Ask Afrihost CEO Gian Visser anything

[Afrihost-Gian]

When you launched the R29 / gig pricing a few years back, this totally changed the DSL landscape for ever in SA, can we expect a similar ground breaking event in the near future with regards to 3g/4g/LTE etc?

Thanks Bernie. We are very proud and humbled by what we achieved with the launch of the R29/GB in 2009. I believe there were many factors in starting the Broadband revolution in 2009 and 2010 and it's an honour to have been one of them. And we would love nothing more than to do similar things in every product we get involved in. There were, however, a bunch of things that were happening in the background in 2009 that made the R29/GB launch possible, and the honest truth is that it would be difficult for us right now to do something as dramatic in the mobile data and broadband space.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

If you were appointed as an interim Communications minister for 7 days, what would you focus on doing within those 7 days?

What a tough, tough question. And what a tough, tough job. One thing I would love to do is get a blue light for my car and spend one full day racing around all the highways that surround Johannesburg. I've always wanted to do that ;-) So that would leave with me 6 days. And for the rest of the 6 days I'd probably realise how tough the job is and look forward to getting back to the simple pleasure of running my own company! One thing I'd definitely try to do would be to scrap every bit of bureaucracy and red tape that I could that makes it tough for entrepreneurs to start and run their own tech or communications company. I would just try and figure out how to get out the way and make it as easy as possible for the heroes to create cool things and cool companies that would improve our country and make it great.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

What product brings in the most revenue for Afrihost and do you see Afrihost expanding to include products and (managed) services designed for big business and enterprises, assuming the agreement with MTN allows for this?

The sale of ADSL data (Capped and Uncapped) brings in the most overall revenue for Afrihost.

I do not see us creating specific products or services designed for big business and enterprises in the short to medium term future. I believe this would require fundamental changes in the way Afrihost is structured and to be honest we have our hands crammed full enough with what we are busy with and focusing on at the moment!

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Our clients are being overly throttled by a certain competitor and we would like to move them over to you but we'd like to have some kind of re-seller rebates. Do you have anything currently in the works for re-sellers?

We (as Afrihost) do not specifically have any Reseller products. Axxess (which we own) has some great Reseller packages - I'd suggest getting hold of them. You can check more out here: https://www.axxess.co.za/reseller If you're interested then submit your details and they'll get back to you with how it all works. Hope this helps.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Do you ever reply to Mybroadband posts? Really?

Yip I really do ;-)

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

In retrospect, what was your biggest regret during your time heading up Afrihost?

Tough question. My biggest regret is probably losing touch and not staying as connected with our team as our growth exploded. We've done a ton of stuff to try and fix this over the last year but I believe we lost some great people because of that. I really love our team at Afrihost and what they do, and it just makes me really sad that many of them never realised (or believed) just how much I appreciated and loved them.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

How frustrating is it, being constrained by "3rd party" infrastructure... and do you have any plans to mitigate this reliance?

It can be ridiculously frustrating. Like over-the-top, throw-things-at-the-wall frustrating. In some cases we simply can't do anything about it and in other cases we have managed to do things about it. Having said that, the one thing in IT you can be 100% guaranteed of, is that things will go wrong at some point, whether you control the infrastructure or not. We work as closely as we can with all our suppliers to mitigate the risks as best we can. In many instances we will probably always be reliant on 3rd party infrastructure as 1) our skill lies in creating software and a client experience that we lay over someone else's infrastructure and 2) We simply don't have the capital to build or replicate the infrastructure that we currently use and sell.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Were you an infomercial script writer?

Hahahaha. What a great question. I take this as high praise indeed! Truth is I have read, studied and devoured a ridiculously huge amount of work by the greatest copywriters and direct selling legends both alive and dead. Gary Halbert, Dan Kennedy, Perry Marshall, Drayton Bird, David Ogilvy, Joseph Sugarman, Robert Bly, John Caples. And I could go on and on and on. I just love it ;-)

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

I was with Axxess because it was always slow, I changed, why was Afrihost better?
Was a few months back when the entire network was really constrained.

That’s a difficult question to answer. It depends on so many factors, and doing a post-mortem this much later is pretty much impossible. When our network was congested (before we changed to our hear-the-angels-singing new network) we had clients having varied experiences, especially at peak demand. It’s a symptom of a network taking strain. I think what we can agree on is that we are all delighted those days are over!

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Are you having sleepless nights after your massive investment to upgrade your network and then not gaining sufficient new customers to justify that investment in the short term?

