MWEB - Message from CEO - Acceptable Use Policy

[SabreWolfy]

but why are they selevtively picking 4mb users out for not following the T&Cs? or are you saying no 384k users have bypassed the shaping?

Maybe none of the canceled 384kbps users have posted here, if there are any? Maybe MWeb has a "misuse threshold" based on the amount of data which is moved which is in contravention of the T&C and the time period? Both the MWeb rep. and the "misuse email" which someone posted here a while ago mentioned that MWeb was focusing attention on users who have been contravening the T&C for some extended period of time -- I can't remember the details. The MWeb rep also said that repeatedly moving hundreds of GB over a secure tunnel, etc. This suggests that they may look at usage patterns over 2 or 3 months. Given that, and that they are obviously looking at the "top" group of users, they may require that, for example, an average of 100GB or more is pulled through an encrypted tunnel per month for 3 months. 384kbps users would not be able to achieve that on average per month.

 

[Gordon_R]

but why are they selevtively picking 4mb users out for not following the T&Cs? or are you saying no 384k users have bypassed the shaping?

Cost per GB means that 'power users' on 384K lines are very unlikely to be a problem IMO. Why would anyone sign up for a VPN at $12 per month(?) if they could only use it on a 384K line? There may be some, but too few to bother chasing...

Maybe none of the canceled 384kbps users have posted here, if there are any? Maybe MWeb has a "misuse threshold" based on the amount of data which is moved which is in contravention of the T&C and the time period? Both the MWeb rep. and the "misuse email" which someone posted here a while ago mentioned that MWeb was focusing attention on users who have been contravening the T&C for some extended period of time -- I can't remember the details. The MWeb rep also said that repeatedly moving hundreds of GB over a secure tunnel, etc. This suggests that they may look at usage patterns over 2 or 3 months. Given that, and that they are obviously looking at the "top" group of users, they may require that, for example, an average of 100GB or more is pulled through an encrypted tunnel per month for 3 months. 384kbps users would not be able to achieve that on average per month.

I was thinking the same thing in different words - always go for the most obvious targets.

It's also hardly worth the time and effort to notify 12 times 384K users for each 4Mbps user.

 

[Necuno]

An interesting question is this:

RapidShare is in Germany. MU is in Hong Kong? And so on. South Africa is a member of the World Trade Organisation, it may be illegal or in breach of international treaties to even shape RS, MU, etc traffic because it unfairly discriminates against THOSE COMPANIES. What's more if MWEB does not shape DSTV downloads it also becomes a contentious issue.

Perhaps someone who is a lawyer could chime in on this aspect?

Definately it is something which could be brought against CUSTOMS (SARS) who discriminate against certain online stores by delaying their parcels more than others for example. AFAIK international treaties are binding by law (local law). If SA has a trade agreement with the EU and it is a free agreement, local businesses or government are not allowed to impede foreign companies.

dstv ondemand. more like sub-standard SD streams.

 

[Kosmik]

Not even then. Only if by agreement with RS et al.

If the customer aggrees to a shaped service and they know that service is shaped and they then utilise a foreign company, how is that discrimination by Mweb?

 

[Browser]

I know some ISP's have been slapped by the ASA for throttling accounts, as yet I've yet to see any ASA rulings regarding outright cancellatons. Any examples?

It was with SolMatrix who's fair usage policy threatened to "disable accounts for the remainder of the month" if "heavy downloading" occurred, also it's worth noting that they tried to hide behind their policy and they lost even before they actually canceled/disabled any accounts (that I know of). The conflict between their uncapped advertising and their policy of disabling/canceling due to "heavy downloading" was enough for the ASA to take action.

It looks like it was to long ago to access the ruling without having an account with the ASA site, though if you do a search of the site for solmatrix using a search engine you will find rulings where they refer to that ruling.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=solmatrix site:www.asasa.org.za

Here are some snippets of the references to the SolMatrix uncapped ruling...

In another matter under the reference SolMatrix / D I Wise & Another / 9956 (22 November 2007), the Directorate ruled that “… a hypothetical reasonable person confronted with a claim such as ‘uncapped’, would expect never to have his connection terminated.

