Paul Jacobson

News just broke about MWEB’s new pricing for its ADSL offerings including a remarkable R219 for uncapped ADSL (for a 384 kbps ADSL line).

Businesses can expect to pay between R499 for 384 kbps DSL and R2 359 for up to 4 Mbps DSL. These prices are a little misleading and they vary depending on whether you are including ADSL line rental in your 12 month contract with MWEB (oh, yes, you need to sign a 12 month contract with MWEB).

The local Twittersphere has just gone crazy at the news with a number of people spreading the news as if it is the biggest ADSL news for the year to date. It is certainly fantastic news for MWEB subscribers who have been paying ridiculously high prices for their ADSL access so far. This pricing is not, however, the best pricing available to consumers or businesses. I don’t know how many businesses are still using 384 kbps lines unless their traffic is pretty much limited to email for a couple people so let’s assume more people will be using the faster connections. Once you are looking at pricing for the faster 4 Mbps lines, you can expect to spend around R2 000 for the pure data component with MWEB. Still not bad for an uncapped and unshaped ADSL connection, for sure. Well, until you consider Afrihost’s pricing …

You may be familiar with Afrihost’s R29/GB pricing offer which just seems to keep going. You may even be aware of the occasional double-up offer where you can buy 2GB of Afrihost data for R29. I just noticed that Afrihost is giving a lot of data away as part of its higher end packages (granted, the service is semi-shaped if that makes much difference to you):

I have a 50GB package with Afrihost and we tend to use around 60GB to 70GB on heavy months. 100GB is, practically, an uncapped package for us. I could probably find some way to use 100GB if I try hard (yes, I know it is easy to use that much data on illegal data transfers, I’m talking about the legal or semi-legal stuff) but it is quite a bit of data for R950. The price will probably revert to R1 450 for 50GB in June but that is still cheaper than MWEB’s equivalent, at least for me.

So, yes, MWEB’s pricing is great news for consumers, particularly its users who have been paying its absurdly high prices in the past but it isn’t exactly revolutionary for those of us who have been Afrihost customers (and other pioneers’ customers).

Welcome to the party MWEB, what kept you?

I’ve been using Axxess DSL for my ADSL access since I first started using ADSL a couple years ago. We use a lot of data and average between 20GB and 25GB on good months. The price per GB isn’t too bad (I pay R59 per GB) and it is very easy to top-up my account … perhaps a little too easy.

There are times when I wonder just how my data is being monitored and how it is I manage to use so much. This morning is a good example. We hit our latest cap last night and I added 1 GB this morning. I did a little browsing and email before I had to rush out for a couple hours and by the time I got back to my office that 1 GB was gone. It turns out much of that bandwidth was consumed by uploads but I haven’t uploaded much of anything today. I was doing a backup online yesterday morning so the thought occurred to me that perhaps that usage was only captured after I added my 1GB and that effectively wiped that data out.

On the other hand it also occurred to me that there are some funny data usage and billing practices going on at Axxess. Now I have nothing to really substantiate this suspicion and it probably only occurred to me because I was (and am) ticked that I had to fork out for yet another 1 GB.

If anything this highlights the cost of our bandwidth and the syrupy rate of price reductions by our providers despite Seacom and whichever other factors help reduce DSL prices. It also doesn’t help that Axxess (and they tell me, other providers too) don’t really distinguish between local and international bandwidth in their billing (unless you have separate local bandwidth and general accounts – what a pain!). I’ve been using Zoopy for my video uploads for a while now because of the local bandwidth appeal but it turns out that means nothing because Axxess just sees usage as usage, regardless of where it is.

Bottom line here is that I am just a bit ticked off at the cost of our DSL and, more particularly, what I keep spending on DSL. I could probably use it less. I could also stop using so much electricity and start cooking by firelight too but that wouldn’t be nearly as civil. I could re-consider Axxess’ uncapped option but at R2 700 for a 4 MB/sec line that works out to around 45 GB of usage. I’m not quite there yet so that still seems a little to expensive. I am also not keen on dropping my line speed down to 512kbps either. Yech!

I guess I’ll just keep an eye on local DSL providers and if/when a cheaper/better one pops up, weigh the merits of jumping ship. I am already trying out G-Connect (well, when I have credit in my account) so maybe I should look at shifting across there? There are one or two other services in the works which also look interesting. The question is what they will charge and what kind of service they’ll offer.

At the moment the biggest data flow seems to be the data representing money from my bank account to Axxess’ bank account.