The truth about wireless broadband

While the telecoms market is awash with news of regulatory issues, new technology and a mountain of advertising, the most important message for the consumer has been obscured - that wireless broadband Internet is generally the cheapest connectivity option on the market.

Winston Smith, Sentech Portfolio Manager: Broadband Wireless, says of the three choices of connectivity (dial-up, wireless and ADSL), wireless broadband Internet access provides the best service at the cheapest price for the average consumer.

"Consumers need to realise that dial-up is dead. It`s just too expensive and the speed of connectivity is very slow. Consumers need to look to faster, cheaper options in the market. ADSL is significantly more expensive for consumers who don`t require large amounts of bandwidth.

"Consumers therefore need to look at wireless broadband Internet access, which allows consumers to simply pay for what they use. A pay-per-use scenario saves the average consumer in the region of R200 a month," he says.

Consumers need to understand that dial-up is no longer a viable option and that the price charged by the Internet service provider is not the real cost of using dial-up.

"The average dial-up connection costs R80 a month. Add to that the rental costs of R100 a month. Consumers who use a landline for Internet access only therefore pay R180 a month before they even connect to the Internet. In addition, they pay for the time they are connected to the Internet, even if they are not downloading anything," Smith says.

Many consumers therefore find that due to the high cost per minute for online charges, using a dial-up for a minimum of 20 minutes per day, pushes their phone bill to more than R200 per month, making their effective Internet access bill a minimum of R400. Any additional usage spent online increases this monthly cost.

Added to the issue of price, broadband (fixed-line or wireless) provides a much faster connection, which makes the experience far more usable and the connection is permanent. E-mails can therefore be pushed to the user directly instead of them having to dial-up to retrieve them.

There are two main differences between wireless broadband and ADSL, says Smith. Firstly, wireless broadband has the obvious advantage of giving mobility/portability to consumers. However, from a cost perspective, Smith says a wireless broadband service provides consumers to choose a smaller data package and pay for additional data if needed, unlike ADSL, which requires consumers to take a gigabyte (GB) package or more and has hidden costs.

"Examining the pricing of the major ADSL providers, consumers will find that they will pay a Telkom line rental fee of R100, an ADSL line rental fee of R245, and between R100 and R150 on an entry-level bandwidth package of 1GB. This means consumers will actually pay a minimum of R500 on average a month for an ADSL service," Smith says.

However, even consumers who send e-mails every day with average-sized attachments and browse at a couple of Web pages a day will only use about half a GB of data or even less per month, Smith says. (Should they be downloading content like music, then their usage will obviously increase dramatically.)

"Consumers and businessmen working in a small/home office environment probably won`t need a GB of data. The MyWireless Flexi package with 200 megabytes (MB) or 500MB of data would suffice, costing them R299 or R399 respectively, including the wireless modem. This means an average saving of around R200 ever month depending on usage," Smith says.

It is therefore a simple message to the consumer: wireless broadband services are the cheapest, fastest connection for the average Internet user. Consumers need to look hard at a connectivity package that suits them and not be swayed by all the marketing material that is pushed at them, Smith concludes.