Internet at home who did it better
In a tribute to the great Joan Rivers we have to ask who did it better with the Home packages for wireless internet in Zambia. The two companies we have are:
vs
With internet at home in Zambia moving from the realm of upper class decadence to the requirement for passing exams, buying shoes, doing work and maybe making money; we decided to take a look at how best to fulfil the need whilst keeping our thin piggy banks from dying!
Discovering the two:
MTN Zambia Website
To find what internet package a company offers you counter intuitively have to have internet – odd that. We wandered off to each companies website, first up MTN Zambia:
MTN Zambia’s homepage is filled with products, services and advertisements that can leave one overwhelmed when trying to find a single product. We braved the page and dived in to find out MTN offered for a fixed home wireless link. Our journey:
iConnect Zambia
We then went over to iConnect Zambia to find out what they had with regards to an internet package for us to enjoy videos of mantis shrimp because cats are so 2010!
We decided to subject the iConnect website to the same simple scrutiny of finding what we what. Our journey:
The winner when finding a Home package on the interweb is iConnect Zambia
Which company offers better value for money? We put the package offerings side by side and they do look like identical twins wearing slightly different shoes!
We have put together the below table to show you how their products compare from data available during a time of day to the cost per GB.
| Company | Package | Total Data (GB) | On Peak (GB) | Off Peak (GB) | Cost | Cost per GB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MTN | HomePack 10GB | 10 | 7 | 3 | 250 | 25.00 |
| iConnect | Home10 | 10 | 7 | 3 | 299 | 29.00 |
| MTN | HomePack 20GB | 20 | 15 | 5 | 490 | 24.50 |
| iConnect | Home20 | 20 | 15 | 5 | 585 | 29.25 |
| MTN | HomePack Unlimited | - | - | - | 840 | - |
| iConnect | Home Unlimited | - | - | - | 999 | - |
The winner when it comes to affordability is MTN Zambia
With both companies winning a section we decided to take a closer look behind the scenes. What will your hard earned Kwacha get you? What does the beautiful page display? Our table gives a score out of 5:
| Feature | iConnect Score | MTN Score |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription Model | 4 | 2 |
| Pay As You Go | 2 | 4 |
| Self Installation | 1 | 5 |
| Ease of Use | 3 | 3 |
| Ease of Top-Up | 3 | 4 |
| Hardware Affordability | 2 | 4 |
| User Configurabile | 3 | 3 |
| User Portal Access and Useability | 4 | 1 |
| Score | 22 | 26 |
The exercise was to find out whose product is best based only on what is available on the internet. What we did find out was that companies in Zambia, even those whose business it is to sell the Internet, do not do a great job of showcasing their product to a potential customer.
If your decision can only made based on what you can find out on the internet …buy MTN Zambia’s HomePack.
Thanks Vinni, very informative.
However (there always is one):
What I would weigh in when choosing an ISP is the following:
– Coverage. Can I get that service where I live? Can I use an indoor unit or do I need a more expensive outdoor unit?
– Stability. Who goes down how often? Do I need several reboots a day to keep my link going? If something goes poof, how quickly does it get fixed?
– Throughput. What speed do I get in a real-life scenario (could be speedtest.net or otherwise a real web download)
Food for thought….
Cheers
E
Hey E, we just looked at what information we could gather using online sources. We will do an in-depth comparison using the providers equipment and customer insights.
This is biased. Where is Zamtel broadband?
Hi Chibete. We will do one with Liquid vs Zamtel as both of them have fibre backbones. In this article we just compared the wireless products.
Thanks for the great info. Very useful.
However, as ES mentioned actual performance is most important to us end users. I am on iConnect Home Unlimited and I have to fight with their technicians daily. Connectivity is extremely unreliable, speed is very erratic, and my emails to support staff are never answered. I basically have to go and see them in person and then its mostly excuses of upgrades, engineers working on equipment, Zesco, etc, etc. Sadly I cannot get Hai yet, and MNT has very poor reception here.
We will all benefit if you can do a real world test comparing the performance of Zambia’s ISP’s