In SolMatrix / D I Wise and Another / 9956 (22 November 2006), the Directorate considered complaints against a print advertisement providing uncapped data traffic. The complainants submitted that the term “uncapped” implied limitless access, but internet accounts had a bandwidth limit.

The Directorate ruled that as there were limitations attached to usage, such a service should not be referred to as “uncapped” and upheld the complaints.

They were forced to remove the advertisement and no longer had uncapped accounts after that because they refused to change the policy to be inline with an uncapped advertisement.

 

[SlowHands]

“The issue of our shaping policies has been raised a few times, and the question asked as to whether or not we throttle line speeds to curb downloads. I’d just like to clear this up for everyone. MWEB doesn’t throttle line speeds,” said Jansen.
http://mybroadband.co.za/news/adsl/13874-MWEB-Uncapped-ADSL-Acceptable-Use-Policy.html

Can somebody please explain shaping to me in plain english. When I check my usage per hour (using DU Meter) then I can CLEARLY see jumps or drops at specific hours. This tells me that on certain services (p2p) speed is definitely throttled. I always thought shaping only means that my download sits further back in the line, giving preference to "other" services (HTTP, FTP etc)

 

[PeterCH]

This is from MEGAUPLOADS site
In case your ISP forces your web connections to pass through a proxy server, your download connections may collide with someone else's even though you are using different computers with different IP addresses. Some ISPs enforce proxy use only for connections to port 80, so we offer two alternate ports (800 and 1723) that you may try. This will never work if your ISP assigns private (10.*, 172.16-31.*, 192.168.*) IP addresses or uses NAT.

FREE Mega Upload is restricted as to how much you can download. Sometimes free users find they have not been downloading but the download refuses to start claiming that they are busy downloading a file - i.e. their IP address is pulling a file. This happens when the ISP is behind a NAT and some other user is pulling a file using the same IP address. In that case MU (like RS) offer the option of selecting a different port as that may allow a download to actually happen and not speed it up.

I think MWEB needs to explicitly say in their ad, it's unrestricted internet but if you pull too much because their shaping is not so good or you were lucky or you happen to be privacy conscious - suck it up - this product is not for you. It is an account which is not truly uncapped as that would be LINE SPEED, HOSTING SERVER LOAD and NETWORK TRAFFIC limited account but limited by artificial means. We already have slow speeds in SA - 4Mb/sec is dog slow considering UK will soon be doing 100Mb/sec and parts of Asia Pacific have 1Gb/sec connections for 2 years now for domestic customers. To limit these accounts further shows how backward we still are.
At the same time we pay dearly for that LINE SPEED. R400 for a lousy DSL line? R400 is enough to pay for an unlimited hospital plan medical aid!

I think iBurst tried this stunt once - they had a 64kbps throttle after you reached your cap. Sometimes the throttle didn't kick in at all and people ended up doing 50-60GB on 1GB iBurst accounts. Other times people would DL 24/7 and pull 20GB per month (64k x 60 x 60 x 24 x 30). iBurst tried terminating the accounts of these users but someone reported them to ASASA and iBurst had to back down. They fixed their throttling system and untimately did away with the FREE unlimited 64K throttle.

 

[bierman]

ok got home and luckily its still on, still waiting for the disconnection, maybe they havent cutt me off because on moday after they called me, i decided to use mweb like i did axxess only staring the donwload @7pm till 7am, ut still think i'm better off with another ISP, even if we have to pay R200 more its still fine, its freedom to download from where and who u want that counts.

ok i stand corrected, got home and POW get a nice message when opening up my browser grom MWEB saying YOUR ACCOUNT HAS BEEN CANCELLED, stupid god dammm a$$ monkeys, and they say that the reason for the disconnection is that they suspect i was using a secure service to download and thus HAS TO BE a VPN and that is against their T&C's, so i say then F them and i hope they get nailed to the floor for pulling a stunt like this.

 

[PeterCH]

If the customer aggrees to a shaped service and they know that service is shaped and they then utilise a foreign company, how is that discrimination by Mweb?

MWEB may itself not discriminate against other companies. It doesn't matter if its customers like it or not. I am not a lawyer but if SA has a free trade agreement with say Germany, German government or companies may not hamper legitimate SA companies from doing business there and vice versa. When you shape RS you discourage users from using that service and viewing its banner ads or paying for the service.

