Following on the success of MTN’s uncapped Internet promotion, which began in October last year, MTN will permanently increase its maximum speed limits.

As from 1 February 2012, users of Uncapped Lite packages will be able to download more, moving from the current (very slow) limit of 128kbps to a slightly faster 256kbps after the 3GB limit is reached. Uncapped Pro package users will also will also get a slight increase, with a maximum speed limit lift from 128kbps to 384kbps after the 10GB limit is reached. MTN Uncapped Lite is currently R289 pm for 24 months, and Uncapped Pro is R899 per month for 24 months.

The current promotion, began on 1 October 2011, and will run until 31 January 2012. It was a response to customer demands for faster and reliable Internet access at an affordable fixed monthly cost. And with a truly uncapped, no restriction limit.

“It was impressive to see the consumption rate – which certainly speaks to the value customers are getting from this R289 p/m promotional package,” said Serame Taukobong, Chief Marketing Officer at MTN South Africa. “The term ‘uncapped’ data has been bandied around in the industry – but this is truly the most competitive unlimited promotion on offer today.”

This promotion’s success has been the impetus for MTN’s decision to revise the Fair Use policy, permanently increasing its maximum speed limits after the limits have been reached.

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Once again it is the newcomer amongst the mobile networks that seem to shake up the pricing for 3G in SA.

Local mobile broadband provider, 8.ta has today announced reduced broadband rates for its Once-Off Internet packages as well as its Post-paid Internet packages. In addition to this 8ta has also revised its contract terms which now include month to month, 12 and 24 months terms. The month to month contract excludes a modem while the 12 and 24 months contracts will include a modem.

“Today 8.ta has reduced its broadband pricing, responding to the need for affordable broadband Internet in the South African market. Effectively, 8.ta has tailored these packages to give users the freedom to choose packages that suit their pockets.

“Existing 8.ta Internet subscribers will automatically be migrated to the new price plans, and after their contracts are up for renewal they can also opt to subscribe on a month to month or 12 months contract basis,” says Managing Executive of Telkom Mobile, Amith Maharaj.

Once the monthly recurring Post-paid Internet package has been depleted, users will be charged an out-of-bundle rate of R 0.30 per MB while the Once-off Internet subscribers will be charged an out-of bundle rate of R1.00 per MB. Compare this to other mobile broadband solutions out there that still get charged more. For example Vodacom charges R1 per out of bundle meg for contract users, and R2 (!!!!) for prepaid users.

Post-paid and Once-Off Internet subscribers will also benefit from the following value added services:

• Free 8.ta email account with 5GB mailbox giving users access to 25GB online storage and free access to online Microsoft Office suite, which includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
• Send 5 SMSs daily and receive 50 FREE SMSs to use on that day.
• 8·ta also provides users with a ‘safety net’ to check their balances on the self-service portal and via USSD and make out of bundle purchase decisions in real-time, using the redirect functionality.
• Users will also receive a free call-out and support services with every 3G data modem purchased.

Now we have to wait and see to see if the other cellular networks will match this offering. Post-paid Internet Bundles – Month to Month contract:
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As 2011 draws to a close we thought it might be a good time to look back and see what products we really enjoyed using in 2011. Some of our choices might be controversial, but hey, horses for courses. Let us know what you think in the comments?

Best Phone: Samsung Galaxy S2

Even the most ardent fans of iPhone have to agree – the Galaxy S2 is a truly great phone. It is very fast, is built well (despite being made of plastic), the screen is beautiful, the camera is excellent – the list goes on. Pricing is also pretty good, and the phone is still great several months later, which you cannot typically say of the Android phone marketplace. You cannot go wrong. Not even Samsung’s bigger and faster Galaxy Note could change our name. Now we just have to get our hands on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Close second: Apple iPhone 4S. Expect our review in the new year.

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MWEB’s Free the Web (FTW) initiative has taken up the cause of Naked ADSL, calling on South Africans to take a stand and add their vote to remove mandatory landline billing with ADSL lines.

