iBurst taking advantage of consumer innocence

iBurst have just launched a R49 pm broadband "special offer" called Play Special. For your money you get 40 megabytes a month (!), "speeds up to 17 times faster than dial-up as well as unrestricted VoIP and Data Carry Over."

Yay - data carry over!

The only thing special about this offer is how underhanded a marketing tactic it is - the only people taking the offer have to be poor uneducated souls who have no idea how little "40 megabytes" actually is, the same kind of people who are likely to get locked into a 24 month contract - which I assume is exactly what iBurst want (the poor subscribers are then forced to buy more data monthly at exorbitant rates using the convenient "Bandwidth Booster" top-up product).

As the article states, 40 megs can disappear in just over 5 minutes at full speed. 40 megs will barely allow you to download Microsoft updates in a bad security month, assuming you actually use part of the bandwidth for yourself!

Shame on you iBurst for trying to take advantage of ignorance / innocence, and for a statement like this which is misleading and I think simply unethical:

"iBurst now possibly offers the most affordable entry level broadband package in South Africa," said Thami Mtshali, CEO of iBurst. "Play Special is about getting people onto the first rung of the broadband ladder"

Again as the mybroadband article points out, there are other obviously cheaper alternatives out there right now. This is more like a drug offer - the first one is (practically) free, but afterwards we've got you forever. Or at least 24 months.

</rant>