South African bandwidth pricing kills broadband joy
By MyADSL, 4 October 2006
mybroadband.co.za
The price of bandwidth in South Africa is severely limiting to local users, making our broadband experience vastly different from that of international subscribers.
Telkom’s DSL 4096 broadband connection provides users with an internationally comparable 4 Mbps downlink speed, but is generally accompanied by a restrictive 3 GB monthly usage limit. This means that, by using this 4 Mbps ADSL service at its full potential, a subscriber will reach their monthly usage limit in less than 2 hours.
Content on the Internet is increasingly developed with broadband connections in mind, making them bandwidth intensive and generally large in size.
Podcasting, video streaming and online radio are only a few services local broadband users are hesitant to engage in due to the restrictive usage limits.
Unsurprisingly South Africa has very few podcasts, and one will be hard pressed to find any free local video sharing websites locally.
Hosting
The problem is however not only related to low monthly broadband usage limits, but also the general high cost of bandwidth in hosting environments.
Where International Internet Service Providers (ISPs) often sell hosting packages allowing for a terabyte or more of monthly traffic, local hosting packages will generally only allow for a few Gigabyte of traffic.
The result is that it becomes prohibitively expensive to host bandwidth intensive websites in South Africa. Many local websites serving the local broadband community are hence hosted internationally.
Killjoy
The lack of local broadband specific services like podcasts and video sharing websites not only mean that local broadband users are not experiencing the joys of true broadband, but also results in the local IT industry losing out on these potential revenue streams.
Local designers are less likely to keep abreast of the latest web-based technologies associated with true broadband Internet usage as they are unlikely to use it when designing for a local audience.
This is indeed an alarming situation.
While many operators and ISPs may describe these low usage limits as bandwidth resource protection and even describe high-end users as abusers, the impact on the local IT environment is potentially devastating.
The exorbitant cost of a broadband service is already hampering broadband uptake, resulting in very low penetration rates, and the low usage limits are seen by many as the final nail in the coffin of the local broadband environment.
A good example of the prohibitive nature of these bandwidth caps is Microsoft’s recent decision to make its new Vista and Office beta version available online for free downloading.
While many international users jumped at the opportunity to evaluate this new software and stay abreast of the latest developments in the software arena, local users generally had to pass because of their monthly usage limits.
The full Microsoft Office 2007 suite is over 2 GB in size, while their server packages are a further 1.6 GB. Micorsoft’s Windows Vista beta version is also available for download, and is a hefty 2.6 GB.
To download these three Microsoft products requires a minimum of 6.2 GB of bandwidth, far exceeding the standard 3 GB monthly usage allowances accompanying local ADSL services.
Local bandwidth caps are clearly creating a new digital divide, not by means of connectivity speed or broadband penetration, but rather by dictating which online services are truly accessible to local broadband users.
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