Broadband.
What is Broadband Internet?

Mobile broadband is the name used to describe various types of wireless high-speed internet access through a portable modem, telephone or other device.

Broadband Internet is the acess of the Internet through a broadband connection.

Types of cellphone broadband connections and networks

CDMA-1 (EVDO related)
GSM (GPRS/EDGE)
UMTS/WCDMA/3G/FOMA/T-CDMA (HSPDA, HSUPA, HSPA, HSPA+)

General packet radio service (GPRS) is a packet oriented mobile data service on the 2G and 3G cellular communication.  It is a best-effort service, as opposed to circuit switching, where a certain quality of service (QoS) is guaranteed during the connection. In 2G systems, GPRS provides data rates of 56-114 kbit/second. (Ref: WikiPedia)

High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) is an enhanced 3G (third generation) mobile telephony communications protocol in the High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) family, also dubbed 3.5G, 3G+ or turbo 3G, which allows networks based on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) to have higher data transfer speeds and capacity. Current HSDPA deployments support down-link speeds of 1.8, 3.6, 7.2 and 14.4 Megabits/s. Further speed increases are available with HSPA+, which provides speeds of up to 42 Mbit/s downlink and 84 Mbit/s with Release 9 of the 3GPP standards. (Ref: WikiPedia)

The fastest analog modems (modulator / demodulator) have a download speed rated at 56Kbps (Kilo bits per seconds), and an upload speed of only 31.2 kbit/s.

Broadband consists of DSL (Digital subscriber line), ADSL (Asynchronous DSL), 3G, HSDPA, EDGE and a range of other connection such as satellite and wireless 802.11b/g/n (Hotspots at airports for example).

Broadband providers and network carriers in South Africa
South African providers in South Africa consists of Telkom, Vodacom, MTN, Cell-C, Sentech and iBurst. New additions include 8ta (Telkom's mobile) and Neotel.

Vodacom
Offers cellular, HSDPA/3G / HSDPA / GPRS Internet access - wide coverage. Sales agents include Vodashops, Nashua Mobile, Autopage cellular.

MTN
Offers cellular, HSDPA/3G / HSDPA / GPRS Internet access - wide coverage. Sales agents include MTN stores, Nashua Mobile, Autopage cellular.

Cell-C
Offers cellular, HSDPA/3G/EDGE Internet access. Sales agents include Cell-C, Virgin Mobile, Nashua Mobile, Autopage cellular.

Sentech
Offers wireless Internet access. Sales agents include Sentech, Sentech agents, Nashua Mobile, Autopage cellular.

iBurst
Offers wireless Internet access. Sales agents include iBurst, iBurst agents, Nashua Mobile, Autopage cellular.

Telkom
Fixed line ADSL and mobile offerings through 8ta.

Saving money on Internet



Saving bandwidth is key to saving money, there is a fantastic service available, it is the onSpeed web acceleration service.

onSpeed uses (almost) military grade compression to compress text, emails, images and flash.

You can get anywhere from 2.5x saving to 10x bandwidth saving, compression also speeds up your web experience. This means that dial-up users get faster page downloads. So if you have an ABSA dial up, Atlantic (DataPro) or Polka dialup contracts, speed up that connection.