Cape Town - “Telkom's announcement that it will drop its wholesale ASDL rate to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) by as much as 30 percent is a step in the right direction,” says Dederick Venter of @lantic, the consumer and small business service provider within the Vox Telecom group.
“But we still have a long way to go before South Africans get truly affordable internet. The wholesale price is just one element of the total cost of ASDL: There's also the Telkom line rental cost (the famous ‘last mile’) as well as local and international bandwidth costs.”
“At @lantic, we have been expecting the rate reduction for a while and dropped the price of our consumer ADSL packages even before it was announced,” says Venter.
“Our revised packages include a range of Anytime data products, such as the ADSL Anytime 10GB for R149 per month with access to the web anytime of the day, or our more customised service, the ADSL 626, a 10GB pre-paid data package for use between 6pm and 6am. These packages are available to anyone, not just @lantic customers”.
Consumers will need to pay careful attention in the next few months, as new, competing and superficially attractive offerings come onto the market.
Consumers should make sure they understand what the service entails, how much data is available and when (during the day? At night? Around the clock?) and most importantly at what cost.