OpenWeb Research

[lotus4052]

Excellent idea. I am already considering getting a capped account for daytime use and an uncapped after hours account like @lantic has. I am currently with Openweb and I may not have to switch ISP if you do this.

 

[MrBEEP]

Thank you so much for the comments.

I will be brainstorming further ideas today to see what we can come up with, if anything in this line.

I have a few other ideas which might work instead.

 

[Aquadyne]

I concur with DJ's remarks on this matter.

Personally I'd like to be able to "work" & browse during daytime if I happen to be @ home.

Your latest responses have finally cleared up as to why this is a problem.

Can I perhaps suggest that you run the "script" for checking downloading every 15, 20 or even 30 minutes and adjust it accordingly. An hour seems too long for those that just want to quickly pop in to do some emails, banking etc. And it seems punitive.

Just a thought.

 

[TEXTILE GUY]

On a different note, when I jumped ISP, I was a bit uncertain ... but posts like this are great to see and confirm I made the right move..

 

[FHTheron]

This sounds like something I would need, but still not take. I prefer a large capped account with simpler guarantees at all hours of the day. "Business hours" and "peak hours" are probably not quite the same thing and I doubt business hours are still a simple 9 to 5 for most people.

 

[bokka1]

That all depends on the price and if shaping after hours will affect my gaming experience.

 

[Messugga]

This sounds like something I would need, but still not take. I prefer a large capped account with simpler guarantees at all hours of the day. "Business hours" and "peak hours" are probably not quite the same thing and I doubt business hours are still a simple 9 to 5 for most people.

I'm sort of with you on this. A decently priced 200GB/300GB a month product that offers line speed data rates and little to no shaping would probably be a better proposition for me than the current uncapped gold account I am on. Effectively, 300GB/month would still be uncapped for me personally, as I doubt I use that much these days. Honestly though, I haven't actually checked my monthly bandwidth usage in months.

 

[unwired]

Sounds a bit like Web Africa's Red Africa promotional product, ie if a cap is introduced on the after hours portion.
I think it could work with a reasonable price point

 

[HavocXphere]

I'm sort of with you on this. A decently priced 200GB/300GB a month product that offers line speed data rates and little to no shaping would probably be a better proposition for me than the current uncapped gold account I am on. Effectively, 300GB/month would still be uncapped for me personally, as I doubt I use that much these days. Honestly though, I haven't actually checked my monthly bandwidth usage in months.

Not a chance in hell of that happening. Essentially you're proposing replacing shaped data with near unshaped data whilst imposing usage limits so high that for all intents they don't exist. You'd need to triple prices to make the numbers work.

 

[Budza]

I concur with DJ's remarks on this matter.

Personally I'd like to be able to "work" & browse during daytime if I happen to be @ home.

Your latest responses have finally cleared up as to why this is a problem.

Can I perhaps suggest that you run the "script" for checking downloading every 15, 20 or even 30 minutes and adjust it accordingly. An hour seems too long for those that just want to quickly pop in to do some emails, banking etc. And it seems punitive.

Just a thought.

Here we go.

The fact that shaping also affects browsing isn't great- if that were 'fixed' to 'shape correctly' whereby browsing is not affected but downloads are, there wouldn't be the same complaints.

From the OW Feedback thread, it emerged the line between browsing and downloading is pretty murky...

What about VPNs? If I connect to my office VPN, that seems pretty slow too- does that also fall into the 'downloading' catch all category?

As I've said before, my current solution is to dial a smaller capped Telkom/FNB account when needed during the day- trying to use the OW one, even with downloads off just doesn't work. If I knew I had to turn downloads off 15min before being able to use the OW account, that might make it more usable as a solution during the day.

 

[agentrfr]

Alternative idea: Keep the uncapped packages as is, but allocate like 50mb of unshaped data to each package per day during day time. For the light users this will improve the browsing experience while the heavy users will smoke through the 50mb in 2 minutes flat & then hit the usual shaping wall.

THIS.

 

[Chevron]

Why not have a turbo button like afrihost? You get like 4 or 5 times a month where you can "turbo" and get unshaped for an hour.

 

[HavocXphere]

Why not have a turbo button like afrihost? You get like 4 or 5 times a month where you can "turbo" and get unshaped for an hour.

Extra hassle.

 

[Chevron]

Extra hassle.

Less than the OP suggestion. and less than changing to a capped account every time you need to do something.

I think it's the perfect solution for those that can't afford a decent uncapped account.

I don't have any of those problems on GOLD.

 

[lestoran]

Personally I have been waiting for an account like this and would jump on it if performance is good.

I download only after hours and during the day require an unshaped connection for VPN, FTP and general browsing.

So yeah, thumbs up here.