Uncapped broadband remains one of the hotly debated topics in the telecoms world with arguments bandying back and forth regarding the sustainability of these services and the impact of unlimited data usage on networks.

While affordable uncapped broadband is a relative newcomer in South Africa, it has been the standard in the developed world since the advent of fast, always-on broadband.

Many international fixed line and mobile broadband providers are however backtracking from their uncapped offerings, introducing strict monthly caps on their data offerings.

The main challenge facing uncapped broadband providers is that a small percentage of high end users consume most of the bandwidth made available to the total subscriber base.

According to research by Cisco the top 1 percent of broadband connections are responsible for more than 20 percent of total Internet traffic while the top 10 percent of connections are responsible for over 60 percent of broadband Internet traffic, worldwide.

Numerous methods are employed by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to protect their networks, including soft caps, time based running thresholds, traffic shaping (mainly against P2P), throttling the speed of high end users and even kicking the biggest bandwidth consumers off the network.

Afrihost uncapped ADSL terms and conditions

Afrihost recently introduced a new strategy to try and ensure high service levels associated with its uncapped ADSL service. 

The company has introduced its latest uncapped ADSL terms and conditions which will see accounts managed each day on an hourly basis depending on the capacity available on the network at that time.

“We have a certain capacity available on our ADSL network for all of our Capped and Uncapped ADSL clients – if the network is congested and slow at any time we will dynamically manage our biggest uncapped users to ensure the best experience for all clients across our network,” Afrihost explains.

“We monitor our overall network usage on an hour to hour basis and if our capacity is stretched we will dynamically shape and throttle certain clients’ uncapped accounts to relieve congestion.  These uncapped clients will be chosen based on their historic bandwidth usage.”

According to Afrihost this new strategy is likely to affect 7% of their client base.  “Uncapped users who have used the most bandwidth will start to be throttled first if there is network congestion,” said Afrihost.

The new Afrihost terms of service will kick in on the 1st of July.

Afrihost uncapped ADSL << comments and views