150Mbps LTE A vs 100Mbps fibre – SA prices

Telkom recently announced that Parkview and Parkhurst would be the first suburbs in Johannesburg to receive its new 150Mbps LTE Advanced service.

Residents can trial Telkom’s new LTE Advanced service free of charge for 14 days, during which time they will receive an LTE router and 20GB of data.

The cost of the service after the trial is R1,399 for a 100GB monthly package. It is understood that additional packages will become available in December.

Curiously, Parkview and Parkhurst are two suburbs where residents joined forces with fibre infrastructure companies to roll-out fibre-to-the-home services.

Last week the Parkview Residents’ Association announced that it had selected Dark Fibre Africa (DFA) as its partner to deliver fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) in Parkview and Greenside East.

This announcement followed a statement by Vumatel on 28 October 2014 that the first homes in Parkhurst had received access to a Gigabit per second fibre connection.

This raises the question: How does Telkom’s new LTE Advanced offering stack up against FTTH products in these areas? The following table answers that question (we’ve also included MTN’s FTTH).

Telkom LTE Advanced vs FTTH prices
Provider	Service	Data	Monthly price
Web Africa	50Mbps FTTH	100GB	R899
Vox Telecom	50Mbps FTTH	200GB	R999
Web Africa	50Mbps FTTH	250GB	R1,099
MTN	100Mbps FTTH	100GB	R1,389
Telkom	150Mbps LTE Advanced	100GB	R1,399
Cool Ideas	50Mbps FTTH	100GB	R1,448
Vox Telecom	100Mbps FTTH	300GB	R1,449
Cool Ideas	100Mbps FTTH	200GB	R3,199