Massive 10Mbps uncapped ADSL price cut

Axxess has slashed the price of its 10Mbps uncapped ADSL product from the usual R1,096 per month to R496 per month.

In a surprise move, Axxess launched its “one price fits all” uncapped ADSL service, which has the same price (R496) for 4Mbps, 5Mbps, 6Mbps, 8Mbps and 10Mbps speeds.

Axxess’ new “one price fits all” uncapped ADSL accounts are available immediately on a month-to-month basis.

According to the Axxess website, this pricing is valid until 31 October 2012, but it may be extended “due to demand”.

This announcement comes only hours after Afrihost announced that it has cut the price of its 10Mbps uncapped ADSL product from the previous R997 to R797 per month.

LTE spectrum for SA: SNAFU

Following her proposal to establish a Spectrum Management Agency in South Africa, Minister of Communications Dina Pule isn’t revealing how she’s going to address the assignment of precious spectrum.

Cellular network operators in South Africa are ready for Long Term Evolution (LTE), a high speed mobile broadband technology, but they have all expressed a dire need for additional spectrum to roll out LTE.

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) was to assign spectrum ideal for the use of LTE, but withdrew its invitation to apply (ITA) pending a “policy direction” from the Minister of Communications.

The Minister previously told journalists during a press briefing at the DoC’s ICT Policy Colloquium held during April 2012 that, “immediately after analysing the public’s inputs… somewhere around May [2012]” they would be able to direct ICASA on the matter.

Dina Pule

However, on 8 May 2012 the Minister told the parliamentary portfolio committee on communications that they should commit to finalising the policy direction for high-demand spectrum by the end of the financial year.

Government’s financial year ends on 31 March 2013, which is a far cry from the previous target of May 2012 indicated by Pule.

In the meantime, the Minister has gazetted the Electronic Communications Amendment Bill for public comment. The period during which comments on the bill may be made, closed on 17 August 2012.

As it stands now, the bill requires the establishment of a Spectrum Management Agency, which is expected to represent the Minister’s role in spectrum management issues.

However, Dominic Cull, a telecommunications lawyer at Ellipsis Regulatory Solutions that specialises in regulatory issues in electronic communications law, previously explained that the Minister would have to bring a separate piece of legislation designed to create such an agency.

Where does that leave the high-demand frequency spectrum ICASA had issued (and retracted) their ITA for? Will the Ministry and Department of Communications still issue a policy direction within the current financial year, or will it wait until the Spectrum Management Agency is established?

Repeated attempts to get answers to these questions from the Minister have been met with promises, but delivered only silence.

Forging ahead in spite of spectrum limitations

Kanagaratnam Lambotharan

MTN recently revealed its plans to launch commercial LTE services on refarmed spectrum during Q4 2012.

The network ran an LTE pilot on 10MHz of refarmed 1,800MHz spectrum on approximately 200 sites, MTN SA chief technology officer, Kanagaratnam Lambotharan, told MyBroadband.

“MTN is exploring the possibility of switching on commercial LTE network within 2012, and has identified 3 key urban cities to roll out the network. Pricing has not been finalised yet,” Lambotharan said.

This firm statement of intent from MTN is yet another case of South Africa’s telecommunications industry working in spite of government’s involvement, rather than because of it.

If government, the Minister, and the Department of Communications are serious about their “broadband for all by 2020” plans, it’s time for them to stop trying to participate in the industry, and govern it instead of talking about governing it.

Isn’t that, after all, what governments are for?

Technical note: The spectrum in question is in the 2.6GHz band and the 800MHz “digital dividend” band. The 800MHz spectrum will only become available once South Africa’s migration from analogue to digital TV broadcasting is complete.

A must-have app for iPhone, iPad or Android

There’s a single smartphone app that will save you a lot of money, especially if you’re on a pricey contract with a limited data bundle.

Onavo Extend could save you as much as 80% on your data bill. It’s available for iPhone, iPad (Onavo in App Store), and (from earlier this year) certain Android devices on version 4.0/ice Cream Sandwich (Onavo in Google Play).

And it’s free.

(Many readers will have this app already. It’s the automatic suggestion on tons of websites of which app to install when you get an iPhone. If you have it, you’ve already saving money and don’t need to read on).

Onavo Extend relies on data compression technology between the connection to your mobile network and the internet (or apps). The major saving comes through far better compression of images on the web and within apps.

The Opera Mini browser for mobile phones works in a similar way, but with the link to the compression layer built into the app. BlackBerry devices use a proprietary global APN to achieve similar compression and efficiency.