Derek Hershaw, CEO MWEB ISP, says: “With Uncapped ADSL finally becoming the norm for fixed line access, the time has come for Free the Web to focus on the next cause. So we’re asking consumers to take a stand and call for Naked ADSL.”

“There are currently three costs associated with having ADSL connectivity in South Africa: the ADSL line rental; the cost of the ADSL data; and the cost of the landline rental from Telkom,” says Hershaw.

As Telkom is bundling the landline with the ADSL line, consumers are unable to subscribe to an ADSL-only service, where they just rent the ADSL line and pay for data usage. If they want ADSL, customers are forced to also pay the rental fee for the landline, irrespective of whether they use the line for voice calls. Although our voice lines do currently subsidise a portion of our ADSL line costs, consumers should still see a reduction in costs if you didn’t have to have a landline.

“Since a landline is not required for ADSL connectivity, Naked ADSL calls for Telkom to unbundle landlines from ADSL lines, ensuring that ADSL customers who don’t want a telephone line don’t end up having to pay for one unnecessarily,” says Hershaw. (more…)

It’s been a long day, and you finally decide to just zone out in front of the television and unwind. You start with your favourite channels and then proceed to lesser favourites in the hope of catching something that you find mildly entertaining. For R529 pm (DSTV premium subscription) and a multitude of channels promising the very best in entertainment, you would expect to find something interesting to watch whenever you switch on the telly. Yet, time and time again, all one finds is a multitude of choice with no real options!

I am certain that I am not alone with the above experience but this is not the forum to discuss such gripes. Rather is it completely relevant to discuss the recent DSTV offering, BoxOffice – but I would like to briefly state my opinion on this new product. BoxOffice is an on-demand movie rental service but it is only available to DSTV’s PVR subscribers. That means that if I wanted to use BoxOffice, I would have to firstly upgrade my decoder and then pay an additional subscription of R65 pm. Only then would I be allowed to rent out the ‘latest’ movies (R25 for a 48 hour loan). It does not take an actuary to ascertain that this makes no financial sense unless of course you are already a PVR subscriber and you happen to find a movie on offer that you meant to watch on circuit but never got around to. As a premium DSTV subscriber, I would expect the latest movies to be on offer with my current bouquet and simple economics dictate that if a movie is popular on BoxOffice, it is going to be a long time before it is available on DSTV.

The reason for this post is the announcement from John Kotsaftis, CEO of DStv online, that BoxOffice, or a service like it will be launched online by the end of 2011 and that it was launched on satellite first due to South Africa’s broadband constraints. This new service will not only be available to DStv subscribers but to all South Africans. Firstly, this is encouraging news. Multichoice believe that by the end of the year, South Africa’s ‘broadband constraints’ would not be as limiting. With the recent announcement of the MTN LTE pilot and the ongoing broadband pricing wars, this is perhaps a fair assumption and I am sure most of us would agree that it’s about time. However, I think DStv may want to take cognisance of one factor before embarking on this venture. Reality.

If broadband prices are reduced considerably, it would still only be economically viable to download encrypted movies if you have an ADSL line. I doubt that cellular data costs would ever drop as low as those offered to ADSL customers, but I would be pleased to be proven wrong in this instance. This implies that the user would have to add the cost of downloading the movie to the price charged by the service provider, and bear in mind that these movies are typically larger than 1 GB. Furthermore lower bandwidth costs and faster speeds could result in many choosing to rather just download movies from international websites (you know the type) thereby saving the subscription fee to the service provider and removing sharing and time restrictions that would be otherwise imposed. I intend to neither justify or condone this option but wish to merely point out there is a strong liklihood of it occurring.

Another point for the brains at DStv to consider is that after paying to watch a movie, most people would be frustrated if they are forced to watch the movie on their Laptop screens. They would therefore need to either have the ability to connect their laptop up to their TV or use a dedicated media player. How this player would have the ability to play the encrypted video is anyone’s guess? The pricing would also have to be very competitive, if the intention is to get people who watch movies at home to suddenly stop going to their DVD store but to rather get a movie from this new service. Seems like a lot more inconvenience for very little (if any) benefit.

