Three Internet service providers (ISPs) have revealed how much they will charge consumers for access to bandwidth in the pioneering fibre-to-the-home Johannesburg suburb of Parkhurst.

Vox Telecom, Cybersmart and Cool Ideas have announced pricing ranging from R399/month for a capped service right up to R5 900/month for an uncapped 100Mbit/s product.

The Parkhurst fibre deployment, which kicked off this week with the digging of the first trench in a street outside Parkhurst Primary School, is being led by telecommunications start-up Vumatel. Vumatel has plans to extend its fibre deployments to as many as 40 suburbs in the next phase of its roll-out.

Vox Telecom has announced three products for the Parkhurst project. The first is a 4Mbit/s fibre bundle, which offers 4Mbit/s fibre line rental, 100GB of “Fat Pipe” data, 1GB of mobile data, a Vox Supafone and 10GB of backup storage for R449/month.

The second product offers a 50Mbit/s connection, 150GB of Fat Pipe data, 1GB of mobile data, a Supafone and 100GB of backup storage for R999/month.

Vox’s third offering costs R1 449/month and provides a 100Mbit/s connection, 300GB of Fat Pipe data, 1GB of mobile data, a Supafone and 100GB of backup storage.

Cybersmart is launching with one product, an uncapped solution offering 50Mbit/s for R1 299/month. Some bandwidth shaping applies to peer-to-peer Internet traffic.

The third service provider, Cool Ideas, is offering three options to Parkhurst residents, all of which exclude line rental payable to Vumatel.

The first is called “Cool” and offers 4Mbit/s uncapped for R399/month. Then there’s “Super Cool”, which provides a 50Mbit/s connection. This option comes in both capped and uncapped flavour. Capped is 100GB for R949/month; uncapped is R2 799/month. “Sub zero” is its third product, which offers 100Mbit/s capped and uncapped options. Capped is 200GB for R2 500; uncapped is R5 900. — © 2014 NewsCentral Media