Telkom vs Afrihost – Naked ADSL price comparison

Openserve recently announced the long-overdue launch of its naked ADSL wholesale offering, which formed part of its new Pure Connect wholesale DSL model.

This product allows ADSL and VDSL customers to obtain their broadband service directly from ISPs, and they will no longer be required to pay for a voice line along with their DSL connection.

The idea of naked ADSL has been discussed for years, and in June 2016, Telkom CEO Sipho Maseko said that line rental would be removed from broadband services.

Four years later, South African consumers finally have access to naked DSL products, with Telkom launching the first uncapped ADSL products reflecting the new wholesale model.

The company has separated its uncapped DSL offerings into Unlimited Home Lite and Unlimited Home Premium products.

Home Unlimited Lite includes uncapped Internet with no fair usage policy (FUP), as well as a free Wi-Fi router and installation.

The Premium package includes the above, as well as a mobile data SIM with Unlimited Telkom-to-Telkom and Telkom-to-Telkom Mobile calls.

Home Unlimited Lite packages are significantly cheaper than the Premium options, although Telkom has said existing ADSL customers may not migrate to these offerings and may only move to Premium packages.

Shortly after Telkom launched its naked DSL products, Afrihost followed with its own Pure DSL packages based on the Openserve Pure Connect infrastructure.

“Why pay for a telephone line that you don’t even use? Only pay for the DSL line rental and data – saving you more than R200 per month,” Afrihost said.

We have compared the pricing of Telkom and Afrihost’s naked DSL products below.

Speeds and discounts

Afrihost has said there are no usage thresholds on its new Pure DSL packages, which means users can use as much data as they like.

As part of its launch promotion, Afrihost said it will also cover the R999 setup fee which is prescribed by Openserve.

Both Telkom and Afrihost’s packages include free installation and a compatible Wi-Fi router, and they are available on a month-to-month basis.

Telkom offers a reduced monthly price promotion for the first six months of a new customer’s Unlimited Home package.

These discounts were excluded from this comparison for parity as Afrihost offers no initial monthly price promotion. More information on Telkom’s Unlimited Home promotion can be found in our previous article.

The table below shows the monthly price of naked DSL products from Telkom and Afrihost.

Afriihost vs Telkom

Now read: Afrihost launches Pure DSL – Uncapped, unshaped, and unthrottled broadband