Companies at the forefront of this type of offering internationally (Netflix, Blockbuster) do not only focus on streaming VOD (Video on Demand) but have other offerings like DVD by mail delivery. Although recent Netflix pricing changes appear to be encouraging subscribers to use the streaming feature rather than the mail option, this has been met with severe criticism from subscribers. Furthermore whether such a mail delivery system would work in South Africa is debatable, especially if one considers the decision by Amazon to no longer ship goods to SA via the South African Post Office.

Many Apple users already have access to VOD via the US iStore and the cost of hiring a new release is typically $4 with a vast library of other movies available either for sale or for rent at a reduced rate. I cannot see a future where the proposed business model for BoxOffice VOD via broadband makes sense. So for now, I’ll keep watching my blockbusters at the movies (where they can be truly appreciated) and the Discovery channel late at night.

Update: The Undecided Future of My Television

This just in. MTN is about to rollout their new high speed LTE network. This is great news in SA’s current very competitive broadband space – but LTE is a newer wireless internet standard which has not been rolled out at this scale in SA yet.

However the final speeds are still a big improvement over existing wireless broadband solutions, but the biggest improvement is in latency, with around 20ms times. Compare this to current high speed HSPA+ connections, which typically do not get faster than 60ms. This will of course be beneficial for people who like their online gaming, but also for things like VoIP.

These new fibre backed network clusters only have around 600 meters coverage per antenna, which means that a significant effort is required to roll out this service, and it will not be available everywhere at first (in other words, typically city areas).

But here is the full scoop:

Today MTN announced the launch of a Long Term Evolution (LTE) pilot in five clusters around Gauteng that will revolutionise the provisioning of broadband services in South Africa.

The LTE rollout and pilot test, which MTN is undertaking in partnership with Huawei and Ericsson, will see selected MTN customers with provisioned dongles reaping the benefits of navigating on an ultra-high speed network that boasts speeds of up to 70Mbps across over 100 sites (more…)

A few weeks ago Telkom’s mobile network, 8ta, surprised us with some pretty great prepaid deals. These included the lowest all day cost rate to mobiles in SA, but some pretty great deals like for every 5 SMS’s you send, you get 50 for free. But many of us were waiting to see what they would bring when they announce their contract pricing. Well wait no more.

Contracts range from R90 all the way up to R500. But unlike the prepaid deals, these deals seperate the costs between on-net and calls to other networks. What bothers me are that these contracts are not really clear upfront about what you get, you have to go dig a bit on their site:  

Contract 1 gets 90 minutes to 8ta and landlines, and only 15 minutes to other networks. This also gets 25MB of data. R90 pm

Contract 2 gets 130 minutes to 8ta and landlines, and only 30 minutes to other networks. This also gets 25MB of data. R130 pm

Contract 3 gets 230 minutes to 8ta and landlines, and only 60 minutes to other networks. This also gets 25MB of data. R230 pm

Contract 3s gets 230 minutes (13800 sec) to 8ta and landlines, and 60  minutes (3600 sec) to other networks. This also gets 25MB of data. R230 pm

Contract 4 gets 500 minutes to 8ta and landlines, and 200 minutes to other networks. This also gets 50MB of data. R500 pm

What you should note is that all except one of these contracts have only per minute billing, which I find odd. The phone selection is not bad at all as well – you might want to go take a look at what is available. 8ta is also making the deal a little sweeter for contracts – you can phone one landline number for free for the length of the contract. So if you phone one number a lot, it might make sense to look at a 8ta contract.

But presently the bigger concern is the mobile broadband deals – competition is heating up with Cell C taking the market by storm with their deal.

So how about 8ta’s data deals?

Internet 1 – 650MB for R195 p/m
Internet 2 – 1.5G for R280 p/m
Internet 3 – 3.2G for R500 p/m

At present these deals look quite competitive with Vodacom and MTN, but do not come close to Cell C’s current deal. If you are someone who wants to get a notebook with your data contract however, 8ta’s deals look very good,  but 8ta might want to consider giving more info about the netbooks and notebooks they are supplying with the contracts…

Up to now I have avoided signing up for 3G contracts in South Africa – despite being someone who is constantly online. True, I do add data bundles to my cellphone, but the idea of signing away 2 or 3 years to a 3G contract seems silly. It is after all such a competitive industry, why would I want to subscribe to a fixed cost for the next few years?

