As with any rapidly growing market the number of offerings in the broadband ADSL (Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line) market has exploded with many different options now available. Its almost as bad as the mobile and banking market where consumers have so many options its hard to know if you  making the right choice.  It is usually possible though to break the numerous offering down into a small number of categories with most offering being slight variations on the central theme. This is true with ADSL as well. The four main categories of ADSL products you get are:

• Capped ADSL,
• Uncapped ADSL (also referred to as soft-capped ADSL),
• Prepaid ADSL  and,
• Local Only ADSL

Capped ADSL

Capped ADSL means that once your monthly bandwidth allocation is used up, your connectivity will drop to a speed which essentially makes it unusable for Interenet use. In most cases capped ADSL solutions have a soft and a hard cap. This means that once your data bundle is exceeded you are still allowed to surf locally with International bandwidth dropping to an unusable rate. Once you double the usage locally a hard cap kicks in and your local bandwidht drops to an unusable rate too.

This type of ADSL solution is ideal if you have a fixed monthly budget and want to make sure you don't get an ADSL bill that varies each month. In todays tough times this is quiet a popular choice, especially for parents who want to provide their children with access but avoid any damages to the monthly budget. This is especially relevant for parents whose tech-savy kids demand Interenet Access but they themselves hardly use it.

Uncapped ADSL or Soft capped ADSL

Uncapped  ADSL comes in two forms namely consumer uncapped ADSL and business uncapped ADSL.

A consumer uncapped ADSL offering means that once your purchased data bundle has been used up for the month you can continue to use the Internet but you are charged for each megabyte over your allocated bandwidth that you use. This is some-times referred to as soft capping. In this case your ADSL line speed does not impact the cost of the account as the more you use the more you pay.

There second type of uncapped ADSL is a uncapped ADSL solution at a fixed prices each month. The "catch" here is that your line speed is limited to a maximum amount depending on the contract you buy. The higher you line speed, 512Kbps ADSL, 1Mbs ADSL the higher the monthly cost. The monthly fixed cost is also relatively high and this ADSL offering is aimed as SMEs or home offices. It allows SMEs to easily budget for ADSL usage as a fixed monthly cost.

Although the first option is referred to as a "consumer" offering it is often used by businesseses, because of its lower costs, who can accuratly plan their usual monthly usage but occassionally exceed their cap. Since it is uncapped businesses can continue to use the Internet since the cost of being without ADSL access outweighs the cost per megabyte that you pay. In the long run using such an offering is cheaper than using the uncapped business ADSL solution if you manage the monthly usage appropriately and make adjustments when necessary.  Usually if overusage continues for some months the business will upgrade their package to a higher but cheaper overall package.

Prepaid ADSL

Prepaid ADSL works pretty much like any other prepaid service such as cell phone airtime or electricity. You buy a data bundle upfront and can use it in one day, week or over several months depending on your needs. Prepaid ADSL never expires. It is an ideal solution for light internet users who just want to check mail and surf the web. Nearly all ADSL accounts start at 1G. Most people seldom use more than 500Mb which means that each month more than 1/2 their bandwidth is "wasted". In this case it is cheaper to buy 1G prepaid ADSL and use it over several months.

The offering allows consumer to get cheaper Internet access and at the same time allow them to easily and quickly upgrade or top-up their account. This solution is ideal for most people who don't use the Internet every day for things other than checking mail and surfing and banking. It is also used by businesses who have telmetry applications that only send small amount of data through each month.

Local Only ADSL

Local only ADSL accounts are ADSL accounts that make use of local bandwidth only. Local badnwidth is considerably cheaper than International bandwidth. Whilst this might sound like its not very useful their are many cases where Local only ADSL is ideal and as South Africa's internet usage grows it becomes more and more useful as more and more services become locally available.

Conclusion

I hope this helps with your broadband decisions. If you have any question please feel free to contact us on 011-781 8014.