Afrihost Mobile's plan to remove data bill shock

Only problem is that my devices are on contract, just wish I can bundle their data with my vodacom iphone :whistle:

EDIT: I ported to cell c at the beginning of the year (iphone 4 contract ended) after being with VC for 15 years. I could only stomach 3 months and have to say I have ported back and have signed up for my iPhone 5 :)

I must say, since cell c stoked the fire, VC have come to the party and data has come down, at least when it says 3g it means 3g, I regularly test 20mb on 3g ping 100ms on speedtest.net, LTE about the same but ping around 25ms.
 
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wingnut771 said:
Only problem is that my devices are on contract, just wish I can bundle their data with my vodacom iphone :whistle:


I must say, since cell c stoked the fire, VC have come to the party and data has come down, at least when it says 3g it means 3g, I regularly test 20mb on 3g ping 100ms on speedtest.net, LTE about the same but ping around 25ms.
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Dude i had a fat chat with one of the afrihost guys, you dont need to buy a new sim or whatever. you can add an access point to your existing unit (phone + Sim) with afrihost's specific details and now you can use afrihost data.
 
nemisi said:
Dude i had a fat chat with one of the afrihost guys, you dont need to buy a new sim or whatever. you can add an access point to your existing unit (phone + Sim) with afrihost's specific details and now you can use afrihost data.
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I will be seriously stoked if that is the case
It would be damn useful for whichever network they are on as well - I assume it will be MTN but possibly the other boys will follow suit as well.
 
nemisi said:
Dude i had a fat chat with one of the afrihost guys, you dont need to buy a new sim or whatever. you can add an access point to your existing unit (phone + Sim) with afrihost's specific details and now you can use afrihost data.
Click to expand...

Interesting :) Thanks man for the insight!

Can you provide more detail how this access point is possible on an iPhone? I assume you go to settings, general, cellular, cellular data network, and edit "APN"?

Waiting with baited breath with their pricing if that is the case.

EDIT: If this is true then I would have voted differently on the poll :D
 
CeeBee said:
but when....???
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As the article stateS:

Afrihost is set to launch its new mobile data products within the next few months
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Anyhow if they can do this without me having to get a different simcard , then i'll be dropping my overpriced MTN bolt-on data bundle like a rock. If i actually used my MTN bundle at full potential, i would've been having bill-shock every month since it's pretty crappy to manage bundles with MTN (especially on contract).
 
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nemisi said:
Dude i had a fat chat with one of the afrihost guys, you dont need to buy a new sim or whatever. you can add an access point to your existing unit (phone + Sim) with afrihost's specific details and now you can use afrihost data.
Click to expand...

This sounds like a recipe for disaster. Suppose someone not so tech savyy is on contract with a smart phone. Somehow some app doesn't use the "correct" APN or they set it up incorrectly. It defaults back to the previous APN. OOB bill shock yes, just the money is not going to Afrihost.
 
ajax said:
This sounds like a recipe for disaster. Suppose someone not so tech savyy is on contract with a smart phone. Somehow some app doesn't use the "correct" APN or they set it up incorrectly. It defaults back to the previous APN. OOB bill shock yes, just the money is not going to Afrihost.
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You mean it's any different right now? It's always been a 'disaster' (with or without Afrihost) having your service provider tap into your cash balance / credit card without any notification,limits or "opt-in" mechanisms in place. Yes, sure it's convenient to simply open up facebook on your phone and it just works, but i would have preferred MTN/Voda/Cell-C actually require you to subscribe to their internet services. This would at least give everyone the opportunity to understand (and accept) the costs and not go a month without realizing how much data you are using. (likewise i would have liked to be able to "unsubscribe" (or at least get capped) to the internet service which would solve this potential "disaster" of not knowing which ISP you are using at a given moment).

Really, it's absurd to think that anyone with a simcard can "accidentally" use an overpriced service without even agreeing, activating or understanding the service. There should be a consumer protection law against this kind of shark baiting.

