Web Africa ADSL general feedback

[Fulton17]

The thing is, we have advised our customers that are on our Uncapped service that you need to stay within your thresholds as per your package and if you have gone over the threshold, just slow down your usage so that you fall below the threshold. We never ever want a customer to leave us but we have to follow the process as per our AUP, which all Uncapped customers agreed to when signing up. But again if you stay within the thresholds you will have a smooth and uninterrupted service.

So as I read this Justin, your uncapped accounts are actually not uncapped, but capped accounts. If my threshold is 14 gigs per 7 days, I pretty much have a 60 gig capped account that I can only use 14 gigs within 7 days.

"Usage Management:

We use a rolling window system between 6am and 12am to ensure our network is optimised to keep our customers' accounts running smoothly.

If a User uses more than a certain amount of Gigs in a 7 day period, then their service will be moved to a lower priority until that 7 day period is up. Their ADSL account will then be restored to normal priority." http://www.webafrica.co.za/legal/hom...-usage-policy/

According to this your speeds will be slowed down, but your account should not be terminated.

All very confusing

[WAJustinW]

And this on an "uncapped" account

Surely WA should manage their systems better? Also I thought if you went over they just throttled your account depending on capacity and time of day. This type of behaviour on their behalf seems to indicate that they must really be battling and times are tight

Quite the contrary Fulton17, we have increased our network capacity quite considerably over the last couple of months and are not running near full capacity. The reason behind this is that we have a small amount of customers continually exceeded their thresholds and this in my opinion is unfair as it is impacting the majority of our Uncapped users which are well within their limits.

We have notified these customers about their usage exceeding the thresholds but they decided not to slow it down. We even give these customers a call to warn them and all they need to do is stick within the threshold. These customers also have a choice of upgrading their service to a bigger package since they will using such a high amount of bandwidth.

So we have done all that we can do from our end but we need our customers to work with us as well.

[Pr⊕phet]

Quite the contrary Fulton17, we have increased our network capacity quite considerably over the last couple of months and are not running near full capacity. The reason behind this is that we have a small amount of customers continually exceeded their thresholds and this in my opinion is unfair as it is impacting the majority of our Uncapped users which are well within their limits.

We have notified these customers about their usage exceeding the thresholds but they decided not to slow it down. We even give these customers a call to warn them and all they need to do is stick within the threshold. These customers also have a choice of upgrading their service to a bigger package since they will using such a high amount of bandwidth.

So we have done all that we can do from our end but we need our customers to work with us as well.

I've asked this millions of times before:

A) What if I exceed it by using steam? How about HD streaming?
Sure there are other means like TPB, but seriously not everyone is digital distribution handicapped.

B) How many strikes a month or months in a row before the bullying tactics kick in?
We all know that the letters only mean one thing... you will be kicked unless you use your webz less.

:edit
Steam obviously on a single user... well you would have to download a lot of games in those seven days, but what if we add more connections to it? Would be interesting to know how many home users in a home WA worked their cap from. If you take a typical house of 3 - 4 people on a single home uncapped account it gives you about 2 - 3 gig a day. (4 meg account used with 71 gig window over 7 days)

So as I read this Justin, your uncapped accounts are actually not uncapped, but capped accounts.

They will deny it. WA seems to only cater for grandma and grandpa...

[BigAl-sa]

They will deny it. WA seems to only cater for grandma and grandpa...

Yes my son, it suits me fine...

[Pr⊕phet]

Yes my son, it suits me fine...

How many persons are you?

Just curious as how this product will work for more than one person that is actually using the internet. For 3-4 people 2-3 gig a day might be too little..

We are talking Home product for home which includes families ?

[Zewp]

The thing is, we have advised our customers that are on our Uncapped service that you need to stay within your thresholds as per your package and if you have gone over the threshold, just slow down your usage so that you fall below the threshold.

In other words, you basically tell them how much they are allowed to use?

How are you getting away with calling this uncapped? You just blatantly admitted that it's not uncapped.

[froot]

In other words, you basically tell them how much they are allowed to use?

How are you getting away with calling this uncapped? You just blatantly admitted that it's not uncapped.

It's the first question we asked them (months ago) and they still haven't come up with an acceptable excuse answer :/

[Kwerty]

What happened to only getting shaped if you go over your rolling window AND the network doesn't have enough capacity? I'm pretty sure that's what WA was punting when uncapped was just released.

[Fulton17]

What happened to only getting shaped if you go over your rolling window AND the network doesn't have enough capacity? I'm pretty sure that's what WA was punting when uncapped was just released.

http://kb.webafrica.co.za/article/AA...lling%20Window

"REMEMBER, this ONLY occurs when we do not have available capacity on our network."

Yep, that is why I am saying that it would appear they have serious issues. I base this on their own website. At times I really do think WA is their own worst enemy

[bullfrog]

I came, I saw, I lolled

Glad I left.

[Zewp]

Yep, that is why I am saying that it would appear they have serious issues. I base this on their own website. At times I really do think WA is their own worst enemy

And when you point it out to the reps here, they deny it.

WebAfrica, your ISP of choice... if you don't mind being misled and lied to.

[Incognito64]

What happened to only getting shaped if you go over your rolling window AND the network doesn't have enough capacity? I'm pretty sure that's what WA was punting when uncapped was just released.

Nobody knows...but it's still in their Kan't Beaccurate article
"If you use more than a certain amount of Gigs in a 7 day period, then your service will be moved to a lower priority until that 7 day period is up. Your ADSL account will then be restored to normal priority"

So what happens if you don't get warnings (or in most cases ignore them)? The system auto disables your account. This is something I think people should know.

