ADSL prices: then and now
Many Internet users in South Africa were ecstatic when Telkom officially launched its ADSL service in August 2002. With a downlink speed of 512 Kbps the company’s ADSL service offered far better speeds than dial-up (56 Kbps) or ISDN (64/128 Kbps), and also did not require users to ‘dial-up’ and be charged by the minute to access the Internet.
Telkom’s ADSL pricing structure – which comprises of analogue line rental, ADSL access and ADSL ISP charges – has been a bone of contention for consumers since its launch. Another concern to businesses was that they were charged more than residential customers for no apparent reason.
In 2002 a basic 512 Kbps ADSL service cost R404 to install, and would cost residential customers R966.72 per month (R67.72 analogue line rental, R680 ADSL access and R219.00 for a 3GB data bundle) while business customers had to fork out R 1108.97 (R89.97 analogue line rental, R800 ADSL access and R219.00 for a 3GB data bundle).
Since the early days of ADSL Telkom has significantly cut the price of ADSL access and in time did away with the higher ADSL fees for businesses.
But it hasn’t all been about price cuts from Telkom. Telkom has doubled the analogue line rental price since 2002 and has also increased the price of its ‘3GB ProLog’ ADSL data bundles – from R219 to R249 per month –prior to cutting data prices recently.
The following tables provide an overview of some of the price adjustments which occurred over the last eight years.
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DSL Access Prices (aka ADSL line rental)
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| Service | August 2002 | September 2004 | March 2005 | August 2005 | August 2006 | August 2007 | August 2008 | August 2009 |
| DSL192 | — | — | R329 | R270 | R245 | — | — | — |
| DSL384 | — | R449 | R449 | R359 | R245 | R152 | R152 | R152 |
| DSL512 | R680 | R680 | R599 | R477 | R362 | R326 | R326 | R326 |
| DSL512 Business | R800 | R800 | R699 | R477 | R362 | — | — | — |
| DSL 1Mbps | — | — | — | — | R516 | R413 | — | — |
| DSL 4Mbps | — | — | — | — | — | R413 | R413 | R413 |
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ADSL installation and Analogue line rental
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| August 2002 | August 2003 | August 2004 | August 2005 | August 2006 | August 2007 | August 2008 | August 2009 | |
| ADSL Installation | R404 | R404 | R404 | R404 | R437 | R490.00 | R543.91 | R598.31 |
| Analogue line rental | R67.72 | R81.90 | R87.05 | R92.28 | R99.92 | R111.90 | R124.20 | R131.00 |
ADSL prices since 2002 << discussion
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