Ask Afrihost CEO Gian Visser anything

[rpm]

Can we please stop posting questions now, and give Gian time to answer the hundreds of questions. It is easier to read the answers with questions popping up between his answers.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

When will you offer uncapped 3G? (even if throttled to 1Mbps)

I would personally love to offer this or something similar. However, right now, we can't do this. We pay per GB of mobile data moved - no matter the time of day or night. And given what our (Afrihost's) input costs per GB of mobile data is, we can simply not do this. Even at a much lower throttled rate.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

What are your honest feelings about BEE?

As a general rule I try stay out of public discussions relating to politics as it is such an emotionally driven topic. And any statements made in a few words have the danger of being misinterpreted either way. Having said that I do believe in BEE when it is used as a tool to truly empower underprivileged individuals.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Do you use Afrihost as your main ISP at home?

I do use Afrihost Mobile at home. However, the estate I live in does not have Telkom lines. So for my fixed line connection I use the defacto Fibre provider: Smart Village.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Is Afrihost serious about education and do you see yourselves actively playing in this sector?

We are serious about the education of our team. We provide onsite training in house and also subsidise other studies. However, we do not have any specific plans to get involved in the public education system at this time.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

What other Fibre networks besides Telkom Fibre are you going to be rolling out your FTTH offering? Vuma, Frogfoot, Fibrehoods?

Our plan is to roll out Afrihost data with every open access Fibre Co out there. So this includes Vuma, Frogfoot, Fibrehoods and many others too. This is obviously quite a massive undertaking, and one that we may not be able to do with every provider. But rest assured that we are attacking this with gusto!

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

How did you decide on your company name ( ie. Afrihost)?

One of the guys who was with us at the beginning (Wikus Stander) came up with the name. We all spent a morning writing down names and then going and checking whether they were available as .co.za and .com domains. In the end we had a list of about 10. I think we chose Afrihost because we thought anything with 'Afri' in front of it sounded big and well established

And in fact, the first ever client I met with said "Aaah yes, Afrihost. I've heard good things about you". The irony was that at that time our website was not up, we didn't have one client and NO-ONE had even heard the name before!

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

MTN have installed FTTH all over Sundowner and Northriding but aren't offering options yet.

Are you going to be the primary reseller for MTN FTTH packages and if so when are they going to come on sale?

With us being in close partnership with MTN, it’s very likely we’ll offer services on their infrastructure, but we can’t say when for sure. We’ll hopefully have various options in different suburbs (if we can), depending on whether we can get great pricing and value for our clients.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Mac or PC? iOS or Android?

Mac and iOS.

And now you all hate me ;-))

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

In the process of your business growing "from your garage" to what it is now, at what stage did you go "**** just got real... this is gonna get big!!!" ?

Haha. Great question. I don't think I ever had that moment! We were just doing what we thought was best day to day and it somehow got to this! One of my favourite sayings is: "It takes 10 years of hard work to become an overnight success". And it's been a lot like that. It's still quite surreal in some ways. There are days I feel like I'm still working in 'my garage'. And of course there are days when I don't. But the best days are the "still feel like I'm in my garage" days.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

One of the big problems many people face in our country with adsl is a lack of speed. Most suburbs can only get up to 4mb.
How does an individual get that increased?

That’s one of the toughest question I get asked as a CEO. We’d love to give you a 3 step programme to follow, but the reality is that ADSL is limited in terms of options. If Telkom has not upgraded infrastructure to allow better speeds, there is not much that can be done. We’ve put a lot of energy into making our Mobile offers more attractive for this reason. Using Afrihost Plus and MTN’s network, you can get really great speeds on LTE and 3G, and a fair whack of data at a great price.

Having said that ADSL (despite its challenges) is still a great overall option and we have tens of thousands of clients who are very happy with it.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

How does one get fibre in there area?

For the moment, there are usually only one (sometimes two) fibre operators in an area. And there are many areas where there are no fibre operators. Most operators, including Telkom, have a process on their website where you can collect signatures or signups from neighbours for them to decide whether it is financially viable to lay out fibre infrastructure for you. At the moment there is a fair amount of legwork necessary to get a fibre operator interested in your area if there isn't one there already. But if you can show that you have enough interest in your neighbourhood or complex then there will be someone willing to come and lay fibre.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

For what reason does data allocation have an expiry date?