Also note these warnings are for going over the 14GB threshold a number of times, not your total usage. At a guess there is no customer specification for how much over is a problem (e.g. is +100mb a strike? or +1GB) nor is there a given number of 'strikes' till your service is out.

One has to wonder if the documentation regarding this service is accountable to anyone if it doesn't match the maintenance of the service?

"Even if your service is switched to a lower priority, browsing remains awesome."

Not if your service is disabled?

[WAJeff]

Hi all,

I'm only posting up here once, Justin asked me to jump on - I'm on leave until Thursday, so he'll be taking things back over. Just here because we have the history of the issues brought up and have been discussed ad nauseam.
If I miss anything, I'll post it up on Thursday or have Justin answer - I'm addressing the common points in this thread (even though Uncapped should really be discussed in the Uncapped Feedback Thread, but anyway)

Is WA's Uncapped really Uncapped?
Yes. Remember, expecting a true Uncapped experience in SA is few and far between - looking at the UK/ overseas markets. We cannot simply allow free reign over the accounts and allow everyone to download the internet every night. This is where the AUP and rolling windows come in.

Remember, these have also been recently increased along with a rough 8% network capacity increase - so the experience is looking better. Every ISP in SA offering Uncapped has an AUP, and we still stand out as the ISP with the most transparent, easy to read document that we're straight up about. From the start the AUP hasn't changed, keeping in mind the following points:

Web Africa may undertake the following action(s) against excessive usage:

• Adjusting the throughput of the aforementioned service if the account exceeds the 7 day limits.

• Limiting or preventing service through specific Protocols and/or Ports if the account exceeds the 7 day limits.

• Termination of the service due to continuous excessive usage.

• Any attempt to bypass Shaping Policies may result in termination of the Uncapped ADSL account.

Again, very similar to other ISP's AUP's out there.
Also noted that Uncapped is still fairly new to WA, so we are constantly looking at new improvements and features. From launch we've already made a couple changes and will continue to do so.

Why do you have rolling windows?
This is our way of applying QoS to allow the best possible internet experience for every user across the board. This isn't very restrictive at all in terms of the 7 day thresholds either, especially considering we recently removed the 6 hour rolling window. You can use 90% of this threshold on day 1 and the other 10% over the following 6 days - however you feel most useful.

As of late we also haven't been running anywhere near our network capacity, so even after you reach your 7 day threshold you won't be slowed down. I've personally tested this on a 4Mbps Uncapped account going download crazy, reached the threshold after 4 days of constant downloading and didn't see any speed decrease.

Why do I receive emails about my usage?
Simply put, to give you a heads-up about the usage. These emails work other 3 sends.
The first to say you've reached the threshold, please use less (while not necessarily slowing you down)
The second to point to the AUP and the other legal terms you agree upon when signing up.
The third as a warning where we may terminate the account should the excessive usage continue. Remember my example above of downloading - I wasn't slowed down once and used almost 100GB's over 8 days or so.

Again, this is something that was agreed upon during the sign-up process and was made clearly available. We're not hiding this information anywhere and throwing it back in everyones faces, which feels like is happening here.

What constitutes abuse?
Partly discussed above. I'm aware that there are abuse limitations on the account which are all fairly high, just not 100% sure on the actual numbers. I've asked Justin to follow up on this and get some info for you guys.
In all honesty though, the current 7 day rolling windows are fair and if downloads are run intelligently (ie between Download Plus hours) a lot of usage can come from these accounts.

I know of issues around the difference between 384 and 1Mb accounts - I'll see if we can twist some arms and have the 1Mbps accounts increased a little. No promises here, but we'll see what we can do.

Simply put, if you feel that the 7 day rolling window isn't enough to fit your internet needs why not look at upgrading?
Hope this clears a few things up. Justin will be looking at things for today/ tomorrow - I'm back at the office on Thursday.

[Zewp]

The problem is, Jeff, that nobody has an issue wit AUPs or shaping. We have a problem with actively being told how much we are allowed to use, which is basically what termination of a service or abuse letters amount to. That's not uncapped.

WA is using loopholes and technicalities to get away with calling a service with severe usage limitations an uncapped service.

Also, once again, why do you have rolling windows if you send out abuse emails anyway? Rolling windows are supposed to be a security measure put in place to ensure people don't use too much bandwidth. If it is necessary for you to send out abuse emails even with a security measure in place, it means that your security measures aren't working as they should. Isn't this grounds for checking the security measures or even removing them entirely?

[Incognito64]

I get the feeling that its odd to have such harsh methods if the network is not suffering. Not that people should be doing what Jeff demonstrated is possible.

Rolling windows seem to have no scale in terms of penalty 1gb over 14gb is potentially as bad as 20gb over 71gb. I think there needs a better sense of scale and for people over to actually be throttled instead of letters and cut offs, no one likes micro management. Either make 4mb rolling window 56gb or 1Mb 17gb with a 50% penalty in speed if over. Easy to explain and easy to state, there are of course many design options available. At the end of the day my emphasis is that the system should scale better. Also download plus utilization should come into consideration when issuing complaints about excessive usage, although it is completely fair to advise them to use download plus more.

Just as information I am staying with web africa, the service and value of the 1Mb package is decent and suits my needs and well an accident on sign up happened which meant no warnings were received.

As an aside BT in England run uncapped where you have a 100gb per month limit and are alerted at 80gb, I don't think iplayer counts to this limit though. Other uncapped services there are better certainly but it makes you realise webafrica isn't bad but it could be a lot better.