Telkom’s Internet service provider, TelkomInternet, has unveiled a “bouquet” of uncapped fixed-line broadband services, starting at R219/month.

TechCentral revealed the operator’s plans to introduce uncapped services on Thursday. Telkom is late to the uncapped game, with many rival service providers already offering uncapped packages. Its rival MWeb started the trend to uncapped fixed-line broadband 18 months ago.

The new products will go on sale on 1 October.

Telkom says its research has shown that consumers prefer more bandwidth to simply faster connections, hence its decision to introduce the uncapped products.

“Bandwidth prices are constantly coming down and … we can manage bandwidth much more effectively now,” says Telkom executive for converged business services Steven White.

He says Telkom is able to offer uncapped services profitably without compromising shareholder returns.

The R219 entry-level product is for data only on a 384kbit/s line. With broadband line rental of R152, the product costs R371/month.

Its uncapped 1Mbit/s product costs R369/month for data only and R658 with broadband line rental factored in.

At the top end, Telkom has surprised with price points far above its rivals. Data only for 4Mbit/s and 10Mbit/s lines costs R2 097/month, well above MWeb’s R539, by way of example. With line rental, the top-end uncapped service costs R2 510/month.

All the products are subject to a fair usage policy, but Telkom insists it has no specific limit on the amount of data its customers can consume.

Priority will continue to be given to its business customers during the day, though the uncapped services will run at full speed at night, says White.

Telkom will also offer “intermediary services”, to allow third-party service providers who purchase bandwidth on Telkom’s wholesale Saix network to offer uncapped products. However, those are not yet ready for launch. — Duncan McLeod, TechCentral