Backtracking on uncapped mobile broadband
Uncapped fever has hit the local broadband market after MWEB launched its affordable unlimited ADSL offerings in March. Numerous Internet Service Providers (ISPs) followed suit, and prices quickly plummeted to well below R200 per month for an uncapped 384 Kbps ADSL account.
In the mobile space MTN launched an uncapped mobile broadband offering – albeit a crippled one. MTN’s uncapped service, which retails for R749 per month, carries a 3G fair use policy after which the service is throttled to 128 Kbps.
Move away from uncapped
While uncapped broadband is only starting to take off in South Africa, the United States is starting to move away from unlimited data usage services.
In August 2008 well known US ISP Comcast revealed that it will start to enforce an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) where users will be subjected to a 250 gigabytes per month usage limit.
In a more recent development AT&T has announced the discontinuation of its uncapped mobile data plan, effective 7 June. It is well known that mobile operators, and in particular AT&T, have been struggling to cope with the tremendous data traffic growth on their network – partly fuelled by the iPhone.
According to media reports AT&T will allow existing unlimited data customers to keep their plans for $30 per month. New subscribers will have to choose between the DataPlus and DataPro plans.
For $15 (R114) per month DataPlus users will get 200MB of bandwidth usage whereas DataPro subscribers will get 2GB for $25 (R190). Extra bandwidth can be bought at $15 (R114) for 200MB on the DataPlus plan and $10 (R76) for 1GB on DataPro.
There is widespread speculation that other carriers in the United States will follow in AT&T’s footsteps.
South Africa
Apart from the recent unlimited offer from MTN, local cellular providers have avoided flat rated data plans.
MTN, Vodacom and Cell C have often came under fire for their high per-GB rates, but while many consumers are asking for flat rated data plans this is unlikely to happen in the near future.
Unlike the United States, Europe and other developed markets where most mobile broadband subscribers have a fast, uncapped fixed line connection at home for bandwidth intensive services, many South Africans are using their mobile broadband connections as a primary broadband service.
The relatively low usage limits therefore serve as a network protection method for the mobile operators while the high per-GB rates ensure that these business units remain profitable –a problem that the international operators with unlimited plans are struggling with.’
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