A rough and dirty iBurst v ADSL comparison

From the off. This is not meant to be a comprehensive cost analysis of iBurst vs Telkom. It is a comparison of what I believe to be the closest comparisons between the two. Both costs assume that you do not lock yourself into a 24 month contract for the modem.

I have chosen OpenWeb as the ISP as it seems to be the only I could see from Hellkom that offers access after reaching your cap. I assume that the access occurs even after reaching your local cap.


The without line column strips the cost of the telephone line rental for those that have it already. After all, that is a cost being already borne without ADSL. I have put the iBurst costs in comparison to 512 and 1024 as it would seem that some people never get close to downloading at 1024k. I have no clue as to ADSL issues regarding consistency of getting the advertised speed.

Of course one has to consider the cost of the equipment as well, latency issues, mobility, how soon you can get access etc. However whereas I might have previously said that I felt iBurst offered value for money; at this stage I would have to say that if I were choosing between the two now, it would not be as easy a choice as it was when I got into bed with WBS. In fact I suspect I would try to get ADSL first.

EDIT: I give up on the coding.

Jongi said:

However whereas I might have previously said that I felt iBurst offered value for money; at this stage I would have to say that if I were choosing between the two now, it would not be as easy a choice as it was when I got into bed with WBS. In fact I suspect I would try to get ADSL first.

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I would agree with that. Not only because ADSL is a more stable platform, but because there is a much wider range of ISP packages and options available. The problem for broadband noobs is the waiting period for ADSL, which can take many months, whereas they can get Iburst in a day.

Vastly improved support and not having to deal with Telkom are major plusses for Iburst, but if I were Iburst management, I would be a little worried about existing month-to-month Iburst users moving over. After all, they can continue to use Iburst while they wait for an ADSL line.

The thing about stability.. if you use IS, which you have in your comparison and most people would because they offer the best prices and have all the benifits; after cap surfing, but only with openweb as a ISP, big local caps and ots of other smaller innovations.

Now IS uses similar connections to Iburst for international ,they dont use SAT-3. So if you look at the ADSL forums you will see ALOT of complaints about IS service, they are slower (and have the same sort of slow down during the day as Iburst does) and have much higher latencies to international .Thier latency is in fact simialr (if not the same or worse) to a good connection on Iburst. I see some guys here got 470ms averages and 300ms min pings to international sites, and im shure IS get simialr results, and i highly doubt its any better than that.
Also quite a bit more downtime for shirt periods on international.

So if you compare IS to Iburst, then dont automatically fafctor in much better pings and reliability.

Gatecrasher said:

I would agree with that. Not only because ADSL is a more stable platform, but because there is a much wider range of ISP packages and options available. The problem for broadband noobs is the waiting period for ADSL, which can take many months, whereas they can get Iburst in a day.

Vastly improved support and not having to deal with Telkom are major plusses for Iburst, but if I were Iburst management, I would be a little worried about existing month-to-month Iburst users moving over. After all, they can continue to use Iburst while they wait for an ADSL line.

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QFT - once my contract is over i'll be using m-to-m till i get adsl

Ekhaatvensters, isn't there an isp that won't have that issues? Where the latency is like it should be for adsl? (even if hardcapped?) *EDIT* Which isp do you prefer for best latency on adsl?

Tjorriemorrie said:

QFT - once my contract is over i'll be using m-to-m till i get adsl

Ekhaatvensters, isn't there an isp that won't have that issues? Where the latency is like it should be for adsl? (even if hardcapped?) *EDIT* Which isp do you prefer for best latency on adsl?

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Latency isnt really about the ISP, its about the bandwidth that they resell. If you get an account that works on the SAIX network, you will have great, regular ADSL. But IS is just a bit slower for international, and has more problems with uptime and connectivity etc.
i.e. Its alot more like Ibursts performance, without the spikes that arise from wireless technology.

Basically Id say Webafrica for SAIX and Openweb for IS.
IS is cheaper, with more goodies like after cap surfing and they have the big local caps.
Many peiopel just get a small SAIX account for international surfing and some small int downloads, andthen a IS account for more general use, and gaming/downloading local.

After having performed a similar exercise to this for my private Internet connection, the conclusion that I came to was that iBurst is still a viable proposition. The R900/6gig package compares favourably to the R800 total (all-in) that you would pay for 384Kbps aDSL with 6gigs from a reasonable provider. For a private connection, you are likely to see higher speeds out of office hours on the iBurst connection (different story during the day, I suspect).

However, if you're shopping at the higher end of the market, other factors apply. When selling business-oriented aDSL solutions, the major ISP's will differentiate between satellite or SAT-3 fibre backend products. Uncapped satellite is generally R2500 per month and uncapped SAT-3 ("fibre") is usually R5000 per month. The satellite solutions are the ones with the high latency and occasional unavailability. Note that these are generally also shaped offerings - unshaped is typically only available on pay-as-you-go. If you've got tight control over your office's bandwidth utilisation, you might be able to get away with a usage based solution, but there is always a risk involved.

Always be aware of what you're being sold, and shop around. That is what competion is all about.