I really don't like how they advertise the product, they make it seem as if it's for the extremely basic user who will use 10GB a month and if you want more, then they "recommend using one of our Standard Uncapped accounts instead" . Nice website though
Hi Natedogg,
Thank you for the kudos with regards to our website.
Regarding the manner in which we are marketing the new product...
Nexus ISP prides itself on being an affordable, yet
reliable ISP and it is with this in mind that we feel obliged to be honest with our customers and not to mislead them into believing that these new accounts are something other than what they were in fact designed for, an affordable yet basic uncapped service.
These accounts are a fantastic option for home users (and even small businesses) who have previously been using cap accounts and finding themselves often exceeding their monthly budgets. The accounts will certainly reduce overall monthly internet costs for most and are thus a suitable replacement for customers using more than 3GB-5GB per month for general internet usage, such as web browsing, emailing and of course http/ftp downloads.
Our concern is however the vast amount of existing uncapped users who have already become accustomed to their existing accounts performance and benefits perhaps being misled into believing that these new accounts are an identical product yet at a fraction of the cost - which is not the case, these products are slightly different. It may be the case that they will be perfectly suitable to some existing uncapped users while simply not an option for others.
Without going into too much technical depth, let me try and explain...
Essentially these accounts have been created out of consumer demand for a cheaper uncapped product, while at the same time ISPs/Tier-1 providers have not been able to attain any significantly cheaper cost prices. In truth, besides the recent cost benefits from the newly launched SEACOM cable, Telkom still holds every ISP (and all Tier-1 providers) in their vice grip in terms of their
extremely exorbitant costs for IPConnect and Local Transit, which are mandatory to provision ADSL and thus allows Telkom to dictate whatever price they see fit. In most cases the Telkom IPC link costs more than the actual transit!
Given the fact that Telkom has not lowered these prices for quite some time (or at least not significantly), the ADSL Cost landscape has not changed all that much from an ISP or Tier-1 operator's perspective (at least not to the level where they are able to provide these prices without some type of trade-off - performance) as they are still having to fork out the same insanely high costs to the likes of Telkom in order provision these accounts.
That said, in order to then provide a "cheap" uncapped service, while still having to pay the same or similar costs prices, one can only achieve this by employing higher contention ratios and more aggressive shaping (at least for now). Leaving you with a fantastically cheap uncapped service (which is great for the average home user) but in truth is inferior to what was (and still is) currently available for "power users".
This is why we have listed these different uncapped services as "Home Uncapped", "Standard Uncapped" and "Business Uncapped" and have not simply done away with our existing bouquet of uncapped offerings - providing customers with choice is a key element to any business. We definitely feel that there is still much more room for improvement on the prices of the existing "Standard" and "Business" services and are constantly pushing for further reductions on these products, especially now that the gap is so wide between them.
Interestingly, many a discussion has recently taken place between different (vocal) ISPs through our industry body, the ISPA, in that many of us feel it may be of immense consumer benefit for some type of "ADSL Grading" or "Standardising" system to be put in place by the ISPA. Where the different bandwidth options should be graded, for example "bronze", "silver", "gold" and "platinum" based on performance, latency etc. Naturally however you can imagine that certain players are vehemently opposed to such a move.
Regarding price and the future of broadband in SA, the recent events are certainly a step in the right direction, but at the end of the day the BIG changes will only come into effect when the backbone providers begin price wars amongst themselves, rather than leaving it to the ISPs on their own.
I have no doubt however that with local loop unbundling, the landing of several more international transit cables in the near future and with other network operators beginning to lay their own national fibre networks for local transit that Telkom will eventually be left with no alternative but to join the price war (or fizzle away) and when this starts TRUE affordable broadband will finally arrive.
