Increased competition in the broadband market is starting to force companies to improve their service offerings and cut prices. Recent moves in the market came from Vodacom, Neotel and iBurst – all beefing up their value proposition in an effort to gain market share. <\/p>\n
The long anticipated consumer offerings from Neotel have arrived in the form of its NeoConnect Prime and NeoConnect Lite services.<\/p>\n
Their flagship product, NeoConnect Prime, offers consumers peak speeds of up to 2.4Mbps and starts at R 399 a month for a service offering 2.5GB of monthly usage, 1000 free on-net call minutes, 50 free on-net SMSes and the device needed to access these services.<\/p>\n
To the delight of many high-end users Neotel also introduced an uncapped NeoConnect Prime service, offering unlimited Internet usage, 2000 free on-net minutes, 120 free call minutes to Telkom phones, 100 free national SMSes and100 free on-net SMSes for R 999 a month.<\/p>\n
These offerings are significantly cheaper than any similar offerings in the market, and it is widely expected that Telkom will have to announce price cuts to its ADSL services at its results presentation on Monday to remain competitive.<\/p>\n
Neotel is however not the only company who beefed up its value proposition recently. <\/p>\n
Vodacom launched its High-Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) service across its whole network last week, offering upload speeds in excess of 1Mbps. This uplink speed is significantly higher than any other broadband offering in the market today and provides for a far better overall Internet experience.<\/p>\n
The new service is provided free of charge to all Vodacom 3.6 HSDPA subscribers.<\/p>\n
iBurst also recently cut the rates of its broadband offerings to make it more attractive to consumers. Despite the fact that its new prices are higher than similar offerings from Neotel, the company remains upbeat about its ability to compete in the current broadband market.<\/p>\n
“iBurst has successfully competed in an already competitive broadband market and will continue to provide a competitive offering in a dynamic market place,” the company said.<\/p>\n
Apart from the short term prospects of more affordable broadband services due to an increasingly competitive market, more affordable international bandwidth is on the horizon which will further improve broadband offerings.<\/p>\n
Communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri recently announced that the African West Coast Cable, which is run by Infraco and will connect South Africa to Europe, will be ready in May 2010 in time for the World Cup.<\/p>\n
Other cable systems which will provide more affordable and abundant international bandwidth to Africa, notably SEACOM, are set to be operational even sooner. SEACOM has a June 2009 due date, while another east coast system, EASSy, is expected to also be ready in time for the 2010 World Cup.<\/p>\n
These developments bode well for more affordable broadband offerings providing for far higher monthly usage limits.<\/p>\n