According to MyBroadband, Telkom has unveiled new pricing structures for their ADSL broadband accounts.

The changes seem to be focussed on bringing Telkom’s broadband offerings up to scratch with that of other local Internet Service Providers (ISP’s), who generally offer cheaper uncapped and per GB options.

Apart from reducing costs across the board, Telkom also announced that it would increase bundle (cap) sizes.

Among several changes Telkom has announced that its Telkom InternetAllAccess 3 GB standard and TelkomInternet AllAccess 5 GB  advanced packages have seen cap increases to 5 GB and 9 GB respectively.

Do Broadband 2 and 3 customers also receive bandwidth increases in the form of 2 GB and 4 GB extra bandwidth per month.

The company has also announced that its TopUp prices have been lowered from R64.76 per GB to R49.00 per GB for shaped bandwidth while unshaped bandwidth has been reduced from R113.34 to R69.00 per GB. Compare this to webafrica with their R15 per GB and the Afrihost R29 per GB rate and it’s clear that Telkom still has a long way to go.

Some might argue that is about time Telkom implemented changes to its broadband packages. Many local ISP’s such as Afrihost and Mweb currently offer much cheaper and higher capped broadband deals than Telkom.

The telecom giant still remains strong in the industry however, with the Do Broadband packages from Telkom remaining some of the most commonly used by South Africans.  This is partly due to a general lack knowledge regarding the online environment, as many South Africans simply use Telkom because it’s the easiest option.

It is however good to see that the company is (albeit belatedly) changing its ADSL offerings to be more representative of the local ADSL pricing landscape.

This is definitely a step in the right direction for Telkom and an unforeseen blessing for many of its customers to be sure. We can only hope that with the advent of higher capacity cable networks we’ll soon see prices drop further.