Rudi Jansen - The man who gave South Africa affordable uncapped broadband

rpm

rpm

Admin
Staff member
Joined
Jul 22, 2003
Messages
66,772
Reaction score
5,002
Location
Johannesburg
The man who gave South Africa affordable uncapped broadband

Rudi Jansen is one of South Africa’s Internet pioneers. He was a founding member of MWEB, helped with Naspers’ acquisition of Tencent Holdings, and was behind the drive which enabled open peering between all networks in the country. His biggest achievement, however, was to bring affordable broadband to South Africans.

Here is the full interview with Rudi about launching affordable uncapped broadband in South Africa.

Rudi Jansen_800.jpg
 
Last edited:
When did you first think it was possible to launch an affordable uncapped ADSL service?

About 2 years before the launch we started with the POLKA brand to develop a technical solution based on the Telkom IPC product to provision our on local and International bandwidth for our ADSL customers. It became clear at that stage that there are better solutions than simply buying a set product from Telkom and then selling it on to our subscribers.

We also had to kick-start MWEB’s growth again as there were little product differentiation, as most ISP’s were just selling a Telkom product. Basically everybody was competing on price and that is a road to no-where. So we had to come up with a plan.

Uncapped was a challenge I set the management team to see if we could really differentiate ourselves. It ended up being one of the most exciting projects within MWEB and it really got the entire organisation focussed. It was a wonderful period in the MWEB history.
 
Affordable uncapped was unheard of before MWEB launched it in March 2010. What were your biggest hurdles to develop an affordable uncapped offering at that time?

There were lots. As you say nobody believed in it and everybody said it could not be done. The biggest hurdle was for MWEB to build our own national and international network in a short time frame, which was previously outsourced almost entirely to Telkom and Internet Solutions. We went from no network to one of the biggest networks in a space of 4 months.

We had to find a way to get affordable international bandwidth into the network. This was actually made easy with Seacom being a fantastic partner. They could see the opportunity to sell lots of bandwidth early on and they helped us with some innovative solutions.

We also had to order large amounts of IPC bandwidth from Telkom, which takes a long time to build. Also had to do some interesting moves to ensure Telkom did not find out what we were up to. Keeping everything quiet and a secret was very difficult but we managed it and caught the industry by surprise.

Then there were the whole peering issue and the fact that nobody wanted to peer with MWEB locally. It was easier to get peering in Europe than in South Africa. The network providers were very protective of their networks and peering was seen as only for the few. Nobody wanted to open up as they thought their own growth will stop and they charged a fortune for transit between networks.
 
How did you convince the board that it is a good idea, and that you will not lose millions each month?

MWEB had a fantastic board, and with the bigger group in South Africa being all about content, it was easy to see that for content to be made more available the capped internet world could not be sustained. The international trends of free open networks made this selling job a lot easier.
 
What did other ISP CEOs say to you after you launched this product?

I think they all though we lost the plot and it made no sense to go this way. Most of the comments were around it not being sustainable, and it will never work. A few though it was just a marketing stunt.

I was also interesting to follow the media and the forums. The users were very critical and managed to get us to change a number of network issues.
 
Did the industry change as you expected after this launch?

It certainly did. I think it changed more than I hoped for at that stage. It really made gaming more enjoyable, online streaming became a real possibility. Facebook usage picked up, content consumption in general increased and people even started shopping a lot more online. We lagged the world in our internet economy, and uncapped made us catch-up just a little.
 
You proved many people wrong who predicted it was not sustainable and uncapped will die. What made you so certain that uncapped was here to stay?

The world was changing. If you had an iPhone update it would take up half you cap for the month. You could not do your Microsoft updates. Netflix started its incredible growth in the US and to think we would not be able to watch it was just incomprehensible. We had to change and make proper intent possible. Metered internet has kept growth back, even in the dial-up days and the writing was on the wall.
 
You also made a big statement to say you will not pay for any peering after this launch. Can you explain why you have done it, and did it work out as expected?

If I remember correctly I said that at the MYBROADBAND conference!.

Everybody wanted to charge exorbitant rates to accept our traffic locally, and even charge us for accepting their traffic. It was simple, we had enough international bandwidth in the network and by routing the traffic to Europe and passing the network traffic over at the almost free peering links it just made economic sense. The plan was that the other networks will realise that it cost them more to accept our international traffic than simply peering locally and then start peering locally.

