SA has the worst broadband services: DoC study
The Department of Communications’ (DoC) newly appointed Director General Mamodupi Mohlala recently presented the DoCs’ International Peer Benchmarking Study which compared telecommunications costs in South Africa, South Korea, India, Brazil, Malaysia and Chile.
The five benchmarked countries were selected for their similarity with the South African market while the study evaluated various telecoms pricing components, including fixed line services, mobile services and Internet offerings.
ITWeb reported that Telkom was the most expensive provider when it came to fixed line call rates while Telkom Business was the most expensive when it came to a basket of fixed line business services.
Fixed local call rates per minute on Telkom’s prepaid service proved to be the highest, at more than 10 US cents per minute, followed by Telkom’s postpaid service at eight US cents per minute. “Telkom Business proved to be the most expensive, at $160.39, followed by Brazil at $123.55, then Malaysia, Chile and South Korea, with India coming in cheapest, at $36.98,” ITWeb reports.
Other findings include that South Africa has the second highest SMS tariffs, high mobile broadband fees for high usage accounts, generally high mobile tariffs and high fixed and mobile wholesale termination rates.
Broadband services
Unsurprisingly it was further found that South Africa has the slowest broadband speeds and low Internet penetration rates. It is already well known that South Africans have to pay very high prices for high end broadband services, and this study confirmed what local broadband users have been complaining about for years.
While the full International Peer Benchmarking Study is not available in the public domain yet, it is not difficult to see how far South Africa has fallen behind its international counterparts.
According to the latest Internet World Stats, South Africa currently has 4 590 000 Internet users, translating into an Internet penetration rate of 9.4%. This is higher than India’s 7.1%, but South Korea’s Internet penetration rate of 76.1%, Malaysia’s 62.8%, Chile’s 50.9% and Brazil’s 34.4% puts South Africa’s poor Internet access in perspective.
When it comes to broadband penetration rates South Africa fares even worse. South Africa has around 2 broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants, far lower than South Korea’s 32 and Malaysia’s 24 percent household broadband penetration rate.
On broadband speeds and monthly usage limits South Africa is also not doing particularly well. In South Africa broadband speeds range between 384 Kbps and 7.2 Mbps with typical monthly usage limits of between 500 MB and 5 GB.
The average broadband connection speed in Chile is 1.705 Mbps, with various low priced capped services and high speed uncapped services – like an uncapped 6 Mbps offering for under R 500 per month. Chile’s South American counterpart Brazil is aggressively improving the country’s state of broadband, with affordable broadband offerings with speeds ranging between 256 Kbps and multiple-Mbps.
India is also not doing too badly. According to WikiPedia India’s Airtel and BSNL have launched 8 Mbps services while Reliance Communication offers 10 Mbps broadband internet access in selected areas. For home users the maximum speed for unlimited downloads is 2 Mbps, available for roughly USD 60 (R 450) per month.
Fibre is the dominant connection technology in Korea and now accounts for 43% of all broadband subscriptions in Korea. South Korea has the highest fibre penetration rate worldwide at 13.8 fibre subscribers per 100 inhabitants with typical speeds of 50 Mbps or higher.
Fibre connections are also starting to gain traction in the Malaysian market, but other broadband technologies like DSL, HSDPA and WiMax also provides inhabitants with affordable Internet access at speeds of multiple-Mbps.
DoC study on pricing – give your views
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