'Cheaper to fly than use ADSL in SA

by Lyse Comins (thanks to Rowan for providing this piece!)

If you don't eat or stay over, you could fly to HongKong and download 100 gigabytes of data from theInternet, fly back to South Africa and pay less than if you were to download that amount of information using Telkom's ADSL service. Even taking into account the duration of the returnflight, you could be back in South Africa days before you could complete the download here.

This is according to Durban software developer StuartGunter, who has posted on an Internet forum the findings of an investigation that show just howinternationally uncompetitive Telkom's ADSL service is compared to the rest of the world. The findings were posted on the website myadsl.co.za, an informal online community that acts as a watchdogof Internet access services in South Africa."

A couple of guys at work always found ADSLparticularly expensive, especially with people having family overseas who can access the Internet at suchcheap prices," Gunter said. He said he had thought that it would probably becheaper to fly to Hong Kong to download data off theInternet than it would be to use Telkom's services. Hethen did his maths and posted the findings.

Gunter compared the time and cost involved to download100 gigabytes of data over Telkom's fastest ADSL service (one megabyte per second) with the time and cost it would take to fly to Hong Kong, visit anInternet cafe, download 100 gigabytes of data at their fastest speed (one gigabyte per second) and fly backto South Africa.The result was that it would be faster and cheaper to download the information in Hong Kong, including thecost of air fare.

In just 13 minutes for a cost of R17,43 (HK$20) the data could be downloaded in Hong Kong compared to adownload time of 9,5 days and a cost of R9 146 for 34 of Telkom's three gigabyte accounts - to which ADSLline rental at R680 and residential voice line rental at R92,28 must still be added.Gunter said the grand total using Telkom's services amounted to R9 918,28, compared to the cost in HongKong - including air travel and Internet cafe use atR7 959,43 - making the technologically advanced Asiancountry R1 958,85 cheaper.

Telkom's Group Corporate Communications Executive,Lulu Letlape, was not available to comment on thewebsite posting at the time of going to print.However, a spokesperson distanced Telkom from thecharges levied for ADSL services, saying that Internetservice providers were responsible for setting chargesfor end use.

She declined to disclose Telkom's cost price toInternet service providers under its new billingsystem. The new per gigabyte process, as opposed to packagedbilling, came into effect on November 1 and has attracted widespread criticism from consumers that ithas drastically inflated the cost of ADSL Internetaccess.