The only legit way around it would be to shape all traffic equally.

 

[SlowHands]

I can't believe they would go so far and cancel your account purely based on suspicion alone...I think you must challenge them to PROVE it, and if they can't they must reactivate your account immediately.

 

[Kosmik]

MWEB may itself not discriminate against other companies. It doesn't matter if its customers like it or not. I am not a lawyer but if SA has a free trade agreement with say Germany, German government or companies may not hamper legitimate SA companies from doing business there and vice versa. When you shape RS you discourage users from using that service and viewing its banner ads or paying for the service.

Peter, your grasping at straws here, my friend. If Sony can supply me with a blu-ray player and blu-ray discs ( this being the international company ) and I go out and purchase a 32 inch TV only capable of displaying 720p , is the company I purchased the TV from at fault as I can't enjoy my blu-ray disk at its full quality of 1080p? Is the maker of the TV at fault? No, it is the consumer who settled for a lesser product, knowing that they would not be able to fully enjoy the same experiance if they had the money for the more expensive product.

It always boils down to choice.

 

[PeterCH]

Peter, your grasping at straws here, my friend. If Sony can supply me with a blu-ray player and blu-ray discs ( this being the international company ) and I go out and purchase a 32 inch TV only capable of displaying 720p , is the company I purchased the TV from at fault as I can't enjoy my blu-ray disk at its full quality of 1080p? Is the maker of the TV at fault? No, it is the consumer who settled for a lesser product, knowing that they would not be able to fully enjoy the same experiance if they had the money for the more expensive product.

It always boils down to choice.

Wrong analogy.

It's not whether the ISP shapes or not, it's whether it shapes some sites or not. Unless RS is an illegal site under SA or EU or German law they should as a business not be discriminated against, anymore so than ftp.symantec.com or www.microsoft.com. Even if the intent is not to discriminate against RS, the result is still the same.

Again I am not a lawyer and this is all hypothetical talk. The FTA between SA and EU may not even cover this and only involve certain industries. However, once SA signs a treaty, that treaty is law in SA. That's why ACTA will suck if SA signs it.

 

[killadoob]

Pete they can shape and do what they like buddy.

If you don't like it move to another provider. Fairly simple in my opinion.

 

[Buzz97]

Just reading the complaints on Hellopeter, only one MWEB client has posted there regarding being booted by MWEB. Real pitty and in usual MWEB bad client relations style they just forgot to comment. WOW what a great company. Misrepresenting their product charging clients then without notice just cancelling. Hopefully soon a better deal will surface and MWEB will watch all their customers move. MWEB - that generally happens when you give k@k service.

 

[PeterCH]

Pete they can shape and do what they like buddy.

If you don't like it move to another provider. Fairly simple in my opinion.

That depends on the law.

Heard about Microsoft and Europe?

I don't care either way but the reality may be that they are not allowed to shape some sites and not others. IANAL.

 

[SlowHands]

Pete they can shape and do what they like buddy.

If you don't like it move to another provider. Fairly simple in my opinion.

Hey Killa, if that's true then why should a customer give them "notice" when they want to cancel their account...if I was so unhappy to the point of canceling my account I would just go ahead and do it without giving a months notice...hell I won't even tell them I'd just cancel the debit order at the bank...I mean, it's my money, so I can do with it what I like...and if THEY don't like that they can go find customers elsewhere.

 

[SSung]

ok i stand corrected, got home and POW get a nice message when opening up my browser grom MWEB saying YOUR ACCOUNT HAS BEEN CANCELLED, stupid god dammm a$$ monkeys, and they say that the reason for the disconnection is that they suspect i was using a secure service to download and thus HAS TO BE a VPN and that is against their T&C's, so i say then F them and i hope they get nailed to the floor for pulling a stunt like this.

Sorry to hear that, dude.

Bad joke time: MWEB promised to "Free the Web!", so I guess you can consider yourself freed from the web, at least temporarily.

Seriously, I wouldn't take it lying down. The way I see it, strictly, is that MWEB have been deceptive from the start. The way I understand that the advertising board (ASA?) works is that anything uttered in public by an official from MWEB can be considered as advertising, and the CEO or whatever was quoted as saying that nobody would have their account terminated and that they are working to "international standards" etc. So that's a start, and I'm sure if you dig through the archives of the MWEB Q&A threads you should find some juicy morsels from the 'MWEB Operations' guy/s about how torrenting would be fine after hours, shaping only during peak hours etc.

