R 8 per GB ADSL too good to be true

Rudolph Muller

Rudolph Muller is the editor at MyBroadband and covers telecoms and broadband news. Rudolph comes from an academic background, but left the University of...

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Social Flu Internet recently launched ADSL data bundles which significantly undercut current offerings in the market.  The newly launched ISP offered ADSL data at R 8 per GB for ‘local only’, R 35 per GB for standard shaped data and R 45 per GB for unshaped data.

This offer was widely welcomed by consumers but the pricing, which is well below wholesale costs, made one upstream provider investigate the issue.  The wholesale ADSL service provider, which asked not to be named, found that Social Flu Internet had a reseller account with them, and was not billed for usage since 2005.

“We can confirm the client has not been billed for services in the order of about R50 000. There can be no question he knew of this situation as it existed since 2005. It only looks like last month he acted to take advantage of this loophole based on the account activity,” said the wholesale provider.

The wholesale ISP confirmed that Social Flu realms – including sfmlocal, sfmunshaped and sfmshaped – are using SAIX accounts and are set up on their system.  “We are still gathering opinion on whether it is actually fraud or if it can be proven there was intent to commit fraud, but any reasonable person would be highly suspicious. No business can run at sustained below cost,” the ISP explained.

An emotional but honest Social Flu Internet owner Enrico Rausa confirmed that the cutthroat pricing was only launched because they were not billed for the bandwidth, and that this offer would not be sustainable if they were billed for bandwidth. 

Rausa said they tried to give people what they deserve and not get ripped off.  “No consumer was ever left out of pocket.  We even refunded people who did not get a login but paid,” said Rausa. “We tried something, it backfired. Send me to the gallows if you want. It is time people took a stand against the big people.”

“All I can say is sorry. What more can I do!” Rausa concluded.

Social Flu Internet Marketing Manager Gareth Diedericks said that he was shocked when he found out how the business was run.

“The calm attitude shown by Enrico after the scam report made me firmly believe that everything was above board. I am still amazed at how this turned out… I really thought that this was legit and even believed that I was going to become very wealthy,” said Diedericks.“Thank you to MyBroadband for bringing this to light. I dread to think what may have happened to me or my family should this not have been discovered and Social Flu grew.”

Diedericks has resigned with immediate effect.

Social Flu Internet ADSL service discussion