Is this why we are seeing all the new "special offers" from Afrihost? (cap rollover, longer "free" night time download slots, etc)

The good news is that our new ADSL network is actually helping me sleep much, much better overall. Yes it was a massive investment, but it was without a doubt the right decision and the right investment for the future of Afrihost and our clients. So yes there is some short term pain. But I am convinced that there will be long term gain from once again providing the best ADSL and internet service available. So that is helping my sleep!

The reason you are seeing all the new features added (Free after hours data from 23h30 to 07h30, data rollover on ADSL capped data etc) is that with our new network we now have both the IPC and bandwidth capacity to offer them, and the flexibility and ability to do so too. Having so much more control over the upgrade window and the way the network actually works has enabled us to be innovative in the way we can deliver our services to our clients.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Dear Giaan,

Considering the current market place in terms of broadband, how does Afrihost plan on taking Fibre and Wireless braodband forward into the future taking into account that many other companies have jumped onto both bandwagons, how will you plans differ and surpass the other players?

Richard

The fibre market in particular is very tricky because you are limited in terms of operators in specific areas, but that will change in time. It’s likely that, no matter how much we drop our margins, service providers out there will have similar offers. What we hope to differentiate ourselves on is a superb client experience, overall value and stellar service. With self-management tools like ClientZone and our Mobile App, we will always offer a unique experience, regardless of whether competitors offer some of the same components that make up our offers.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Hi Gian.

What are the greatest challenges due to government regulation that hinder growth of the broadband sector to both current ISP's as well as new emerging companies?

Government policy is a major driving force behind the industry. On paper we all have the same objectives: Get as many of our people enjoying the internet and what it brings as quickly as we possibly can. But we’d like to see government pushing harder for things like spectrum allocation, naked DSL and IPC cost drops. Something else they could do is remove as much red tape and bureaucracy as possible and create a nurturing environment for telecomms startups and entrepreneurs.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Im currently an AH ADSL subscriber, however Im installing FTTH this week. But after finding out that AH only offers data on FTTH, im now forced to move over to a new ISP.
I would have preferred to stay with AH and just move over to FTTH platform.
When is AH rolling out full FTTH platforms?

Sorry to lose you Allen - I hope to see you return one day when you can! We're working with as many of the open access fibre co's as possible and we will be rolling out our FTTH products out during the course of this year, starting in a few months.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

How ready is Afrihost for IPv6? Assuming naked DSL were available tomorrow, could I then get an IPv6 address?

We are ready for IPv6. If naked DSL was available tomorrow I would be a very happy man and we'd be getting you an IPv6 address ;-)

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Hi Gian,

With the recent news of MTN threatening to charge extra for OTT services like Whatsapp, will your mobile customers have to worry about your underlying provider imposing surplus charges?

Thanks,
Peter

As a mobile data client of Afrihost you do not have to worry about us imposing any surplus charges for any OTT services.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

What technology you use for broadband at home and what is the average speed you experience?

I have fibre at home and my average speed is 20Mbps.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Would you ever consider a decent uncapped package on your mobile data plans, that does not get throttled to 56kbps @ 100mb?

From another answer I gave to a similar question:

I would personally love to offer something like this. 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 unfortunately not afford to offer an uncapped mobile data package. Even at a much lower throttled rate.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Why is Afrihost not a full fledged MVNO to start competing with the MNO market?

We would absolutely love to be a fully fledged MVNO. However, the only companies that can allow and create MVNOs are MNOs. So while we are constantly trying to work towards becoming an MVNO, we are currently doing what we can in the mobile space with the tools we have available to us.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Hi Gian
Firstly thank you for the great network reliability and speed. Also the ability to do all my mobile and fixed line in one place on one platform, it is really great!
Are you going to manage the Telkom FTTH lines as well, as you are doing with ADSL?
Keep up the good work.

Thank you so much for the kind words Jan - it truly makes my day (or night!) when I hear from our happy clients. We are definitely aiming to manage the Telkom FTTH lines in the same way as we are currently doing with the ADSL lines. Thanks again!

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

I'm so frustrated with the rollout of fibre to home. I live in the Northern Suburbs of Cape Town, and although there are many areas covered, there doesn't seem to be any plans for ours (Brackenfell)
How will Afrihost bring development to the fibre market in SA and contribute to breaking Telkom's chokehold on the sector?

I understand your frustration completely. As they say Rome wasn't built in a day, so it will take some time for fibre to truly be available in most suburbs in SA. But at least we've started building Rome! Our aim is to work with all the existing open access fibre providers. We, ourselves, are not planning at this point on rolling out any fibre ourselves. We will be utilising our software and service, as we do with our ADSL and mobile data products, with the infrastructure of the fibre companies. I'm sorry we can't be of more help in Bracknell for now.