The latter part of 2009 has seen some of the most significant price moves in the local ADSL ISP market with ADSL data bundle pricing dropping to as low as R20 per GB and uncapped services starting at R399 per month.
While Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are battling it out for ADSL market share, South Africa’s broadband operators – Telkom, Vodacom, MTN, iBurst and Neotel – have not announced significant changes in terms of price reductions. This has however changed today.
Increased Bundles and New Pricing
iBurst – which has around 80,000 broadband subscribers – announced today that it is increasing its data bundle sizes and significantly reducing its out-of-bundle and booster rates. Data bundles increase by between 50 to 100% while Top-Ups will drop by as much as 96%.
As part of its new pricing model iBurst announced a different pricing structure in line with Telkom’s ADSL service with an access (subscription) fee and a per-GB data fee. Data costs range between R39/GB and R99/GB.
“With these prices iBurst is the first wireless operator to take on the fixed-line space head-on,” says iBurst CEO Jannie Van Zyl. “In addition some promotional offers are also on offer for the next 3 months, including a free 1GB per month data bundle to use on the popular iGame gaming platform.”
Subscription Fee
In future there will be an ‘iBurst subscription fee’ where, unlike Telkom’s model , a higher price does not provide users with higher speeds but rather lower data rates. Van Zyl indicated that this model was created to lay the groundwork for multi-access, single data rate solutions.
The new pricing model further has an ‘out-of-bundle = in-bundle’ rate, resulting in significant savings to current subscribers who typically pay 95c per MB (R950 per GB) for out-of-bundle data.
The new iBurst Wireless products will not be ‘capped’. When subscribers reach their limit a pop-up screen will appear giving them the choice to allow their account to be ‘capped’ or they can top-up at their relevant ‘in-bundle’ rate to continue surfing.
The new products will however not have unlimited throttled bandwidth like some of the current iBurst products, but the company said that existing subscribers will have the option to remain on their contracts.
Uncapped Services
For subscribers wanting to move to the new bundles, a number of bolt-on Value Added Services (VAS) are on offer, including uncapped services. With the launch of the new bundles two new uncapped services will be made available: A 64 Kbps All-day Uncapped service at R199 per month and a 128 Kbps All-day Uncapped service at R249 per month.
A number of additional VAS services will be launched over the next few months including higher speed ‘All-day Uncapped’ and a number of ‘Off-peak Uncapped’ services. Specialist VAS services such as a dedicated iGame service will be launched in the next few days offering uncapped access to the iGame servers, gaming patches and automatic inclusion in prize draws.
Automatic Migration
iBurst have been criticized in the past for not automatically migrating subscribers to better value packages. Van Zyl said they are currently looking at the existing bundle rules to see if they can do an automatic migration which will be the preferred route. If there are legal concerns around automatic migrations a self-help process will be put in place and subscribers will be able to migrate themselves. “We prefer to do an automatic migration but all subscribers will be informed about the new packages and migration will be free of charge,” van Zyl commented.
iBurst indicated that it will provide clarity before month end if the migration will be automatic or user-driven.
iGame Promotion
Included in the new bundles will be a 3 month trial period for the popular iGame service hosted by iBurst. All subscribers will get 1GB of gaming data per month on top of the bundle size. This is typically good enough for about 50 hours of gaming.
The following tables provide an overview of the new iBurst Wireless pricing and the new out-of-bundle rates:
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Old pricing
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New pricing
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| Old GB | Old pricing | New GB | Subscription | per-GB | Data | Total |
| 0.5 GB | R 149 | 1 | R 50 | R 99 | R 99 | R 149 |
| 1 GB | R 199 | 2 | R 60 | R 69 | R 138 | R 198 |
| 3 GB | R 449 | 5 | R 150 | R 59 | R 295 | R 445 |
| 5 GB | R 599 | 8 | R 200 | R 49 | R 392 | R 592 |
| 10 GB | R 999 | 15 | R 370 | R 39 | R 585 | R 955 |
| Bundle Size (Old Size) | Old OOB (per GB) | New OOB (per GB) | Saving |
| 1 GB (0.5 GB) | R 950 | R 99 | 90% |
| 2 GB (1 GB) | R 950 | R 69 | 93% |
| 5 GB (3 GB) | R 950 | R 59 | 94% |
| 8 GB (5 GB) | R 950 | R 49 | 95% |
| 15 GB (10 GB) | R 950 | R 39 | 96% |
New iBurst pricing – discussion
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