iBurst is offering a R200 credit to new subscribers who sign up for a 24-month ADSL, HSDPA or wireless contract if they hand over their old dial-up modems.
"SA still has a surprisingly large population of dial-up users, despite the fact that cellular, wireless and fixed-line broadband services are available in many parts of the country," says iBurst CEO Thami Mtshali.
According to iBurst, the country still has in the region of 1.2 million users who access the Internet via a dial-up connection. Mtshali says the company hopes to convert these users to broadband services through its promotion.
Mtshali says: "Reasons that these dial-up users have yet to move across to broadband include fears about the costs of broadband, technophobia in the face of the many broadband choices in the market, and a lack of understanding around the benefits of broadband."
He adds that many consumers are also unaware broadband services are available in their region.
"Dial-up users can rest assured that broadband technology is as simple to use as dial-up, but with a range of added benefits," he says. Some of the benefits he lists include lower costs, added bandwidth for large mails and attachments, photo downloads and video streaming.
The "trade in your old modem" promotion aims to drive awareness of the affordability, benefits and features of broadband Internet services to those who have yet to move away from dial-up connectivity.
"For a user processing 1GB of data in a month, broadband services offer total cost-savings of between 65% and 87% over dial-up. To illustrate, a dial-up user would spend more than 40 hours and R1 781 to download 1GB of data," says Mtshali. However, he points out that this example depends on theoretical maximums, and overheads were not considered.
The company has committed to collecting and disposing of users' old modems should they choose to sign a contract, which starts at R69 per month, including a new modem.
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