Time for a wake-up call....

[Jade Chen]

"Abuse" of one's connection is an ARTIFICIAL term invented by South African ISP's to shift blame away from the second-rate services they offer (specifically the concept of shaped and unshaped services). I have lived and worked in several countries around the world and have used fantastic broadband internet that was much faster than most of what SA ISP's can offer, at lower prices, and have met many people from many different countries and guess what? NONE of them have ever heard of the term "shaped" or "unshaped" or "abuse" regarding internet services. They also haven't heard of a condition whereby one has to buy slivers of (overpriced) internet time (essentially the "capped" and "uncapped" concepts SA uses), they have all always been familiar with "always-on", "uncapped" internet.

That illustrates how far behind SA has been ( and still is) in the ISP industry. There is no excuse: if SA really wants to be a player on the international scene it needs to have an internet service that matches those available in so-called 1st-world countries.

MWEB's "uncapped" service is a good (yet overdue) start but the silliness of "shaped" and "unshaped" concepts needs to stop. Time to wake up and join the big boys out there, South Africa!

 

[Dan C]

Firstly take a look at population and area size of our country.. then you will realise why.. pretty simple.

 

[TonyA]

High density large population enables cheap high speed always on internet, small widely dispersed population negates this type of connection.

 

[who.is.michael]

In full agreement with the OP.

 

[bekdik]

There are packages offering what you want. Al you have to do is pay the price.

 

[detritus]

Oh look, this discussion again.

 

[Srack0verflow]

The concept of a 'cap' is no longer as isolated as OP thinks. it started showing up everywhere, America, even Canada, to name but a few. furthermore, i recently read through a British ISP's AUP that claims unlimited downloads, but they state clearly that a hardcap is placed on the upsteam. as the only download that does not generate overhead is best effort streaming (like DSTV), downloads can't be unlimited.

shaping has also been around quite a while, only back then it was called 'throttling'

 

[Jagtiger]

The concept of a 'cap' is no longer as isolated as OP thinks. it started showing up everywhere, America, even Canada, to name but a few. furthermore, i recently read through a British ISP's AUP that claims unlimited downloads, but they state clearly that a hardcap is placed on the upsteam. as the only download that does not generate overhead is best effort streaming (like DSTV), downloads can't be unlimited.

shaping has also been around quite a while, only back then it was called 'throttling'

Agree.
Done some of my own research around about other countries' internet. Shaping/throttling always existed, limit is also is known.

Remember 50Mbps Virgin Media broadband service from UK? It is shaped (many users complained about slow access to services like Steam, etc). It is monitored for "abuse" (in their T&C).
There are serious problems to find uncapped in Canada. If an ADSL exchange/provider found that supports area where your residence located, only up to 5Mbps (maybe a bit more by 1-2Mbps) for a hefty price. Otherwise, caps about 50GB-200GB on cable offerings.
In USA, Comcast uses limits (as they announced a while ago). Their T&C say 250GB.
And so on.

Oh, another thing to remind: if somehow copyright infringement letter arrives (no matter, if PeerBlock/whatever was used), provider discontinues service provided. Here, in SA, no one gives a thing about it.

With stuff like that, I begin thinking that SA broadband no so bad after all.

 

[Stevie G]

Telkom have been hibernation for the past 1000 years. i doubt they will ever wake up. The world will end and Telkom won't even know whats happened around them.