Maybe some of the guy's who've been booted should band together and at least investigate what legal avenues may be open. Same goes for all the users who (like me) who feel that MWEB's shaping effectively amounts to a capped/throttled service.

 

[MWEBHelp]

Good evening ladies and gents

I see there has been quite a lot of debate regarding "the call". Please note that I limit my posts to clarifying specific issues from time to time if I feel that it can add some value. I'm also not going to discuss the specifics of individual customers who have been contacted regarding abuse, this is a matter between MWEB and the customer so please do not expect me to respond to questions about what customer X did, or didn’t do.

I would like to clarify a few points based on recent comments and re-emphasize some of my previous comments.

There is a lot of speculation going on about whether we are looking at a gigabyte limit, or some other such arbitrary rule to determine who is 'abusive'. Let me state again, we are looking at behaviour over an extended period of time and we are considering factors such as:

· repeated incidents of long periods of uninterrupted downloading at high speeds.
· the use of various techniques which allow vast amounts of traffic to be transferred at line, or near line speeds for extended periods of time.
This includes vpns and tunnelled http traffic from commercial seedbox services (thanks Venificus for describing the methods used by these services earlier).

Customers found to be making extensive use of ‘unshaping techniques’ will not be given a second chance.
These are the actions of an Internet savvy user who has gone to some lengths to optimize their downloading experience, not someone who stumbled on a faster way to download by pure chance.
These users are having a very real impact on the integrity of the network and service delivery to the vast majority of our customers is the first priority here.

This is not a process that is going to affect normal reasonable Internet users. The handful of people being affected by this know that they are pushing the envelope trying to continuously download as much as possible, as fast as possible. This isn’t what our shaped product was designed for and we quite simply cannot allow it be used in this way.

Kind Regards
MWEB Operations (Tech Manager)

 

[xrapidx]

... you forgot to add, "Even if you've been with us for many years, we won't accept your apology - and still tell you to bugger off.

 

[SabreWolfy]

Good evening ladies and gents

I see there has been quite a lot of debate regarding "the call". Please note that I limit my posts to clarifying specific issues from time to time if I feel that it can add some value. I'm also not going to discuss the specifics of individual customers who have been contacted regarding abuse, this is a matter between MWEB and the customer so please do not expect me to respond to questions about what customer X did, or didn’t do.

I would like to clarify a few points based on recent comments and re-emphasize some of my previous comments.

There is a lot of speculation going on about whether we are looking at a gigabyte limit, or some other such arbitrary rule to determine who is 'abusive'. Let me state again, we are looking at behaviour over an extended period of time and we are considering factors such as:

· repeated incidents of long periods of uninterrupted downloading at high speeds.
· the use of various techniques which allow vast amounts of traffic to be transferred at line, or near line speeds for extended periods of time.
This includes vpns and tunnelled http traffic from commercial seedbox services (thanks Venificus for describing the methods used by these services earlier).

Customers found to be making extensive use of ‘unshaping techniques’ will not be given a second chance.
These are the actions of an Internet savvy user who has gone to some lengths to optimize their downloading experience, not someone who stumbled on a faster way to download by pure chance.
These users are having a very real impact on the integrity of the network and service delivery to the vast majority of our customers is the first priority here.

This is not a process that is going to affect normal reasonable Internet users. The handful of people being affected by this know that they are pushing the envelope trying to continuously download as much as possible, as fast as possible. This isn’t what our shaped product was designed for and we quite simply cannot allow it be used in this way.

Kind Regards
MWEB Operations (Tech Manager)

Thanks for the update and details. I can't imagine how anyone can argue with anything you've said (that being said, we all know they'll try anyway). It all makes sense and is absolutely reasonable. Let's wait for the over-reactions and hysterics though. I like the idea that my ISP is constantly monitoring network performance and taking action to ensure that the 99.99% of regular, responsible users continue to receive the service THEY paid for.

(Anyone who wants to bleat "fanboi" now, can go and find a cactus.)