Broadband and Phone in South Africa
I wanted to share a few things about getting online, both in terms of internet and mobile in South Africa, particularly for UK residents.
The first thing I did when I landed was pick up a HSDPA package from Vodacom Hire. This is a really convenient service for a temporary solution. They give you a Huawei E220 modem and contract SIM, which costs about R700 (£45 today) for 1GB for the month. Note that you have to take the modem back to the airport, which is a bit of a pain.
A better solution is to but a modem such as the E220 (currently around £60 on ebay - make sure it's unlocked!) or check if your phone itself is HSDPA and network unlocked. Then you can get a pre-pay (PAYG) SIM for as little as R1 (£0.06p today) from Pick n Pay or Checkers supermarket.
Vodacom currently offer the best mobile broadband service here in my opinion. For 1GB, which you need to use in a month (I use that in around 15-20 days with normal use) it'll cost you R289 (£18 today) or R0.28/MB (£0.018p today). Go to an ATM and you can charge your R1 prepay SIM account with exactly the amount of credit you need, then importantly, log in to https://www.vodacom4me.co.za or (dial *111#) and convert the credit into a data bundle.
One other quick phone tip; I was trying to call netflights and failing, as they only have an 0800 number. Apparently, it can be tough to call these numbers sometimes from abroad (I tried from a mobile and work landline). However, you can easily use Skype to do this without any credit on your Skype account - very handy.
Tagged as internet, south africa, travel, web + Categorized as Blog