DSL providers get a bloody nose from Afrihost

News of Afrihost’s special offer has spread like wildfire and for good reason. Afrihost is offering ADSL connectivity for a low R29 per GB which is probably the lowest price in South Africa at the moment.

I am currently an Axxess customer and I just called Axxess to find out if they have any price drops planned. The sales person I spoke to said I should keep an eye on their website over the next 2 months or so because they are “looking into” reducing their prices. I pointed out to her that Axxess is going to lose a bunch of customers because Afrihost’s special offer is only valid for a limited time period. She asked me if I am a customer and I said I am an Axxess customer but I use a fortune of data (35GB this month so far) and it is costing me a bomb. She basically just told me to keep an eye on the site.

Being the lawyer I am I just called Afrihost and asked for the fine print for their ADSL offering. They don’t seem to have any but I did find out the following:

• if you have exceeded your cap you will be directed to the Afrihost control panel to top up your bandwidth;
• if you ever want to cancel your account you will have to give Afrihost 1 month’s notice (I suspect other providers like Axxess have the same notice requirement so bear this in mind if you want to leave your current provider for Afrihost); and
• the special offer was supposed to end today but the call centre guys have been told to keep selling the cheaper packages for the time being.

There is no doubt the Afrihost offer will attract a number of new customers. I am seriously tempted by the 50GB package at R1 450. It is cheaper than my bandwidth at Axxess is costing me for a lot less and given my current usage, 50GB is practically uncapped for me. Another big plus is that Afrihost’s ADSL allows for 5 concurrent connections and if I understand that correctly, that means my family can also use my account for their DSL needs. That translates into an even lower cost all around.

The Afrihost guys seem to be pretty confident that they have shaken up the local ADSL industry and they probably have. It remains to be seen what the post-special offer price will be although I doubt very much it will be much more than around R49 per GB which is what G-Connect is charging for ADSL on the high end.

What is clear is that pricing ADSL at anything more than R59 per GB for simple ADSL is foolish and we should see other providers drop their pricing sooner rather than later. Either that or those providers will start to fall away as serious competitors.

That just leaves you with one question. Have you signed up with Afrihost yet? I’ll be exiting the Axxess offramp shortly after about 2 years as an Axxess customer.