Rain’s big 5G fight – MyBroadband

The RainOne Home 5G wireless Internet and mobile network service does not offer substantially better value compared to creating a similar combination using other fixed-5G Internet providers and mobile networks.

Following Rain’s recent price increase of its RainOne Home Wi-Fi product, MyBroadband compared the offering to combinations of uncapped 5G wireless Internet and SIM bundles.

RainOne Home offers customers an uncapped 5G service and two SIM cards with 2GB data, 60 minutes, and 100 SMSs for R625 monthly.

The two SIM cards have the same allocations as Rain’s new 4G mobile product, priced at R165 per month for a single SIM.

Since launching RainOne, Rain no longer offers a standalone fixed wireless access service. This makes comparing its products to rival operators challenging.

However, its lack of standalone 5G service also means it doesn’t have a great value proposition for customers looking for just a home Internet connection that are comparing it to similar products from Vodacom, MTN, and Telkom.

Our comparison found that although RainOne’s entry-level service was cheaper than combining a fixed-5G service with two similarly-configured mobile packages, it offers much slower speeds.

RainOne’s standard offering is a package for R625 per month with the maximum speed restricted to 30 Mbps. This can be upgraded to either 60Mbps or 100Mbps for an additional R200 per level.

The package includes two SIMs that can also be upgraded should subscribers need additional data or voice minutes.

Multiple network operators and Internet service providers (ISP) offer uncapped 5G Internet packages, each trading off speed restrictions against price.

These restrictions often come in the form of a fair usage policy (FUP), which stipulates that a subscriber’s speeds will be throttled after consuming a set amount of data.

Throttling is usually aggressive, with speeds limited to between 1 Mbps and 4 Mbps after hitting the threshold.

Rain has opted not to use FUP thresholds, but limits its maximum 5G speeds to between 30 Mbps and 100 Mbps.

Other providers offer unrestricted speeds but implement FUP thresholds with heavy throttling.

For instance, Telkom has the highest FUP threshold of 1TB before users are throttled to 10% of the package speed.

Axxess, on the other hand, offers some of the cheapest 5G prices on the market but has the lowest entry-level FUP (300GB) before users are throttled.

Mobile operators typically implement FUPs to ensure that their networks aren’t overwhelmed, as the wireless bandwidth available to them in the form of radio frequency spectrum is limited.

For our comparison, we considered mobile offerings from Vodacomm, MTN, Telkom, and their various mobile virtual network operator partners.

These SIM offerings include Afrihost’s AirMobile, which runs on the MTN network and was configured with the same data, voice, and SMS allocations that Rain has for its SIM cards.

AirMobile was the cheapest among the mobile service providers compared — R40 per month cheaper than RainMobile.

For just under R5 more, Telkom has a 2GB bundle with 15 more minutes and five times as many SMS.

MTN compared favourable with R169 per month package, respectively. However, its bundle only has 1.5GB of data.

The most comparable Cell C and Vodacom mobile packages fell within the upper price range, costing R189 and R274, respectively. Therefore, they were excluded from the overall price comparison.

Using Supersonic’s R399 offering and adding two of AirMobile’s eSIMs at R124.40 each comes out at just under R650 — R25 more than RainOne Home.

Using Telkom’s 40Mbps and 1TB FUP package at R499, along with two AirMobile SIMs, would cost just under R750.

In between these two options are Axxess’s 5G offerings combined with sister company Afrihost’s AirMobile all-in-one mobile product.

Axxess 5G services are particularly interesting because it offers uncapped 5G on Vodacom and MTN’s networks.

Using Telkom’s 40Mbps and 1TB FUP package at R499, along with two AirMobile SIMs, would cost just under R750.

In between these two options are Axxess’s 5G offerings combined with sister company Afrihost’s AirMobile all-in-one mobile product.

Axxess 5G services are particularly interesting because it offers uncapped 5G on Vodacom and MTN’s networks.

Its MTN-based product comes to R698 per month, while the combo with its Vodacom uncapped 5G service is R745.

It’s also worth noting each mobile network’s quality and average speed.

MyBroadband Insights’ latest network quality report revealed MTN to be the best mobile network in South Africa and Rain the worst, with ratings of 9.87 and 4.48, respectively.

The table below compares combinations of 5G uncapped wireless Internet packages and mobile product offerings in South Africa to RainOne.