MWEB Uncapped ADSL Feedback - Part 2

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From the My Broadband article:
Responding to a specific query from a forum member that we put to him, Hershaw said that streaming movies on a regular basis “is not going to be a problem.”
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From the comments on said article:
not all heavy users are pirates. I use between 250 - 400 Gb each month streaming from Netflix and Hulu
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Though I suppose Mweb Guy will next ask whether this user received an "email pertaining to AUP", or perhaps Mweb is upset that this user is not using the crappy streaming service offered by their sister company?

Mweb is also showing just how out of sync they are with what typical users do on the Internet (I'm talking of true Internet users, not Granny Smith who only downloads her email, checks her Facebook, and browsers recipe.com):

...These are just three channels' videos which I watch frequently, most at 720p since they often contain small, hard-to-read text or details that you need to be able to see. A single 1h20min presentation at 480p can easily come in at 1gb, while a 720p version can easily exceed 2gb. Watch at least 5 hours of 720p video per user per month and 10 hours of 480p footage per user per month? That's 18gb/month right there.

Farmville, for a single user, can rack up over 10gb in a month on its own. That's a minimum figure.

Browsing photos on a site like 500px, 1x, Flickr or the like can easily chew up 1-3mb per item you view - multiply that by 100 a day on average and you're already using 3-9gb or more a month.

Internet radio streaming at 128kbps? Do so for an average of at least 8 hours a day every day? 10gb right there for a single user.

Considering the people that use our connection, without doing anything else (aside from general browsing), this correlates to the minimum of 74gb or so we use in a month. That's without illegal downloads of any sort.
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Ignore illegal downloads, and rather assume that said user is also into gaming - download a new game from Steam, or updates, or just play online games frequently - what does that translate to in a month? We really shouldn't be holding our breath for Netflix to launch in South Africa anywhere in the next 20 years because local Internet users will be too afraid to use them, what with vague AUPs and all that.
 
Hi Mweb Guy

I have not, but i also do not want to live in fear that i will be throttled just for using my ADSL line, which i pay you for each month. I would like to know if i can continue using my ADSL line like i have without being throttled, or do i need to look for someone else who is able to provide the service i pay you for
 
Lazy.Me said:
Hi Mweb Guy

I have not, but i also do not want to live in fear that i will be throttled just for using my ADSL line, which i pay you for each month. I would like to know if i can continue using my ADSL line like i have without being throttled, or do i need to look for someone else who is able to provide the service i pay you for
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Hi Lazy.me

I have had a look at your precious months usage and if you keep using your ADSL like you have then you do not have to worry about being affected by this.
 
Hi Mweb Guy. I have been reading all the other replies so i know you won't say anything helpful but i thought i would voice my displeasure anyway. I have been a loyal customer since April 2010, and going by the average usage for the last 12 months i use between 45 and 120Gbs, averaging at 88. Which is well below the amount i *could* use on the line if i was to "leave my connection running all day (downloading heavy content)" And as i have *never before* received any kind of warning before this email just makes it an even bigger slap in the face.

Now unless you will (we all know you can) provide a basic guideline for what would be qualified as "acceptable" amount of data on an "uncapped" account, then i too will be cancelling with you, and encouraging all my clients to cancel too on principle.
Somewhere above you said that the kind of "abuse" would be considered such by any ips in the "uncapped" market, then if you "can't" answer how much we "should" be using, why not ask some of your competitors?

Because while we are stuck with Eskom and Telkom, we are not stuck with you!
 
MWEB said:
...At no stage will there be any throttling of a customer's service based on consumption.
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The above quote was stated a couple a of years back about the MWEB Uncapped service offering. This was wholeheartedly backed by Rudi Jansen. It seems now that he is gone this no longer is the case...I'm sad to say it but MWEB have lost the plot. We're paying for a "Premium Uncapped" service but they are going to start throttling us like we're on the basic uncapped package. I don't see the difference now...
 