Internet Providers pay for their internet capacity every month. This means we have fixed costs every month based on the usage that we predict all our clients will need that month. If data does not expire we cannot correctly predict the demand.

This would mean that either: a) We underestimate demand and the capacity of our network is woefully inadequate and all of our clients get a terrible service or b) We overestimate the demand and while all our clients love their experience we go out of business because our expenses for the extra capacity outstrips the revenue we receive. And then the next month none of our clients get any service.

BTW, the 'data' we pay for also 'expires' at the end of any given month in effect. We pay a set amount for our capacity, and if we don't utilise this capacity fully we cannot use that 'unused' capacity in the next month either.

Having said this I know that your data expiring can be frustrating. So that is why we now have data rollover on our Capped ADSL products - any data you do not use of your cap this month will now be carried over and you can enjoy it next month.

An analogy that is similar is when you eat at a buffet: On that given day you are free to eat all the food that is available. However, if you do not eat all the food that day, when you come back the next day you have to pay for the buffet again, even though you didn't eat all the ribs yesterday. And the reason you have to pay again is that the food the restaurant had yesterday is now rotten and they can't serve it again. And the restaurant has to charge for the food again as they had to pay for the fresh food again.

I hope this helps - It is a really tough thing to explain.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Wow, I am only on Page 2 of the 27 pages of questions. I'm clearly not going to get through all of them before 17h00. RPM, can we leave this thread open after 17h00 please so I can keep answering tonight?

Also thank you everyone for not asking more questions while I am answering. If you still have a question after I've answered all the questions I promise I will make a plan to answer it.

Thanks

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

I just want a SIM card I can use in my K4605 USB modem, ( full size ) and when needed in my Galaxy Tab 4 ( mini size ) ....

I speak under correction, but I think that you can get little convertors that you can put smaller SIMs into that ensures that they can fit into the bigger SIM slots. I think.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

What can we expect to see from afrihost on the mobile data/voice department this year ?

We've just launched our Afrihost Mobile so that you can get voice and data on one SIM. We did this by layering our systems and software over MTN's prepaid engine. This has been a huge undertaking for the teams from both companies (and is still ongoing) - and there are still some things we have not got right just yet. I believe it is a great product but the first thing is that we will keep working on our existing offering to iron out the kinks.

We also have some other ideas around how to simplify the entire mobile experience that we will continue working on and roll out in the coming year.

 

[rpm]

Wow, I am only on Page 2 of the 27 pages of questions. I'm clearly not going to get through all of them before 17h00. RPM, can we leave this thread open after 17h00 please so I can keep answering tonight?

We will definitely keep it open until you decide it should be closed. 400 answers x 2 mins = 13 hours. Good luck

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Why did it take Afrihost so long to realise there was a huge issue on their network last year sometime?

We initially thought the problem related to our traffic management hardware and software we had at the time. And there was indeed a problem with this. And this took quite a bit of to and fro'ing with the hardware company to sort out.

When we did manage to sort that out we noticed relatively quickly that there were some other issues with our network. These issues were not as easily fixable. We tried to resolve these issues but we were unfortunately unable to solve them. This then led us to exploring the creation of a new network that would allow us more control so that when similar issues did arise we would have the ability to solve them quickly ourselves. This led to the new network our DSL clients are now on. I firmly believe that the type of problem we experienced last year will not happen again. And I personally have been delighted with its performance and also the feedback we have been getting from our ADSL clients since we've been using it.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

We will definitely keep it open until you decide it should be closed. 400 answers x 2 mins = 13 hours. Good luck

2 Mins! I wish!

Thanks RPM

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

What is/was your greatest challenge of starting up and growing an ISP in South Africa and how did you overcome it?

An ISP is an annuity based business with a fair amount of fixed costs every month (especially if you want to secure the best wholesale rates) This means you generally need a bunch of clients to cover your monthly costs. And clients don't just pop out of thin air in a competitive environment like the ISP landscape. So it takes a long time to organically grow your base. So we overcame that by taking 16 years to build what we have ;-)

We also tried to think what is it that potential clients would really love. Or really need. Or would really make their lives easier. Or would really value as a great deal. Then we tried to give them as much of all those things rolled into one! And then we trusted that if we delivered these things in one delicious package our clients themselves would tell their friends about us. We call it 'Braai Marketing'. And thank God this has worked for us.