Of course, if MTN/Voda/Cell-C actually had proper systems we'd all know what is happening on our accounts on a daily basis , getting notifications about data usage that is OOB and so on. But nope, these companies are just being sharks.
 
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No sharkies :D in afrihost waters
 
So the whole story about Gian's mother being bitten by the OOB for R7k and the tweets between Jan and him were just marketing? Sneaky Gian, very sneaky!
 
ajax said:
This sounds like a recipe for disaster. Suppose someone not so tech savyy is on contract with a smart phone. Somehow some app doesn't use the "correct" APN or they set it up incorrectly. It defaults back to the previous APN. OOB bill shock yes, just the money is not going to Afrihost.
Click to expand...

I dont think phone will default to another apn, i know android doesnt maybe but maybe neanderthal blackberry does
 
Skerminkel said:
So the whole story about Gian's mother being bitten by the OOB for R7k and the tweets between Jan and him were just marketing? Sneaky Gian, very sneaky!
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Nope they are probably very very true. It is probably a case that Afrihost has been looking at the 3G based data options for a while but had it lower on the priority list over getting other stuff right - ultimately many ISPs are 3G resellers Afrihost hasn't gone that route. If Gain's mother was bitten by the shark for 7k that would cause him to reconsider an attitude that 3G is not the top priority and that the OOBShark isn't a problem for Afrihost. They may have had an opportunity from MTN from the get go to provide 3G data at say 75c per meg and were thinking meh we will wait for that tariff to come down or for forced wireless local loop unbundling in 2060. If you look at the time frames Gain may have gotten a bee in his bonnet to move past well its something we have in the possibilities horizon to "lets make a fcking difference".

The OOBShark is a horrible beast not just because it fleeces people but because it introduces a lot of fear into the market and drives people away from using new technology - I know of at least two households that do not have home broadband internet because after being bitten more than two years ago by an OOBShark a mindset that having home internet is risky has taken hold - so even looking at ADSL doesn't happen. Even if challenging in this wireless space (we don't know if it will be mobile - seamless handover) runs at a loss if it drives customers to Afrihost, gets them great marketing in the bag and gets hosting revenue up (if they are able to have a "domain" of APNs - afrihost.xxy then developers can construct sites hosted by Afrihost which can be accessed at a discounted block from mobile customers, which is pretty useful for enterprises which have employees who they don't want to give VPN type access but who need to be able to do certain tasks on a company portal at company cost -- a complication that currently exists is that Afrihosts datacentres are all on IS but I suspect as they expand they will end up with some hosting capacity on MTN as well).

Anyway I am WABing in this post - writing about the OOBShark as a reprieve against finishing up the article on the OOBShark that is on my desktop at the moment
 
we need something like ting.com in this country. And this is a step in the right direction.

The first virtual mobile operator to do it will make a nice sum
 
I can not believe that R150/GB and cheap are still in the same sentence. Mobile data carries overheads but one would think that if wholesale data pricing is well below R2/GB such exorbitant markups would not exist. Afrihost is not to blame for this - will be interesting to see how MTN positions themselves since Afrihost whitelabels their mobile data products at a cheaper price (and also makes me question why SPs can't implement the capping properly).
 
Paul Hjul said:
...It is probably a case that Afrihost has been looking at the 3G based data options for a while but had it lower on the priority list...
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They polled their clients less than three weeks ago about the prospect, so it must have been important enough to them. Joke will be on Jan if he fell for a tweet campaign!

Can someone explain to me the risk of the OOB? If you are a contract customer to any of the cell providers, it means that they extend you some credit and invoice you monthly for the credit used. In terms of FICA, they must make sure that you can afford the credit. Signing a new contract with CellC a month ago, they limited me to R250 or something, until I requested them to increase it. If Gian's mom ran up credit to R7k, she might well walk away and say they never did a proper credit check on her and she cannot afford it. Seem to me that there should be a FICA-induced cap on all accounts.
 
If they offer larger bundles (10GB's and upwards) at R20/GB or less, I would give this some serious thought.
"Less than R150/GB" is not enough to get me even remotely interested.
 
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