Monthly usage limits or bandwidth caps (aka bitcaps) are a bone of contention for many South African broadband subscribers. These caps are typically restrictive and force users to watch their Internet usage – akin to dial-up services where users have to pay for every minute they use the Internet.<\/p>\n
In a price sensitive market many users are initially attracted by a low monthly price, and the monthly usage limit is often not considered when signing up for a service.<\/p>\n
In South Africa most broadband services carry bandwidth caps of between 500MB and 3GB per month, allowing for a fair amount of email and web browsing.<\/p>\n
Telkom’s 4Mbps ADSL service typically carries a 3GB monthly usage limit which means that users will reach their monthly usage limit within 1.71 hours when used at full speed.<\/p>\n
Vodacom and MTN’s HSDPA services are generally ordered with a 2GB usage limit, providing a usage time of 1.3 hours before the bundled bandwidth is depleted.<\/p>\n
iBurst 40MB service is the broadband service with the lowest usage limit which is widely promoted as a broadband offering, and at R49 a month it is often considered an alternative to dial-up for price-sensitive consumers.<\/p>\n
This service, when used at the full speed of 1Mbps, will last users just over five minutes, or 0.08 hours, to reach their monthly allowance.<\/p>\n
International comparison<\/strong><\/p>\n A study by the OECD investigated the time it would take a user to reach their bitcap at advertised speeds and some of the results made even iBurst’s 40MB offering look like a good value proposition.<\/p>\n According to the study, Australia’s BigPond ISP offered a 30Mbps service with a 200MB bandwidth cap. This meant that a subscriber would be capped within 0.014 hours if the service was used at full speed.<\/p>\n Equal second and third was Australia’s Optus ISP and New Zealand Telecom who both offered a 24Mbps service with a 200MB bandwidth cap. At full speed this monthly usage limit would be reached within 0.018 hours – not much surfing.<\/p>\n It should however be noted that this OECD study was conducted in 2007, and some of the usage limits may have increased since then.<\/p>\n