However, things have started to change in the last few months. It is as if someone lit a cracker underneath the cellular operators in SA – and for once it is not the Vodacom and MTN who is getting all the attention. Up until now Cell C did not really have any presence when it came to mobile broadband in SA, in fact they did not roll out 3G until recently. Clearly their late entry to into the data market has a few advantages.

Cell C uses a different payment approach – instead of signing a 24 or 36 month contract, you pay a once off fee that gives you a certain amount of data every month, for a year. This suits me perfectly – because it means in a year from now I have the freedom of choosing a different 3G service, and not be locked in. This helps Cell C as well, seeing as they can get early payment and thus pay off their investments in new supporting data infrastructure.

Cell C is currently in some trouble because they called their service “4G” up to now – which is technically speaking not true, despite being significantly faster than any other 3G offering locally. The CEO of Cell C made a public apology recently regarding this, but not without driving home the fact that Cell C is faster than even 4G networks in the US…. My opinion is that if the product works, I dont mind the name…

Currently Cell C has 2 offers using this payment model:

2GB a month for 12 months, using the included 7.2 mbps modem, for R1499.

5GB a month for 12 months, using the included 21.6 mbps modem, for R2999.

You can also buy it without the modem for somewhat less. My advice – get the modem, because there are not a lot of modems available locally which can access the applicable frequencies that Cell C uses.

Compare this to Vodacom’s current deal which charges R945 pm for 5GB, and you immediately see why this is such a good deal. Vodacom also released their Internet Starter Pack using a similar payment model, but it clearly doesn’t cater to the same higher end market as Cell C.

Included in the bundle is a modem – I used the faster 21.6 mbps one, and it’s a pretty simple looking device. Understated in black and dark brown, it looks good. The setup was easy – insert the SIM card included in the box, push out the USB plug using the slider, and plug it into your machine, be it PC or Mac. Both versions of Cell C’s software is included on the stick. Just a tip Cell C – you might want to make it available on your site, I only see the updated Windows drivers there. It tried it on both platforms.

Now Cell C has a much better deal money wise – but what are the trade offs? Up until now the high speed 3G was only available in certain urban centres, but they have clearly made a big effort to improve their data coverage. For example, I live in Stellenbosch in the Western Cape, and in a low lying area that has always had pretty horrific cellular coverage. In fact my Vodacom phone still only gets Edge signal. The Cell C modem gets a full signal and very respectable performance. I also used it in Cape Town and in Bellville, and in all cases I got a full HSPA signal. So lets see how the Cell C network does.

My Speedtest results are as follows:

Local Connections: Cape Town and Johannesburg

International: UK and US

I did these tests with my unshaped 4Mbps ADSL connection as well afterwards, and the speeds were never the same, only reaching 3.5 Mbps maximum of course, but with ever so slightly faster ping times.

The tests were done over the weekend, so your speeds during business hours might differ. I will add them to this post soon. Of course the major concern is whether these speeds will be sustained once more people start using the network – and it is a valid concern. After all, Neotel also had very respectable wireless speeds when they first launched, but quickly that speed disappeared.

So here is what we will do – for the next 12 months I will occasionally post my speed results using the Cell C network, and in a variety of uses. (Update: You can find my first batch Cell C Speedtest results here) Only time will tell whether Cell C can deliver on their promise.

One has to applaud Cell C for the way they are heating up the mobile broadband market – finally some clear competition has arrived after years of very slow price decreases. With all the additional fibre running into SA recently, we have all been promised more affordable internet, and it seems we are inching closer and closer towards that. Cell C is also involved with this fibre rollout with Fibreco. Maybe this means that Cell C will become a dominant player in SA Broadband…

Keep it up Cell C.