ADSL offerings which generally give higher speeds and are more reliability than its wireless counterparts.

Smith’s argues that consumers and businessmen working in a small/home office environment probably won’t need a GB of data, which makes the MyWireless Flexi 200 Package at R 299-00 or its 500 MB package priced at R 399-00 affordable alternatives to ADSL.

It is debatable whether a service with such low usage limits should be categorized as broadband, but even in such cases it may be more cost effective to rather look at Vodacom’s or MTN’s 3G or HSDPA offerings.

The cellular giants’ services are not only faster and cheaper than Sentech’s MyWireless Flexi, but also provide countrywide coverage with their GPRS/EDGE fallback.

Sentech’s simple message that wireless broadband services are the cheaper and faster than other options may be little more than an attempt to win over customers after their potentially damaging decision to discontinue the popular MyWireless Classic product.

The table below gives a run down of the most affordable main broadband services for the respective usage limits for a month-to-month agreement. 

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