I was looking at getting a mobile plan from Afrihost but I had 0 LTE-A coverage here and thus I was forced to shop around
Every place that offered a good price ha either no coverage here or they had up to LTE. Telkom actually offered the absolute best deal by far but their coverage map said I only had 3G. I bought myself a R1 sim card at Checkers and bought R50 of data to test it out and I got 4G download speeds even though Telkom says my area only has 3G speeds. Telkom said they can give me the contract but at my own risk. If the speed sucks, that's my problem but the contract will stand... And so the search continued.
Eventually I got a massive surprise when I went to Vodacom and looked at their Big Red data deals. Wow, they are cheap and they have what seems to be the best coverage in South Africa! My download speeds went up from 700Kb max over my 4Mb ADSL to 2.5Mb and my torrents list is empty 2 hours after the night owl period starts... I can't find enough content to download to keep up.... and when I think I have a lice large list of downloads lined up, they are done by the time I come back from making coffee... I am so glad I cancelled my telkom line and got rid of my ADSL.
This Vodacom deal is awesome! Only catch is that I am now locked into a 2 year contract so if anything better comes along then that's too bad. R599 per month for 150Gb of data... not too shabby if you ask me! (50Gb anytime, 100Gb night owl). Now that I don't have a phone line any more I finally started using WhatsApp and hey, look at that, now I don't have to buy airtime any more either
My only regret is that I didn't buy a modem with ethernet ports. Having this portable mifi router that I bought for R300 from CashCrusaders is awesome as it will enable me to have internet even during load shedding and the rest of the time it feeds my house the 150Gb per month PLUS I can very easily take my internet with me when I travel ... but I can't connect my NAS to the thing and Plex refuses to stream content overmy LAN without an internet connection (????) so, yeah, my choice in routers sucks... but as far as a data contract goes I am so happy with this Vodacom deal that I don't even look at all the "Save so much on our data products" emails that I get. I'm locked in for 2 years but with the experience I am having with this contract I don't mind that one bit!
I looked at this as a replacement for my phone line and ADSL.
I was paying R580 to Telkom and Afrihost for a 4Mb capped 100Gb ADSL.
I now pay R600 per month for 150Gb per month at speeds way faster than anything I've ever experienced in my life! (Max line sspeed atmy house is 8Mb)
As a bonus I have no more phone line to worry about, don't need to buy airtime, get 20 free sms a day and my downloads are faster than I've ever experienced in my life making it very easy to use up the 150Gb per month IF I can ind that much stuff to download
Find the best Data Deals for all your mobile needs. On SAleading network. Vodacom
www.vodacom.co.za
Currently have:
90Gb deal for R500
60Gb for R350
Seems the 150Gb is off the table now.