MWeb dropped a bombshell on the SA Internet industry on Thursday morning when it announced it was slashing the cost of fixed-line broadband and introducing uncapped offerings starting at just R219/month. The move, which brings SA more in line with Internet prices in other markets, could spark a price war among Internet service providers in the next few months.
MWeb, part of media group Naspers, has thrown down the gauntlet to its rivals in the Internet service provider market, slashing the price of fixed-line broadband, in some cases to as much as 40% below its rivals.
The company will offer uncapped ADSL data starting at R219/month for a shaped, 384Kbit/s service; a shaped 4Mbit/s uncapped [...]
Internet service providers (ISPs) could get “hurt” as the decline in bandwidth prices in SA gathers steam.
The fall in prices, already evident in the market for fixed-line broadband, will result in lower revenue for ISPs and put pressure on their profit margins.
That’s the view of Keith Matthews (pictured), GM for sub-Saharan Africa at BT Global [...]
The second high-capacity fibre-optic submarine cable system along Africa’s east coast will be brought ashore at Mtunzini, north of Durban, this weekend. The East African Submarine System (Eassy) will join Seacom in providing connectivity to countries in East Africa when it goes live in July.
Eassy, whose investors include MTN, Telkom and Vodacom, will provide connectivity [...]
High-capacity undersea cables and long-awaited cheap, reliable and fast broadband connectivity bring with them some challenges. For a long time, all technology planning in business in SA has been geared towards operating in a bandwidth-constrained economy. Not all businesses are in a position to take advantage
The number of Internet users in SA is growing strongly for the first time in years, new research from World Wide Worx has shown, as a result of a more liberalised and competitive market.
SA now has more than 5m Internet users, finally breaking through the 10% mark in Internet penetration for the country, says World [...]
The East African Submarine System (Eassy), a 1,4Tbit/s sub-sea cable along Africa’s east coast, is on track to go live in eight months’ time, according to Neotel, one of the investors in the project.
Eassy is an operator-led initiative to build a cable system along a similar but shorter route to the Seacom cable, which recently [...]
Telecommunications group Altech has acquired 5Gbit/s of capacity in the Seacom undersea cable system to provide bandwidth to the markets in which it operates in East Africa. At the same time, Seacom has acquired capacity in Altech’s fibre infrastructure in the region.
Altech has bought two STM-16s — a technical term for a quantity of bandwidth [...]
The panel this week is made up of Simon Dingle, Gartner analyst Will Hahn, Duncan McLeod, Ivo Vegter, Brett Haggard and Toby Shapshak. We discuss mobility, Seacom, Telkom, and much more
