This heading sounds pretty good right? South Africa is leading Africa's economy... Well it is actually quite an embarrassing heading, if we had to compare the infrastructure and economic state of South Africa to the rest of the countries in Africa, one can see that there is a huge difference.
One would expect data prices to be lower in South Africa than in other countries because the economy is more developed and most of the infrastructure is already in place.
Sadly this is not so.
Now to put things even worse, many people within South Africa can not get a fiber line, but this is a good things are fiber costs even more, as it is faster.
Crazy price right?
Well after being robbed by your service provider, you get uncapped ADSL at 4mbps at R599 (what I currently run on). Funny thing is I get 1.23mbps download speed to Johannasburg (36km away) and 0.98mbps download speed to Cape town... So I do not get what I pay for... but that is not the worst. After downloading about 75G's of data, they throttle your speed to the point where it takes 5min to open a webpage...
SO MUCH FOR UNCAPPED!!!!
This is how I feel most days on steemit with my wonderful internet.
I once made the mistake of calling Telkom about how slow the internet is... this was me, call still on hold...
The fun and joys of living in South Africa!.Love the GIF
South Africa is indeed blessed!
I am using google chrome on PC on steemit.com and I am unable to view your image
Same here. @greenrun. I can't view, @dragonslayer109's images. Anyway, the message of the post is clear. There is urgent need to address the issue of cost of internet in Nigeria and Africa. Personally, I would be very frustrated, if I cannot access unlimited internet with good speed & moderate price that I am now used to.
When I travelled to Durban for the Christmas holiday of 2013/2014,I enjoyed free wifi in my uncle's house. Of course, my uncle pays all the bills.
Hopefully, very soon all these challenges with data in Africa would be addressed.
Edited
@maryfavour for @redfishpillar.
Should be sorted now.
@maryfavour I was thinking it was only me, didn't know its general. Good afternoon, it's a sunny day here.
@greenrun. I'm glad that @dragonslayer109 has sorted out the issue of images that were not showing.
I did a little analysis from the table above - Cheapest 1GB prepaid data prices in 6 large African markets (USD). What was my discovery? It's evident that from Q1 2016 to Q2 2017, there was about 61%, 61%, 41%, 39% reduction in cost for data subscription in Egypt (North Africa), Tanzania (East Africa), Ghana & Nigeria (West Africa) respectively. There was no significant reduction in data cost in Kenya (East Africa). Clearly, South Africa's data cost is increasing. In fact, data cost increased by about 20% from the data presented by @dragonslayer109 in the post.
@maryfavour for @redfishpillar.
In addition to this extravagant charges, the speed still crawls-chug a lug internet. oooooh Africa!
I see, it has to do with busy.org, when I add images there it always turns out like this. Not sure why and how I can change it, but I will edit it soon.
Busy.org seems to have some problems regarding uploading pictures.
Ok. I think it may be compatibility issues.
Same here.. I can't see your pics @dragonslayer109
Images should be sorted now
@dragonslayer109 yeah, image is ok now. Thanks
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Hi @dragonslayer109 , have got to know new things about Africa. I understand the pain when your internet speed sucks even after paying huge money. Here in India,we pay 500 rupees (110 Rands) per month and still get high browsing speeds till 150 GB data limit, after which the speed is fair enough to watch videos. But this high internet costs in South Africa is totally unexpected and hope they come down in the near future as it also has an indirect relation to the country's economy. After all internet is the basic need today.
i up voted you sir i am new on steemit please help me in the form of upvoted & follow me please your one vote give me a way to survive on steemitt i hope you follow me & up voted me i always upvoted you & follow you thanks & your post is so good follow ,me @iwant
crazy things that happen and that should not ... the service companies in general do this kind of thing not only in your country ... Argentina is another example of what you said.
I'm also using how I see you are doing busy.org to make my post ... it's very good ... I need a few whales that follow me so that that vote is bigger and grow faster in steemit...really very good
I read on MyBroadband about Rain planning to start selling data, more competition the better. Cell C also plans to reduce the data packages, also prepaid packages to compete with MTN, Vodacom and Telkom.
Was just about to comment that a change is coming and it is rain.co.za
Somobody will lower price but only after the market saturate.
hey steemit friend
how are you today
amazing funny post
Good Post, That is why all the Major Mobile Phone Companies are trying to get into SA , Nowhere else are People stupid enough to pay the Prices we do! Our Bank Charges here are also extremely high, We have to fill in FICA info to prove we are not terrorists , to the best of my Knowledge most of those type of organisation's keep their loot here?
And we haven't even started talking about the tax we pay and all the government charges on fuel and other things. Oh how I love South Africa.
Hi. @dragonslayer109, data prices in africa generally is a myth. A tragic tale in SA for example a few of my xhosa friends are actually complaining of vodacom and their high rates.
One cant buy tangible data for up to ten rand, i feel your pain buddy, nice awareness.
How much is R599 in USD? I need a very fast internet. Most internet service providers have a very slow connection here.
@dragonslayer109 knows best the exchange rate in SA. I think it's R599 is about $40.
Fourty ($40) is quite expensive to spend on data for the month, in my opinion. When one of my younger brothers was taking some online courses at the National Open University, my parents were paying 10,000 NGN (about 30 USD)/month for unlimited data plan for him using smile network. Unfortunately, smile unlimited lite plan is only available in 8 Nigeria cities
@maryfavour.
@maryfavour I wish Smile could extend their services to other part of Nigeria. Their unlimited package appears to be the cheapest.
That is also my wish, @greenrun that smile services be extended to all 36 state capitals, at least, not just 8. That would really make Nigerians smile.
Apparently, it is the cheapest. My younger brother, Solomon, has confirmed that smile service is good too. When was in Benin, Solo and I used to communicate via skype voice calls using that smyle network.
image source:google
I wonder when they'd finish this project. All I want is fast cheap Internet.
It is around $40
That is almost twice the cost here. Wow.
Thanks for your good news and info
Greeting from North africa exactly Morocco , South Africa has an awesome evolution they are the african leader , Morocco try also to do a great job in Africa
Looks like every telco does data throttling, they have a term inserted in small prints in their TOS with this sneaky clause, fair usage. You'd agree with me that fair is a subjective term. So they should just state is not uncapped but capped.
Hey @dragonslayer being from South Africa I completely understand how you feel about internet prices. I suggest using axxess as your ISP I'm currently paying R400 for 4mbps and they very rarely throttle. On average my internet speed is 3mbps.
Anyway, nice to see more South Africans on steemit!
Wow I would kill for your internet speed :D
LOL!
People from other countries will think we're crazy to kill for 4mbps, but truly South Africans have killed for less xD
@dragonslayer I can't believe the prices mentioned here. I'm from Albania, a small country in Europe. I pay around 10 euros/month for 10 mbps unlimited data + 75 TV channels .
I seriously feel your pain and am laughing here reading this. We are in a losing battle ourselves trying to get our fibre issues resolved. Loved the last gif - that is what my husband does daily due to the useless ADSL - LOL!!!
Awesome post...
I'm also like this most of the time
@dragonslayer it is weird, it is very expensive
data is most important in this age
Hahaha: The images almost made me throw my Pc away too, just like the guy did.
Here in Nigeria, The problem is more of electricity
I feel for you. And they still advertise as if we have "lightning speed" at competitive prices
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