Broadband prices plummeted over the last decade, but the same cannot be said for many other products. Rudolph Muller from www.mybroadband.co.za investigated and stumbled upon a few interesting numbers.

ADSL and mobile data prices have plunged over the last decade. The total cost of an ADSL service dropped by over 50% since it was launched in 2002 while mobile data costs decreased by 96% over the last 10 years.

In 2002 a basic 512 Kbps ADSL service cost residential customers R966.72 per month (R67.72 for analogue line rental, R680 for ADSL access and R219 for a 3GB data bundle). In comparison, the price for a 384kbps connection with 5GB of data is now priced at R358.97 (R219.00 + R139.97).

Even more significant price cuts are visible in the mobile data market. In 2002 a 10MB data bundle from Vodacom cost R200 (hence R20 per MB). Today users can buy a 1GB data bundle from the same company for R99 (10c per MB).

Broadband prices have seen price cuts of between 50% and 95% over the last decade. These price reductions were partly fuelled by lower international bandwidth prices made possible by SEACOM.

When compared with products such as petrol and food, broadband stands out as having bucked the trend of price increases.

The following table provides an overview of the price changes of a few products over the last 10 years.