We started off by peering with whoever we could, big or small. That really upset the big guys and they started losing revenue early on. The more smaller players we added the better the entire South African internet experience got. Some bigger players were quick to react and some bigger ones took a long long time, but in the end they all came around. Today we have a more open peering regime, but more can be done.

Peering was a big win for the industry. MWEB also re-wrote the international peering strategies. An international peering expert even uses MWEB as a case study on how to change the peering landscape.
 
Looking back at what you achieved in 2010 and beyond, are there things you would have done differently knowing what you know now?

There are always things you can change. I think we should have built the network even bigger from day one. The demand was very high for the service, and with a bigger network we could have captured a lot more subscribers. But MWEB did well with the campaign and I am very proud of what was achieved by the entire MWEB team.
 
If you look at today’s fixed broadband market, do you think it is doing well, or are there areas where we can improve?

There is a lot that is happening with fibre so that is all moved in the right direction. We need a big shake-up in mobile broadband offerings, pricing, speed and terms of use need to change.
 
What have you being doing since you left MWEB?

I serve on a couple of boards as an independent director. One of them, Dark Fibre Africa, I enjoy a lot. It is a great company, some great people that work there and they also spearhead change in the industry. Nice to be still involved in the industry.

Other than that I have a partner and we have invested in some small start-ups. Its fun and more than just technology. And then the best part is I have more time to spend with the family.
 
Like all startups, its good for a year or two before it goes bust.
 
rpm said:
Affordable uncapped was unheard of before MWEB launched it in March 2010. What were your biggest hurdles to develop an affordable uncapped offering at that time?
Click to expand...
https://mybroadband.co.za/news/adsl/10622-uncapped-adsl-for-r300.html
Digichilli.
2009
Were they the first?
They were the first I recall.
Uncapped for R300 pm.

Newly launched Internet Service Provider DigiChilli has recently entered the South African market with aggressively priced uncapped ADSL services. The company initially launched three uncapped offerings, 256 Kbps, 512 Kbps and 1024 Kbps, priced at R500, R1000 and R3000 per month respectively.

Shortly after this announcement by DigiChilli the traditional WiMAX provider Screamer Telecoms launched their 384 Kbps unlimited ADSL service for R399 per month. Screamer Telecoms also launched an unlimited 512 Kbps service for R799 per month, an uncapped 1024 Kbps offering for R1499 and a 4 Mbps unlimited service for R2499 per month.

This week iBurst also announced new pricing on its wireless products. The broadband provider increased usage limits on its current packages and further launched 64 Kbps and 128 Kbps uncapped bolt on value-added services for R199 and R249 per month respectively.

DigiChilli has now hit back at the recent developments with a 256 Kbps uncapped ADSL service for R300 per month. Darren Smith, Managing Director of DigiChilli says, “We realized that there are a lot of people out there that need cheaper bandwidth and in keeping with our bandwidth-not-data model we’re releasing our lower cost uncapped package. We’ve priced it at R300 to make it as affordable as possible. It is exactly the same as our R500 product, except it only allows 1 concurrent connection.”

According to DigiChilli the service has no thresholds and no rolling download windows. Peer-2-Peer services and torrents are allowed on the network, but DigiChilli points out that this is a ‘managed service’ which means that business protocols will get priority on the network. “Network conditions will determine the speed of P2P and torrents,” said Smith.

“Unlike other uncapped products in the market, we don’t throttle our users and we allow them to use the full capacity on their line with a minimum speed Quality of Service,” Smith concluded.
Click to expand...
I wonder what Dave is up to these days...
 
rpm said:
Affordable uncapped was unheard of before MWEB launched it in March 2010.
Click to expand...
Erm, nope... IIRC we had that on the office ADSL account before 2010.. and I remember this clearly because I was off work for two weeks due to the birth of my son. We went that route because we kept running out of bandwidth and hitting hard cap. Of course it was business-only accounts.. and with another ISP.
 
LazyLion said:
Mweb might have helped to stir the pot, but they are far from the driving force behind this trend. It started long before them and it is going on without them.
Click to expand...

Yeah.. MWEB were merely on step in the road...
 
Yeah I hate this kind of article... one guy getting the credit for everything when clearly he was just a cog in the gearbox.
 
I'd hazard a guess that Mweb's hand was forced in the matter and that if the bug guns didn't do it, these smaller guys might still be in business.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter