MTN unveils ‘uncapped’ 3G broadband

Advertising hoarding outside MTN's head office in Johannesburg

Mobile operator MTN SA will introduce what it describes as an “uncapped” 3G broadband product from 1 June. The service will be subject to a fair usage agreement, the company has said, and will only be available on a 24-month contract.

The uncapped contract is available for R749/month. However, strict fair-usage rules apply to the service. Once subscribers have used 3GB of data, the service will be restricted to a download speed of 128kbit/s. Before the threshold is reached, downloads are available at full speed, or up to a theoretical 14,4Mbit/s in 3G coverage areas.

MTN has also announced an “uncapped” product for R1 999/month, which includes 10GB of data at full speed, which will then be throttled down to 128kbit/s once that threshold has been reached.

In a recent interview with TechCentral, Vodacom Group CEO Pieter Uys suggested that providing uncapped broadband was not feasible for the operator. He said Vodacom had no plans to follow fixed-line broadband providers by offering uncapped products.

Uys said Vodacom would only be able to consider this if it was given more radio frequency spectrum by industry regulator, the Independent Communications Authority of SA.

MTN’s surprise announcement on Tuesday follows its recent decision to cut 3G data prices. It cut out-of-bundle data rates by as much as 84% and introduced an unlimited per-day bundle that could prove popular among foreign tourists visiting the country.

It introduced a bundle, at R50/day, that gives mobile users unlimited access to MTN’s data network. That product is also subject to a fair-use policy — once a user consumes more than 150MB, the service is throttled to 128kbit/s.

At the same time, MTN launched a 90-minute data bundle at R25. The speed is limited to 128kbit/s and is valid for 30 days, with an additional 30-day carryover for unused data.

In a surprise move, MTN has also announced plans on Tuesday to roll out 3G services at 900MHz, the first operator in SA to do so. It is already running a trial, it says. The move follows Cell C’s recent announcement that it would build an evolved high-speed packet access, or 3G HSPA+, network at 900MHz.

The lower frequency makes it easier to provide broadband services affordably in rural areas and makes 3G coverage better in urban areas.

Until now, SA’s two 3G operators, Vodacom and MTN, have only offered wireless broadband at 2,1GHz. The higher frequency does not penetrate buildings as easily as 900MHz signals.

MTN says SA will be the second country in Africa to provide 3G at 900MHz, after Ghana. — Duncan McLeod, TechCentral

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http://www.thinkingoutloud.co.za Garth Michel

Oh thank god. Finally the mobile operators come to the table.
Greg

Not an amazing deal, but it’s a start! There’s now such a thing as uncapped 3G. Let the bunfight begin!
http://www.prophecy.co.za Paul Johnston

Fail MTN Basically the exact same as Vodacom’s current service, except a little more expensive and with 128kbps available after the cap is reached.

Link to Vodacom pricing: http://bit.ly/bGz4Qp
Mark

Utter crud.
Smoke and mirrors, uncapped is merely a technicality here.
Try browsing the internet at 128kbit/s, it sucks!
Your move Vodacom!
http://www.thinkingoutloud.co.za Garth Michel

This is the same as UK ‘uncapped’. As a mobile phone user, its doubtful you’ll be hitting that 3gb cap, I can’t see SA getting something the UK mobile users don’t even get. Okay the UK 3GB cap is a soft limit, they hard don’t cap people, unless you start abusing the cap month after month. But its a great start for SA.

And Paul, there’s a big difference here. With Vodacom, once you hit your cap, they start charging you. With MTN, you can still browse, albeit at slower speeds. They don’t charge you OOB rates. You can of course top up, but you don’t need to.
Greg

@Paul They’re giving 128k soft-cap for R160 on the 3gig and free (well, R10) on the 10gig account. For comparison, this bolt-on costs R249 on iBurst. Sure, they’re all overpriced, but it’s a step forward, not backwards. What’s wrong with South Africans that they’re so unable to accept intermediary steps in price/service evolution? Just because we started later and are behind a lot of the world, doesn’t mean we can’t just skip the price wars and have the service that these other places have, without going through what they did.

So I say: Win MTN. But we need CellC/Vodacom to bring more win.
http://www.prophecy.co.za Paul Johnston

@Greg – fair enough, it is an improvement. I guess I’m unhappy with them calling it “uncapped”, when it’s not really uncapped whatsoever. To me, a 128kbps connection is essentially equivalent to being capped.

I wonder who this is aimed at? For the average user, getting a pre-paid sim and loading data bundles onto it is still the cheapest, most effective approach.
http://bblounge.co.za Andrew

@Greg: The problem is that the price wars rarely (if ever) happen here. There are African countries that started a lot later in the game and already have true uncapped, not the crud that is falsely advertised here as uncapped. What is long with South Africans is that everybody expects us to jump for joy every time a small scrap falls off the table. As long as you keep thinking like an African you’ll be known as an African, sorry but don’t count me in.

If MTN wants me on board they would have to offer REAL uncapped and I’ll consider it a couple times a year. It would have to be less than R350 if I were to use it every month. Till then I’ll stay with Vodacom.
Pingback: fring mobile voip south africa » Blog Archive » MTN looks at uncapped 3G data
Chris

This is just false advertising. If you say uncapped, it must be uncapped, end of story; not oh sorry, you can download at 14mbit/s but only for so long. 128 is capped in my book. Remember the days of the dialup modem? Why would I want to go back to the bad old days? I’m not falling for this MTN, sorry!
Zeee

@All

The service is uncapped, just because you change the speed does not mean the user cant access the internet.

PS 128 is a standard ISDN line well 2 lines and you can still log onto websites.

The plus here is Telkom is xxxxx well let’s leave it there, Telkom do not focus on their fixed line infrastructure but Vodacom, MTN and Cell C do. This is a good thing for South Africa. Even more important as the price for data comes down the operators will be more and more affected by VOIP service which will also at some point start affecting their call pricing. So all in all this is a good thing for SA

I cant wait untill I can tell Telkom to take a hike and not worry about using their local lines or exchanges
Deon

So it’s more like “MTN unveils ‘threshold based throttled’ 3G broadband” then.
Clive

Ghee I find it very surprising that most of you worry about the 14MB/s and 128K when most of the times our networks aren’t even capable of connecting at 56K – I personally believe the MO’s need to get the basics right and deliver “true” broadband not this intermittent rubbish and at reasonable prices.
Louis

Good luck getting to the 3GB mark, I have a 2GB account with them and hardly get speeds better than a dial-up connection anywhere in the JHB area, so it’s impossible for me to even use that amount of data.
Anonymous Coward

another capped-uncapped offering a la AfriHost.

At least it’s a good start.
Anonymous Coward

Was unable to post from home – think my afrihost public IP might be blocked somehow. Stupid spammers.
Greg

To the people moaning about the soft-cap, you have to get real… the only problem with this offering is the price, which should creep down like the recent ADSL uncapped offerings. For comparison – the usual comparation with the US market, they have 5gig caps on all their “uncapped” offerings, and when you hit that you pay a rate greater than our OOB rates.

I want cheaper broadband as much as everyone else, but we can’t start acting like mybb forum members and expecting to have the cheapest best internet in the world overnight. It’s a process, which is happening. Pieter Uys is quoted in a previous TC article as claiming that technically Vodacom can’t do uncapped as they don’t have the spectrum for it, yet they have exactly the same as MTN according to ICASA. Will be interesting to see how he backpeddles and weasels out of this one.

@Clive that seems to be the norm with mobile networks, people moan globally – my mate was just in US, and the thing that surprised him most was how horrible the internet was; he had ADSL at the guest house he was staying at in Miami, and it was so bad he bought a 3G card for his notebook, which wasn’t much better. He said he was in the strange position of pining for his uncapped mweb bandwidth back in darkest africa. It might have been an isolated incident, but it was a random sample, much as moaning ZA forumites are – but still, I can’t remember the last time anyone ever looked forward to using our internet We’re definately moving in the right direction. Just need to step on the accelerator!
http://www.naeem.co.za naeem

its a good start.

i’m in egypt at present, i prepaid for a 6 month setup.
3.75g usb modem with built in micro sd slot + uncapped (6gig fair usage)
works out to about R400 to R450/month. usual stuff of 128k speeds after 6gigs.
H@mst3r

I fully agree with whoever said that it is effectively capped. It’s a false economy! We demand true uncapped! We would go for Telkom adsl, but, oh, wait. We don’t have any cables! They’re nicked as soon as they’re put up! So **** you Mtn, vodacom, and Telkom! You’re all **** offs! How is a business supposed to run at 128 snails per second? We should boycott the service!
http://www.iiit.co.za IIIT

The REAL drawback of this is the 24 month contract. Why can’t they offer it on a month-to-month basis?? When prices are dropping so drastically, why on Earth whould I sign a 24 month contract? I call it telecoms suicide.

Also, does anybody else here not see the irony in advertising 14.4mbps and 21mbps speeds, and then slapping on a 0.128mbps throttle??? They couldn’t even make it past the 0.5mpbs, nevermind reaching 1.0, yet they have the audacity to scream about 14.4 and 21mbps speeds. Idiots!

Vodacom, MTN, PLEASE STOP with all this crap of 14.4mbps, 21mbps, uncapped, in-bundle, out-of-bundle. Just give us simple capped data at a good price, exactly like Afrihost did. You could sell it at R100 a GB, and everyone will love you for it. Don’t limit my speed, don’t force me to buy 3GB or 5GB to get this rate, don’t force me to buy uncapped to get this rate. Just make it simple. R100 per GB. No rollover. Topup at R100 per GB when I want. Use it anytime. No contracts. No BS.

Is that too frikkin hard for you dimwits in upper management to understand?
Greg

@IIIT totally agree re: 24 month thing. I think there’s a pricewar coming that MTN knows they’re going to lose and want to tie customers in ASAP.

Let’s hope that the mobile operators put up a better fight against MTN than the ISPs did against Mweb. The non-mweb uncapped offerings are massively substandard compared to Mweb. But I think the mobile operators are hungrier and quicker to adapt than the likes of Internet Solutions and Telkom.
Rick

this is actually so unethical.

The general man on the street don’t know that 128Kb/s is only slightly faster than a dial-up modem. Then they con them into a 2 year contract for this crappy service.

shame on you MTN… chancers
Riple

I personally think most people are missing the point; this is not aimed at the man on the street but rather business and people on the move ‘Mobile’

As a start I agree the price is not ideal but it will only drop as time goes by.

Anyone thinking this is a replacement for adsl is sadly mistaken

The wireless infrastructure is not the same as copper cable or as cheap to maintain.
Ian

Why can’t we first get decent pricing for capped mobile broadband before moving to uncapped? A 3gig bundle with a 3g modem is about R165 in the UK.
http://www.discoveryscam.com Z Zing

FAIR USAGE AGREEMENT allows MTN not to be legally accused of misinforming the consumer. The reality of the situation is that this is NOT broadband nor will it be and Cell C’s “attempt” at competing is a crock at best.

I mean come on … when you do thieves stop being thieves (if inter-connect fee bilking of consumers wasn’t enough for people to wake up)
Thakier

IS THIS SOME KIND OF SICK JOKE ??????? R750 for 3G internet on a TWENTY FOUR month CONTRACT ?????? and buying a normal data bundle with more megabytes is actually CHEAPER !!!!!!!!!!!! Who on earrth needs uncapped 3G that “throttles” down to 128kb ..????

ps. All 3G connections reset at 250 MB. !!!! so its not like u can even download a movie . maybe with torrent. but at 128kb you’ll take 3 months to download Toy Story 3 .
Roger

South Africa is a joke with mobile broadband and internet connections. I am looking at moving back to South Africa after being in the UK for the last 10 years – I currently get Unlimited Downlaods with a speed of 20MB for
Res

This is a daylight robbery, 24 month!! R750!!! 24mbps hmm hehehe MTN is making jokes, even if it was true about the “24mbps”, 3gb wouldn’t really last because the faster the Internet, the faster your bundle goes!!! and 128kbps is so damn slow, you will be tired of waiting for pages to load, in today’s world 3gb is nothing for Internet usage, because everything on the Internet is increasing in size because of quality! Try watching a few YouTube videos, or download a few iTunes content, and see if it will last for a week!! …the government should do something about this, Internet is an important part of education!! ……… Vodacom, MTN and etc, STOP SLOWING DOWN DEVELOPMENT!!!
Res

I meant 14mbps*** sorry on that
Res

I’ll stick with the once off budles, at least I don’t get locked to any 24m contracts and I pay when I can and when it’s really necessary, South Africa is really behind compared to other African countries…

…Posted from my iPad 3G…
http://woganmay.com/ Wogan

With the Interconnect bomb looming it’s hardly surprising that this offering is below-par.For the time being, mobile operators are gonna have to use clever marketing to get as many people on board for new products as possible, and this is no exception.

What’s always bugged me about these throttled offerings, is this: 1st of every month, caps reset, full speed for everyone. Not everyone gets the full 14mbps, though, because too many people are competing for a single tower.

Then the heavier users are throttled, and as more days go by, more people are throttled, until you’re left with a situation at the end of the month where most of your userbase is using 128kbps, and the towers go underutilized. 1st of next month, rinse and repeat.

Isn’t it possible to come up with some sort of allowance system that lets people get decent speeds every *day*, even if only for a few hundred MB before dropping down the speed rungs? You can still price and cap the same, just deliver a consistent experience throughout.

~ Wogan
Anton

What a load of crap. Paying so much for a 3GB account. What are we supposed to do with 128kbps??? All this hype about the new Seacom cable is just another BIG dissapointment for south africans. Nothing will ever change here…
http://searchpage.t35.com vince

GUYS! GUYS! GUYS! AND ALSO IF ANY GIRLS HERE
WHY DO WE MOAN ABOUT A SERVICE THAT A COMPANY PROVIDES WHEN WE CAN SEE IT IS NOT THE COMPANY AND ITS REGULATIONS AT FAULT BUT THE PEOPLE THAT WORK THERE AND THOSE TAHT REGULATE THE COMPANIES “ICASA”. ALL THE INSIDE PEOPLE
FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE ANY INSIDERS THERE, MY BEST WISH IS IF YOU GUYS CAN GET THESE PEOPLE TALKING TO THE BIG BOYS.NOTHING WORKS BETTER THAN THOSE THAT ARE CLOSE TO THE INSIDE PEOPLE.
IT MAKES THE BIGGEST NOISE!!!!.
IT’S TRIED AND TESTED THAT CONTACTS DO WORK.ALSO GATHER LISTS OF PEOPLE WHO ARE ON THE NETWORKS AND EMAIL OR INFORM THEM OF NEW AND BETTER INTERNET OFFERINGS AS SOON AS ONE POPS UP.
THE FASTER THE NEWS SPREADS,THE MORE REASON THE NETWORKS WILL HAVE TO ENSURE THEY DON’T LOSE CUSTOMERS.
http://searchpage.t35.com vince

Hi there, Something Important
Theres a lot of talk of third world countires having better products than S.A
What we have here is something sinister going on in our country.
We need to get somebody to investigate this and even get the obuds involved.
Why would a country rich in mineral wealth,excellent climate,and a growing workforce still be battling to compete with the best in the world when it comes to the internet.
This can only hamper development and growth of infrastucture and it’s people
Why are the people being taken for a ride in this country
The S**t needs to start flying
xangetsu

i’d like to piont out the obvious quickly. it wont get cheaper and the prices wont change, why? mtn cant afford to deliver cheaper mobile 3g because then they will go bankrupt. nothing ever gets cheaper.
Greg

@xangetsu You’re trolling, right?
toni harrison

dont waste your time with mtn please……especially with 3g internet and uncapped and r50 bundles…….they are all hoaxes…. you get speeds of vark 1kb per second….your pages dont load…you cant watch youtube ,,you cant vark pus do nuthin…they easy make a million rand a day stealing ppls money…..
its too complicated for mtn to go into 3g and internet…..they make it imposible to do anythin and if you wanna complain….goodluck gettin thru to some1 that knows what the vark data bundles is all about…..stick to goin to internet shops rather…
Makau

“MTN says SA will be the second country in Africa to provide 3G at 900MHz, after Ghana.”……..is not entirely true. I’m from Kenya and Safaricom (a local GSM provider) is already doing this for a year now. Average 3G speeds on USB modem is 2Mbps for about 200 rand a month.

MTN unveils ‘uncapped’ 3G broadband

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