Lord-Flame13 said:
Hi Mweb Guy. I have been reading all the other replies so i know you won't say anything helpful but i thought i would voice my displeasure anyway. I have been a loyal customer since April 2010, and going by the average usage for the last 12 months i use between 45 and 120Gbs, averaging at 88. Which is well below the amount i *could* use on the line if i was to "leave my connection running all day (downloading heavy content)" And as i have *never before* received any kind of warning before this email just makes it an even bigger slap in the face.

Now unless you will (we all know you can) provide a basic guideline for what would be qualified as "acceptable" amount of data on an "uncapped" account, then i too will be cancelling with you, and encouraging all my clients to cancel too on principle.
Somewhere above you said that the kind of "abuse" would be considered such by any ips in the "uncapped" market, then if you "can't" answer how much we "should" be using, why not ask some of your competitors?

Because while we are stuck with Eskom and Telkom, we are not stuck with you!
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Good Morning Lord-Flame13, I understand and hear your point regarding the clear guidelines.

Unfortunately I cannot provide you any thresholds.

I would implore you to use the account during the month of September to gain a better understanding of how the changes will be affecting you.
 
KaMoS said:
The above quote was stated a couple a of years back about the MWEB Uncapped service offering. This was wholeheartedly backed by Rudi Jansen. It seems now that he is gone this no longer is the case...I'm sad to say it but MWEB have lost the plot. We're paying for a "Premium Uncapped" service but they are going to start throttling us like we're on the basic uncapped package. I don't see the difference now...
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Good Day, I understand that we made the statement we would not throttle. The throttling being put in place on the shaping premium product, will only affect the clients abusing our network. If you stay within acceptable parameters, this will not affect you.

Our premium products have more relaxed speed limits and these will only be applied when usage reaches levels which we deem to be abusive. The parameters for bandwidth management are more lenient on our Premium Products and will only affect a very small percentage of our customers.
 
Request No 2 (Aug 10)

Morning Mweb Guy

Can you please post the cancellation procedures and forms on this thread as an attachment.

Really appreciated
 
MWEB Guy said:
Good Morning Lord-Flame13, I understand and hear your point regarding the clear guidelines.

Unfortunately I cannot provide you any thresholds.

I would implore you to use the account during the month of September to gain a better understanding of how the changes will be affecting you.
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Thank you for proving my second sentence correct, about not providing a helpful answer, or even answering any of my questions for that matter.
 
Krypty said:
Request No 2 (Aug 10)

Morning Mweb Guy

Can you please post the cancellation procedures and forms on this thread as an attachment.

Really appreciated
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Good Morning Krypty, I can provide you the cancellation form via email if you require.

Standard cancellation process would apply, if you submit a cancellation request this month. Your account would be cancelled for the end of September.
 
MWEB Guy said:
Good Morning Krypty, I can provide you the cancellation form via email if you require.

Standard cancellation process would apply, if you submit a cancellation request this month. Your account would be cancelled for the end of September.
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Not the case - breach of contract - no matter what Mweb maintains. Their terms of service have changed with inadequate notice. I would not be bullied into paying for September - a clear case for CPA, ISPA, ICASA and ASA. If you are on bundle, insist on your line be transferred back to Telkom and move off Mweb before the end of the month. Read between the lines and you see that Mweb stance is not changing.

I am still failing to see how you can call a product Uncapped (subject to AUP) and then cap it. Clearly this is false advertising with the intention to confuse customers. An uncapped product should be uncapped. Based on your feedback you have parameters in place where once a threshold (read "cap") has been reached you will decrease the level of service. As such YOUR uncapped product is really a capped product.

BTW: Please inform your call-center, that CPA very well applies to your business and your AUP is not safeguarding you at all from any consequences arising out of complaints to industry- and consumer bodies. Still waiting for acknowledgement on my cancellation request from Mweb.... tick tock...
 
