SEACOM prices announced - some light at the end of the tunnel?
From http://mybroadband.co.za/news/Telecoms/2911.html:
Brian Herlihy, SEACOM president, said that the idea behind the cable is to offer international bandwidth at a lower price but to increase usage to ensure profits.
In a move seldom experienced in the local telecoms arena, SEACOM revealed their wholesale pricing structure and strategy to the media.
The company will have a four tiered bandwidth pricing approach where bandwidth prices for larger products, in this case STM-64, STM-16 and STM-4 connections, are sold at reduced rates to the standard STM-1 connection.
Their price for an STM-1 connection however sets a roof for the resale of bandwidth by larger bulk-bandwidth buyers thereby ensuring that smaller players receive a competitive rate.
The price for an STM-64 connection, supplying 9.6 Gbps of bandwidth, is $ 1 663 875 or R 267-00 per Mbps per month. The price per Mbps per month for a STM-1 (155 Mbps) service is R 673-00 while a STM-4 (600 Mbps) connection costs R 575-00 and a STM-16 (2.5 Gbps) service will cost R 435-00.
or in other words:
| STM-1 (155 Mbps) | R673 per Mbps per month |
| STM-4 (600 Mbps) | R575 per Mbps per month |
| STM-16 (2500 Mbps) | R435 per Mbps per month |
| STM-64 (9600 Mbps) | R267 per Mbps per month |
As I understand it, this means the cost for an always on 128 KB/s connection will cost between R267 and R673 per month, but we still don’t know the contention ratio, so I can’t speculate too much.
Certainly good news though, but I’ll wait to see the actual cost to the end consumer before I start jumping for joy. Only the bigger ISP’s will be able to afford STM-64, although, considering the current cost of bandwidth, STM-1 will be far less than the current offerings anyway.
At least we have a specific date and pricing this time. Hopefully change is more imminent now than the imminent change promised by DoC in the past…
