Web Africa ADSL Trial

UPDATE: Sorry we were mistaken, you get 200GB free. Sure you won’t complain though.

It was only a little while back when Web Africa started offering 10GB shaped accounts for their ADSL trial and now they are offering free 100GB local ADSL accounts. That’s a ton of free bandwidth for you to use, even if it is only local. This is great for users who have local servers or transfer a lot of files via FTP to local sites.

You must just bear in mind that this is a trial account and with that comes the occasional downtime and the odd slow transfer rates. It does happen very rarely though with us only experiencing the odd disconnect whilst being on the 10GB trial. (I am actually using it right now to write this post).

All you have to do is visit this page and submit your email address. You will then receive your login information. Easy as that.

We just signed up now and will start using the account this evening.

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Afrihost Logo

We wrote about MWEB giving you more bandwidth for the same price and now we have just received news that Afrihost has slashed their prices for broadband.

The lastest price cut by Afrihost is really going to blow the broadband market wide open with a 1GB package starting at R29. Now these are the prices that we want to see and even though we need to go lower with both line rental prices and the price of broadband, South Africa is heading in the right direction in terms of making broadband available to a majority of the public.

Check out the packages Afrihost have to offer over here.

Update: apparently this is a marketing move so there are only a few accounts available so you better sign up quickly

MWEB Logo

MWEB has announced their new broadband pricing starting form tomorrow. In an effort to make broadband option better for South Africans they have not lowered prices but rather increased what they are offering like 1GB users who do not use MWEB as the line provider will now get 2GB for the same price of R145.

MWEB ADSL Members with a 2GB cap will now get 3GB for R219, and 3GB customers will get 5GB for R299. Customers with 6, 9 and 12GB caps will now enjoy 7.5GB, 10.5GB and 13.5GB caps respectively. MWEB’s All-Inclusive ADSL subscribers, who get their ADSL line and subscription in one account from MWEB, will also benefit. Customers with 2GB caps will now get 3GB for the same price, while 3, 6, 9 and 12GB customers will now receive 5GB, 7.5, 10.5 and 13.5GB of data each month respectively. The “Boosters” will also give you more data for the same price.

via (MyBroadband News)

SEACOM Undersea Cable

The much anticipated SEACOM cable has been completed and is now in testing phase. 18 months of excitement has come down to this last month of performance testing and configuration of the cable that will connect South Africa and east Africa to Europe, Asia and America.

The finish line is in sight which will soon allow us to reap the benefits of faster internet speeds and cheaper access prices. The CEO of SEACOM hit the nail on the head “we are one step closer to delivering on our commitment and become the first project to provide eastern and southern African retail carriers with equal and open access to inexpensive bandwidth”.

We are still unsure of how the SEACOM cable will benefit us in terms of broadband prices because in the end those prices are governed by the local ISP’s. Neotel are one of the service providers that will benefit the most (their parent company TATA own a share of the SEACOM cable) which will see their offerings either decrease in price or offer more to the end user. We are rooting for the latter as P2P access on all the packages would be great.

The major effect of the SEACOM cable will be felt by the Data Centers. We should see a sharp decrease in local hosting costs within the next month or 2 which is very exciting.

Local startups will benefit from these potential price decreases hopefully allowing South Africa and much of eastern Africa to produce numerous quality startups. The potential benefits seem endless however the actual possibilities may be limited.

(Via Nudjit)