How much Amazon Leo will cost in South Africa
Herotel intends to sell Amazon’s low-Earth orbit satellite broadband at prices that closely track its existing fibre packages, and will carry the currency…
The Full Story
Herotel intends to sell Amazon’s low-Earth orbit satellite broadband at prices that closely track its existing fibre packages, and will carry the currency risk on terminals landed in South Africa, CEO Van Zyl Botha has told the TechCentral Show podcast.
It is the clearest signal yet on what Evry will cost – the brand Maziv-owned Herotel unveiled in July as the retail face of Amazon Leo. Registrations are open, but the service will not switch on before sometime next year.
“We’ll be the importer of record, so we’ll land the terminals in South Africa. So, that’ll be our risk,” Botha said. Pricing, he indicated, would be held as far as possible over an initial three-year period rather than moving directly with the rand-dollar exchange rate.
He would not release product detail, but pointed at Herotel’s current price list. “If you look at Herotel’s website and the fibre products we have, we try and be a value provider. We don’t have middlemen or ISPs between us and the customer. We service the customer direct,” he said. “The reason why this product was appealing is that we could match almost entirely our current fibre prices. So, that gives you a pretty good idea of what will come.”
That price list is public. Herotel advertises four uncapped fibre packages, priced on 11 August at R399/month for new customers, R629, R799 and R1 049, with promotional pricing in some towns. The site does not publish a speed against each tier, giving 60Mbit/s, 120Mbit/s and 200Mbit/s only as examples. On the Evry pages, the Nano antenna is listed at up to 100Mbit/s and the Pro at up to 300Mbit/s.
Customers will be offered the choice of buying the terminal outright or financing it, Botha said, with longstanding Herotel customers preferred.
Botha cited a wide range for the addressable market. “We’ve seen studies that say 480 000 and then we’ve seen studies that say 2.4 million,” he said. “It gives you a bit of a range.”
Satellite is “not a perfect technology for density”, he conceded. “I think LEO is more about connecting the unconnected and reaching those spaces that were impossible than it’s about competing in the metro against 5G.”
Read: Amazon Leo all set for South African launch
The agreement is not exclusive. Amazon Leo global business head Trevor Vieweg said in July that Herotel is “our first announced partner in South Africa” and that “we will likely work with other partners”. Botha’s answer was scale: “We’ve got presence in about 100 towns outside the metros, 1 400 people and about 600 vehicles.
“We’d like to have the first bite at the distribution, so I think we have a couple of years to really go and sell the product… We’re happy with competition, we don’t shy away from it. We just want to be first for now.”
Pressed on how long the head-start over Starlink could last, Botha said. “If we compete, then we must just play by the same rules. We can’t have some people subject to the rules and others not. But we, in essence, welcome competition.”
Herotel w…