Telkom versus Neotel

Johannesburg - Neotel recently launched its NeoFlex Data multi-user broadband offering designed for home and small business users as a competitor to Telkom ADSL.

Fin24.com has tested the solution and compared it to ADSL. Our conclusion is that your choice of broadband provider in South Africa depends on what you intend to use the solution for.

In testing the two solutions we specced an ADSL package from Telkom and internet service provider company Axxess that would compete at a similar price point to the Neotel product.

We then ran a series of tests on the two lines early on a Wednesday morning in the Sandton CBD in Johannesburg. Each test was run three times and the best results from each set were used to formulate the table below.

Internet connection performance varies during the day depending on the nature of bandwidth purchased from service providers, traffic on the network and other variables.

Our tests were run at the same time to provide a spot overview of network performance at a specific time.

The Telkom solution relies on the installation of a line and, as such, many customers are faced with long wait times for installation as Telkom battles to stay on top of new orders. It also faces large-scale cable theft. The Neotel solution can simply be purchased and plugged in, making it a quicker solution to implement.

The Neotel solution is also cheaper on a monthly basis, but whereas ADSL subscribers are able to escape contracts and go month-to-month with the incumbent provider, Neotel requires a 24-month contract for NeoFlex Data, which includes device fees.

Neotel says it will let customers out of the contract, but only if they agree to pay the remaining fees on their devices.

A 4 megabit per second (Mbps) Telkom ADSL line does outperform Neotel on download capacity and ping times, although the Neotel solution performed better for uploads in our tests. Latency was also better on ADSL - especially in the case of local pings.

Ping times refer to the amount of time it takes for a packet of data to be sent to a receiving computer and for a reply to be received. Pings are measured in milliseconds (ms).

Latency (the speed of the connection) is measured in ping times and is not to be confused with the capacity of the connection in bandwidth.

Our conclusion is that Telkom ADSL is better for users who make use of streaming audio and video, applications like Skype, or online gaming on their internet connection.

Telkom also provides faster download speeds on a 4Mbps service, although bandwidth is more expensive and therefore more limited on the Telkom solution.

Neotel is a good solution for customers requiring bulk download capacities with the 10 gigabyte (GB) cap product priced at R699 and 15GB at R899, all in. NeoFlex Data's upload capacities make it a potentially better solution for web designers, content publishers and other users who need to upload files over their internet connection.

Neotel is in the process of deploying network infrastructure and it is likely that the performance of its consumer broadband offerings will improve as the network is extended, and especially when the Seacom international bandwidth cable lands in South Africa later this year, bringing with it substanitally more capacity for International bandwidth.

Contention on the Neotel network is also still low, and as subscriber numbers grow it will be interesting to see the effect. A follow-up test will be conducted later this year.

- Fin24.com