Most Affordable ADSL in South Africa
April 12, 2011 | BYAfrihost recently slashed the price of its capped ADSL products in a special promotion, but this special may be short lived
In September 2009 Afrihost surprised the local ADSL market by launching data for R29 per GB at a time when the standard ADSL pricing ranged between R50 and R70 per GB.
In March 2010 Afrihost struck again and launched affordable uncapped accounts in response to MWEB’s offerings, and a few months later started to hand out free 1GB accounts to existing and new subscribers.
The company has now supplemented its Free DSL offering with a “Get the full Afrihost experience for R1” promotion where subscribers can get up to 9GB of data in addition to their free 1GB for R1 in April.
The R1 promotion ends in April, after which the following prices will hold:
- 1GB free and 2GB extra data for R39
- 1GB free and 4GB extra data for R65
- 1GB free and 9GB extra data for R99
Users who paid R1 for the service and decided not to continue with the offering on a monthly basis simply have to cancel the service before 24 April without any further obligations.
Afrihost’s promotional offering compares favorably with competing offerings in the local ADSL market as the table below shows.
Capped ADSL Pricing | |||
ISP | 3GB | 5GB | 10GB |
Afrihost promotion | R39 | R65 | R99 |
Axxess | R57 | R95 | R190 |
Cybersmart | R29/R45 | -- | R189/R245 |
MWEB | R79 | R145 | -- |
Afrihost standard | R87 | R145 | R190 |
Telkom | -- | R149 | R239 (9GB) |
Web Africa | -- | R249 | R449 |
It is currently unclear how long the Afrihost promotion will run and whether there are a limited number of accounts available.
Afrihost CEO Gian Visser explains that the latest promotion which was launched on Thursday last week forms part of the company’s current investigation into different strategies and price points.
Visser pointed out that they may pull this offering at any time. “I cannot tell for certain [what will happen with this promotion],” said Visser.
Visser added that their existing clients can migrate to the specials while they are running. "However, there is a limit of one special per person and the promotion may stop and become unavailable at anytime," said Visser.
"If someone has managed to sign up for the special they will always get this price as long as they are with Afrihost or do not change their package."
Bad news for consumers is that Visser does not envisage sub R10/GB pricing to become the norm. “We do not see sub-R10/GB becoming our standard on our lower data bundles unless there are reductions in the Telkom IPC tariffs in the future,” said Visser.
Courtesy of Mybroadband.co.za
http://mybroadband.co.za/news/adsl/19473-Afrihost-ADSL-price-cut-special-details.html