Bit of a throw away statement, but if 3% can severely impact 97%, i question the contention ratio of Mweb's services (which I assumed was 20:1)... as well as the measures put in place to balance network load.

It just doesn't make sense... "Heavy-usage" protocols such as NNTP and torrents are shaped (surely)? So when network demand increases, surely file transfer protocols get shaped to ****, and gran and gramps can use their HTTP and gmail?

I call (and echo those before me) that call BS. The only way this starts making sense is when you start looking at contention ratios of more than like 30:1 - which I'd hardly call a "premium" product.
 
JustinB said:
Bit of a throw away statement, but if 3% can severely impact 97%, i question the contention ratio of Mweb's services (which I assumed was 20:1)... as well as the measures put in place to balance network load.

It just doesn't make sense... "Heavy-usage" protocols such as NNTP and torrents are shaped (surely)? So when network demand increases, surely file transfer protocols get shaped to ****, and gran and gramps can use their HTTP and gmail?

I call (and echo those before me) that call BS. The only way this starts making sense is when you start looking at contention ratios of more than like 30:1 - which I'd hardly call a "premium" product.
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Good Morning, clients have become very savvy in the way they obtain line speeds. Bypassing shaping has become all to easy.
 
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If you stay within acceptable parameters
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Do you actually understand how absurd a statement this is when you don't actually state what acceptable is? I doubt it, otherwise you would not keep repeating it ad nauseum. I also note that you never respond to any comments regarding the unacceptability of you requiring a calendar months notice, when you yourself never gave a calendar months notice of the enforcement of your AUP AND removal of the throttling statement from your marketing material.
 
I understand shaping people who get close to the theoretical limit of data transfer for their lines (implies 24/7 downloads and abuse which is understandable)
anyone below 85% or so of that limit should not be "managed" in anyway.

Eg. A 1mb line can theoretically achieve around 240gb a month with no restrictions and 24/7 downloads. So anyone that goes over 210 can be shaped or whatever. This would be a good policy. Abuse will be controlled.

But I think MWEB has too many customers for its capacity and is reluctant to increase it to save cost which is really stupid since they have such a large parent company. These smaller isp's are performing much better with cheaper prices even though their customer base is not as big. Which means management and efficiency is terrible at MWEB and it's only downhill from here if it continues
 
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MWEB Guy said:
Good Morning, clients have become very savvy in the way they obtain line speeds. Bypassing shaping has become all to easy.
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So, certain users bypass your rules and now you SCREW everyone over?
Listen, you have started nailing ME long ago, but I'm okay with it, during the day, my speeds were, what... 30 to 50KB/s on News Servers... I had no problem with that, then at night, after say 10pm, it picks up and what, I get 80 to 100KB/s and I was happy with that till about 7am or so the following morning.

Now, you think, since you can change your FUP, AUP and T&C's whenever you bloody feel like it, that 5KB/s is acceptable for 90% of the day... I dare you to come out of your little hot seat, come sit on this side of the page (as a normal user) and tell me that is bloody acceptable!!!!!!!

Oh, and yes, I screwed over your rules too... I DOWNGRADED from a 10MB to a 1MB... yes... because on my 10MB, I was getting under 100KB/s 90% of the time... so why pay extra for bugger all! And now that I did that, you want to nail me even more... stuff that!

**PS: Can you sense I'm royally ticked off?! :mad:
 
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Mweb guy you made the statement to get the customers like me sign up for the service. This surely is false advertisement on your part. I would like to know whether you think us all idiots? I for one will definitely cancel as I have already done with your sister company DSTV out of principle. If every single subscriber that got this email cancel it will send other every ISP out there a massage that they cannot promise a service and then make a about turn whenever it suits them.
 
MWEB Guy said:
Hi Lazy.me

I have had a look at your precious months usage and if you keep using your ADSL like you have then you do not have to worry about being affected by this.
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And how do you know that without knowing the threshold?
 
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