South Africa: Broadband over Power Lines here soon and much cheaper than ADSL

By MyADSL, 6 July 2006

Goal Technology Solutions (GTS) are ready to roll out their commercial Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) services in Tshwane, and will undercut the current ADSL prices by a significant margin.


GTS has finalized their BPL trials in the Tshwane region and said that the results were excellent. They are now ready to roll out commercial services to residential users utilizing the current power grid as an access medium to consumer’s homes.

The new service will initially be available in the Tshwane suburbs of Alfen Park, Menlyn Retail Centre, Moreleta Park, Monument Park, Woodhill, Mooikloof and Garsfontein. While GTS is currently focusing on Tshwane, they are also working with other municipalities on possible similar projects.

The initial offering which will be launched by GTS will be a DSL 512 equivalent service with a 5 GB usage allowance at an all inclusive cost of R 479-00 (R 420-00 ex VAT). This is significantly cheaper than the comparable ADSL offering which will cost users just over R 700-00. Higher cap services will be available for GTS’s BPL products, with a favorable sliding scale pricing structure for high-cap account.

Users who are interested in telephony services on top of their broadband offering will also be able to purchase this service from GPS. The basic monthly telephony cost will be just under R 100-00, while the call costs will be on average around 15% cheaper than Telkom rates. But on international and long distance calls the savings can be as high as 40%.

The future

This is however only the beginning. GPS said that they will launch ‘true broadband’ offerings in November this year where users can expect speeds far exceeding 1 Mbps. Currently speeds of up to 6 Mbps are realistic when using BPL.

The launch of these high speed services will be accompanied by video on demand and video broadcasting services by GOAL who will provide content through strategic partnerships with relevant companies.

Telkom is dragging its feet regarding ADSL and IP-TV leaving a gap in the market for smaller entrepreneurs to fill. Tshwane and GPS are leading the way in providing users with such services, and many other municipalities are following suit.

While Telkom has recently accused municipalities of "premature and opportunistic" behaviour for rolling out telecommunications services in a bid to save costs, it is clear that something needs to be done to provide affordable telecoms and broadband services to South Africans. It is encouraging to see that municipalities, partnering with telecoms companies, are stepping up to do exactly that.

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BROADBAND over POWER LINES: new 200 Mbps Technology !!!