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Question of the Day: How frequently are you watching FIFA World Cup 2026 matches?
Capped or uncapped: Which is best?
- Thread starter rpm
- Start date
Neverwhere
Senior Member
Since these uncapped deals came out, its not only power users that have taken it up. I'm sure lots of low usage users went for it just for the peace of mind of not having to monitor and regulate their usage. So dont the ISP's make a nice profit there. There's also the people like me on 4MB uncapped, who's monthly data usage is lower every month, because I've got tons of stuff from the previous month that I havnt looked at yet. So it'll become increasingly more sustainable. The biggest bandwidth hog must be the episodez and movies ppl are grabbing, and after a few months of that its either full hdd's or a backlog of stuff to watch.
Misinformed
I think the problem with the panel is that they are too in touch with their respective companies revenue goals and out of touch with the market.
Wilcox, Stucke and Visser make the only appropriate statements and that is - we don't really understand the demand for bandwidth in the country because the country has been stifled and starved of service for so long that consumers sparingly use what little they have.
Open the thing UP folks - make the Internet accessible and allow people to use the services that your companies so greedily provide and perhaps we'll see the tide changing.
It might behove myBroadband in the future to inform the panel of "experts" on what actual WW bandwidth usage is before asking them to remove the confusion and allow us all to see how misinformed they are. Perhaps it is because our local industry is led by this misinformed bunch that it is in the state it is!
Anyway - thanks to the pioneers who have taken these bolds steps to show the way and open a path to the future.
We the Internet community thank you
I think the problem with the panel is that they are too in touch with their respective companies revenue goals and out of touch with the market.
Wilcox, Stucke and Visser make the only appropriate statements and that is - we don't really understand the demand for bandwidth in the country because the country has been stifled and starved of service for so long that consumers sparingly use what little they have.
Open the thing UP folks - make the Internet accessible and allow people to use the services that your companies so greedily provide and perhaps we'll see the tide changing.
It might behove myBroadband in the future to inform the panel of "experts" on what actual WW bandwidth usage is before asking them to remove the confusion and allow us all to see how misinformed they are. Perhaps it is because our local industry is led by this misinformed bunch that it is in the state it is!
Anyway - thanks to the pioneers who have taken these bolds steps to show the way and open a path to the future.
We the Internet community thank you
ppedrick
Well-Known Member
I think that you are right here SteveG,
Lack of knowledge is a terrible thing and it just allows the more 'low brow' of the industry managers to make massive generalisations to either sound good or just get a sound bite. The truth, is that noone yet knows what the average SA usage will be once the heavier users have gotten over the need to download 100's GBs.
The more important factor to me, which I really don't understand, is the apathy that surrounds the industry dealing with Telkom.
- Customer ADSL connections (including line) range from R250-R560 per month including a R1100 installation charge.
- Telkom then charge the bandwidth supplier IPC costs from R10k-R2.2k per 1Mbps per month.
- This equates, in most circumstances, to be roughly 2/3rd (66%) of the entire cost of supplying ADSL... before local and international network charges and profits are added.
- Service and uptime levels of the ADSL service is terrible and we aleady know that there is significant overloading and 'out-of-date' hardware in many exchanges.
- Why are the industry not launching PR campaigns and marketing campaign to actually hit the one major cause of the issue here?
Surely getting this campaign together, backed by the ISPs, Tier 1's and customers we can make a change? It's almost like there is no backbone or fight left in the industry.
Forget how much people can download and concentrate on allowing better performance, better costs and more competition in to the bottleneck. Making more savings on the 33% of the 100% is really not going to effect tha tmuch anymore. It's time we focused on the whole pie.
Lack of knowledge is a terrible thing and it just allows the more 'low brow' of the industry managers to make massive generalisations to either sound good or just get a sound bite. The truth, is that noone yet knows what the average SA usage will be once the heavier users have gotten over the need to download 100's GBs.
The more important factor to me, which I really don't understand, is the apathy that surrounds the industry dealing with Telkom.
- Customer ADSL connections (including line) range from R250-R560 per month including a R1100 installation charge.
- Telkom then charge the bandwidth supplier IPC costs from R10k-R2.2k per 1Mbps per month.
- This equates, in most circumstances, to be roughly 2/3rd (66%) of the entire cost of supplying ADSL... before local and international network charges and profits are added.
- Service and uptime levels of the ADSL service is terrible and we aleady know that there is significant overloading and 'out-of-date' hardware in many exchanges.
- Why are the industry not launching PR campaigns and marketing campaign to actually hit the one major cause of the issue here?
Surely getting this campaign together, backed by the ISPs, Tier 1's and customers we can make a change? It's almost like there is no backbone or fight left in the industry.
Forget how much people can download and concentrate on allowing better performance, better costs and more competition in to the bottleneck. Making more savings on the 33% of the 100% is really not going to effect tha tmuch anymore. It's time we focused on the whole pie.
Last edited:
unskinnybob
Expert Member
Gian Visser doesn't offer uncapped, so in my humble opinion, he should STFU.
"Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter... "
These are the words of the Chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, in 1954! And since then people have come to realise that no matter how low the marginal cost of a resource gets, it is always above zero. So let's forget free bandwidth.
The fundamental problem for companies offering uncapped internet is that there are two very different categories of user who choose it:
1. Users who want to download thousands of gigabytes.
2. Users who don't want to worry about caps.
Category 1 users are looking for the lowest effective rates per gig. They buy the double espresso, pour it into a free large cup and then add the free frothed milk and squeeze some chocolate syrup into it while the barista isn't looking.
Category 2 users are price-insensitive and put a high value on convenience. They buy the grande white mocha with fair-trade beans and pay four times the price.
Price discrimination works great when you have a diverse customer base!
But for the smaller ISPs, I bet there are very few category 2 users to be found. Mweb on the other hand probably has thousands of them for every category 1 user. So Mweb can cross-subsidise its uncapped accounts much more aggressively than the rest, and thereby compete on service and price.
The result is a disturbing flood of users in every direction. It will take a while for the dust to settle. But in the long run it will work out in everyone's favour. Companies get to sell bandwidth for the highest price each customer is willing to pay; each customer gets to choose the product they want at the lowest price they can find in a highly competitive market.
These are the words of the Chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, in 1954! And since then people have come to realise that no matter how low the marginal cost of a resource gets, it is always above zero. So let's forget free bandwidth.
The fundamental problem for companies offering uncapped internet is that there are two very different categories of user who choose it:
1. Users who want to download thousands of gigabytes.
2. Users who don't want to worry about caps.
Category 1 users are looking for the lowest effective rates per gig. They buy the double espresso, pour it into a free large cup and then add the free frothed milk and squeeze some chocolate syrup into it while the barista isn't looking.
Category 2 users are price-insensitive and put a high value on convenience. They buy the grande white mocha with fair-trade beans and pay four times the price.
Price discrimination works great when you have a diverse customer base!
But for the smaller ISPs, I bet there are very few category 2 users to be found. Mweb on the other hand probably has thousands of them for every category 1 user. So Mweb can cross-subsidise its uncapped accounts much more aggressively than the rest, and thereby compete on service and price.
The result is a disturbing flood of users in every direction. It will take a while for the dust to settle. But in the long run it will work out in everyone's favour. Companies get to sell bandwidth for the highest price each customer is willing to pay; each customer gets to choose the product they want at the lowest price they can find in a highly competitive market.