Onavo installs a configuration profile to iOS devices (which includes your network’s original APN settings, with some modifications). The app walks you through the whole install process.

Onavo

But is it safe? The type of data moving through Onavo’s servers is the exact same as that routing through your mobile operator’s network. “Onavo Extend does not store any content of the data, and cannot read encrypted SSL (HTTPS) traffic.”

Any encrypted or secure data is inaccessible to Onavo. So, sessions on my FNB Banking App aren’t routed through its servers (fine print about the service and exactly what is routed where is available here).

In the past fortnight, I’ve saved 34% of my total data usage. Some of the savings per app:

• 70% on Maps
• 62% on Instagram
• 43% on Mobile Safari (web)
• 35% on Tweetbot

These are significant numbers, especially considering that I regularly use around 1GB of mobile data in a month. Across the two week period, I’ve saved 110MB of a total of 325MB (34%), which is nothing short of impressive.

Onavo data savings

Practically, if you’re rationing yourself down to 500MB (or even 250MB!) per month, you’re going to be able to use twice as much data or reduce your bundle size.

It doesn’t work while you’re connected on a Wi-Fi network (the assumption is you don’t need to, even though these connections are also pricey in South Africa!). While Onavo is probably not that popular on iPads overseas, given the widespread availability of (mostly free) Wi-Fi networks, it’s invaluable in this market.

For now, the apps are free, although Onavo cautions that “in the future, some apps may come at a cost”. At a low price, it’ll be worth paying for.

It’s launched a second app for Android (supports most versions from 2.2 upwards) called Onavo Count. This app is a simple monitor which will alert you to the apps which hog data (you can restrict these to Wi-Fi only, for example).

Expect additional innovation from Onavo around these kinds of apps/features which provide additional insight into and control over your usage.

Get the app. It’s that simple.

Telkom ADSL pricing: What you will pay from August

Telkom unveiled their new tariffs recently, which included a price increase on all of Telkom’s ADSL access services. Telkom is also increasing the price of its analogue line rental which forms part of any ADSL service.

The monthly rental fees on Telkom’s DSL products will increase as follows: Fast DSL will increase to R165.00; Faster DSL will increase to R299.00 and Fastest DSL will increase to R425.00.

Postpaid residential and business line rental increase by 6%. The installation charges including postpaid, PrepaidFone, ISDN, and DSL services will also increase by 6%.

However, the monthly rental fees on Telkom’s Do Broadband bundles remain unchanged.

This means that all ADSL customers can expect to receive a higher ADSL bill from Telkom, irrespective which ADSL service they use.

The following table provides an overview of the old and new ADSL rates from Telkom.

Telkom Business boosts uncapped ADSL value

Telkom Business announced today (22 June 2012) that its subscribers will get greater value on their uncapped offerings with significant price adjustments to the internet product portfolio.

South African Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) can look forward to bandwidth increases on the entry-level offerings, and up to 27% reduction in prices on the higher-end usage offerings.

Telkom Business ADSL subscribers on entry level 384kbps and 1024kbps uncapped Internet usage products will be upgraded to 1024kbps and 2048kbps uncapped Internet respectively at no additional cost.

The new prices on usage products and value bundles are effective immediately while speed upgrades will commence automatically from 24 August 2012.

“Telkom Business remains committed to enabling small and medium business customers with high quality internet services. Today, we have not only increased value but we have also slashed prices,” said Thami Magazi, Managing Executive: SME Services.

“Over the last six months, we’ve recorded a 105% increase in internet usage from our retail customers over Telkom Internet. This includes increased activity by small and medium enterprises customers who are integrating high speed Internet into their daily operations.”

Magazi suggested that the increase in fixed bandwidth was enabled by the introduction of high quality uncapped Internet last year which has facilitated the uptake of more sophisticated business applications such as collaborative e-mail, document sharing and web-hosting or cloud storage tools.

These product updates follow the recent announcement by the company on the upgrade of entry-level ADSL speeds to enable new generation consumer content and business applications in a more cost effective manner.

Steve Lewis, Managing Executive of Product House said “based on our customers’ responses, we are improving our uncapped offerings while remaining responsible to the core network products through which we deliver our customer traffic.”

“We are passing on benefits of improved bandwidth pricing and increased value in entry level products into our uncapped usage products,” Lewis added.

New pricing

Telkom’s shaped uncapped offerings have been re-priced as follows:

Value and pricing on TBiz Uncapped Bundles have been adjusted as follows:

* To be upgraded automatically from 24 August 2012 to higher speeds