Consumers who have been looking forward to Telkom’s new 20Mbit/s and 40Mbit/s digital subscriber line (DSL) broadband products are going to have to dig deep for access to the ultra-high-speed network.
Prices from the country’s two biggest retail Internet service providers, Telkom Internet and MWeb, start at R727/month and go all the way up to R10 699/month. The two service providers announced the prices within minutes of each other on Tuesday.
For small and medium enterprises, however, the higher speeds may make financial sense.
From 4 March, fixed-line users in selected parts of Gauteng, the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal will be able to sign up for the new broadband connections, which use a technology called very high bitrate DSL (VDSL).
At launch, however, the supported areas are only those around Telkom telephone exchanges in Benmore Gardens and Fourways in Johannesburg; Waterkloof in Pretoria; Durban North in Durban; and Durbanville in Cape Town. These are the same areas that were involved in Telkom’s trial of the VDSL service. The operator says it intends to expand this footprint in coming months.
The new products require a VDSL modem and prospective customers have to be a certain distance from one of the new “multi-service access nodes” that Telkom is deploying to support the higher speeds.
Telkom Internet’s new 20Mbit/s service attracts a broadband line rental fee of R540/month and the 40Mbit/s broadband line rental is R795/month.
This doesn’t include Telkom’s obligatory telephone line rental, which is a further R148,37/month for retail consumers, meaning home users looking to take advantage of the fastest of the new offerings will have to set aside almost R1 000/month before they’ve purchased any data.
MWeb’s newly announced Business Uncapped VDSL products include the required VDSL router, but do not include Telkom’s line rental fees. — (c) 2013 NewsCentral Media
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