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The arrival of the Seacom international submarine fibre optic cable last year has triggered the predicted slide in broadband prices in South Africa. Retail ADSL services are now available from as little as ZAR23 (US$3) per GB per month, down about 80% from mid 2009 when the SAT-3/WASC/SAFE submarine cable, monopolised by Telkom SA, was the only major fibre link to the outside world. Uncapped ADSL services – previously almost unheard of – are now available from between ZAR399 (US$53) per month for a 384Kb/s connection and ZAR2,499 (US$330) for 4Mb/s.

However, in addition to these charges by a customer’s ISP, fixed-line incumbent Telkom continues to charge its “ADSL line rental” of between ZAR152 (384Kb/s) and ZAR413 (4Mb/s) per month – in addition to the normal phone line rental of around ZAR130 per month for residential customers. No wonder South African consumers are sometimes not sure whether they are being offered ‘triple-play’ or ‘triple-pay’ services…

And no wonder alternative broadband services such as 3G/HSPA mobile, WiMAX and other wireless offerings have built up a market share of over 50% in terms of subscriber numbers. However, at the same time Google has noted that only one sixth of all searches in South Africa come from mobile devices. Prices for mobile broadband services have also come down, although not by as much, but they can be more economical than ADSL for low usage volumes.

Further ADSL price reductions can be expected when the unbundling of the local loop (ULL, or LLU) is finally implemented in late 2011, following several delays. Additional international cables such as the East African Submarine Cable System (EASSY) and the West African Cable System (WACS) will further improve the availability and cost of international fibre bandwidth from 2010 and 2011, respectively – probably just missing the FIFA World Cup hosted by South Africa in June this year.

IIR’s 5^th Annual Broadband Summit running in Johannesburg from March 29 provides insight into the latest fibre availability, technology developments as well as insights into what the major players in South Africa are preparing for in order to take their services to the next level. Now that there is more fibre, the issues remain around spectrum availability, ICASA initiatives, increases in competition as well as business and service innovation.

For more information on the Summit see – http://iir-conferences.co.za/broadband/

For more information on BuddeComm research see –

South Africa – Mobile Market – Overview & Statistics

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 10:00 am and is filed under News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.