Internet Solutions introduces Wi-Fi pricing as low as 8c/MB

“Our AlwaysOn hotspots can be accessed at key locations such as all ACSA airports, roughly 80% of hotels in SA and a variety of restaurants and coffee shops,” says Stewart.
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I fail to understand the usefulness of 3GB bundles for usage at hotspots, or do people actually go find a coffee shop for their downloads?
 
“Wi-Fi should be playing a much more prominent role in connecting people,” says Stewart. “It is however perceived to be very expensive, largely because it is incorrectly compared to ADSL services.”
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Why incorrectly? Most Alwayson hotspots are offering WiFi to DSL connectivity. The capital costs of WiFi equipment are small, so the cost of wifi should be similar.
Stewart concluded with a bold statement: “We are already at a point where we can provide customers with speed and quality of connection that is superior to 3G and now it will be a lot more affordable as well.”
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Superior to 3G how? The speed from my laptop to the router may be better with better QoS, but I'm still going to have to compete with twenty other Joes in the coffee shop for my share of the 10Mb DSL line. If I have a Cell C 3.5G connection, I can probably get close to 4Mbps to the tower and the backhaul is considerably more. So I don't agree.
 
@HavocXphere - you are 100% correct. However cell c pricing pricing, while fantastically refreshing is an introductory offering only. These prices are going to be realigned in March 2011 to well above 5c per MB
 
@arf9999 - This is incorrect. Our capital costs are not small and we have multiple running costs. Think support (end user and location based), last mile costs (many of our sites now have diginet or winet and in many cases we bond muliple DSL lines at our cost) as well as capex costs. This is more comparable to a 3G network (fully managed network) when it comes to costs and less comparable to a wi-fi router at home.

Regarding our speed, sure cell c has fantastic throughput at the moment and long may it last! The reality is that the performance at hotspots of ours where we're conneting directly into a PoP or where we have winet or leased lines in place is significantly faster than the majority of 3G providers (happy to send through some screen tests). Even where we've got multiple bonded DSL lines in place (10mbps), our speed tests are impressive.

Thanks for the comments - let me know if you've got any further questions
 
I still don't see any incentive for me to leave my 3G modem @ home when I can connect with it in the same airport or hotel. Then take the same stick to the b&b in Pofadder which doesn't have your wifi but at least has edge(hopefully)....
 
What gets me is that even in the Business and First class lounges on JNB they failed to agree something with ACSA/SAA to provide a free offering for the loyal customers. I travel a lot, (which is why I have access to First class lounges everywhere) and find that I can connect to a free wifi hotspot in any lounge and every country I go to... except JNB. Not sure if it's ACSA, SAA, AlwaysOn or IS to blame, but they surely can work out something better there. My guess is that alwaysOn tried to overcharge SAA for providing the service unlimited to those customers? @craigstewart ?
 
craigstewart said:
@HavocXphere - you are 100% correct. However cell c pricing pricing, while fantastically refreshing is an introductory offering only. These prices are going to be realigned in March 2011 to well above 5c per MB
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True. Pointed that out when they launched in Pta. Nonetheless introductory offers have a tendency to stick...especially since broadband prices are falling so fast that 5c might be par for the course in a few months.

btw If you're here in an official capacity you should maybe PM RPM to get a company rep tag.
 
craigstewart said:
Thanks for the comments - let me know if you've got any further questions
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Thanks, Craig, for taking the time to respond in the forum. I have two questions I'd hoped you could answer.

  1. How many devices/subscribers/connections can one hotspot typically handle?
  2. Connections to the hotspot are unsecured, from my experience. Is this a security risk for a user (especially in the case where s/he's sending a username and password to web sites or email servers in plain text), or do you take other measures to prevent snooping on the hotspots?
 
craigstewart said:
@arf9999 - This is incorrect. Our capital costs are not small and we have multiple running costs. Think support (end user and location based), last mile costs (many of our sites now have diginet or winet and in many cases we bond muliple DSL lines at our cost) as well as capex costs. This is more comparable to a 3G network (fully managed network) when it comes to costs and less comparable to a wi-fi router at home.

Regarding our speed, sure cell c has fantastic throughput at the moment and long may it last! The reality is that the performance at hotspots of ours where we're conneting directly into a PoP or where we have winet or leased lines in place is significantly faster than the majority of 3G providers (happy to send through some screen tests). Even where we've got multiple bonded DSL lines in place (10mbps), our speed tests are impressive.

Thanks for the comments - let me know if you've got any further questions
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Thanks for your comments, and I understand your point. It's not my personal experience though: I use Alwayson hotspots at a few coffee shops and at the airport and in general the speeds are nothing to write home about... certainly no better than my current Vodacom 3G connection, and from all reports the Cell C experience in metro centres is exceptional.

Also, from a financial point of view, I honestly don't see IS installing bonded DSL lines for a coffee shop with 30 tables. And WiNet and Diginet are not as expensive to maintain as a 3G network, firstly due to the licences payable, secondly because of the network topography. I also think it is unlikely that at any of the sites that utilise WiNet and DigiNet (I'm guessing the big hotels and the Airports), that the infrastructure used is solely for the AlwaysOn hotspot. The infrastructure has multiple customers and the AlwaysOn retail offering is an additional service offered on an existing network. So I still think that the costs are high, and that the service is no necessarily better than 3G.

It is more likely that the costs relating to the service are high on a per user basis, purely because the user base is low. User base is low because there is no real incentive to use AlwaysOn over 3G data... reduced prices are a step in the right direction, but they're still around 50% too high.
 
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