Uncapped ADSL: True pricing and service levels

Interestingly the article fails to answer the question it poses itself in the first paragraph "do you get what you paid for" .. perhaps it would have been a better article with an uncapped poll results for different ISP's , and some feedback from users .. so people can see the kinds of shaping and throttling taking place ... ??

Also .. I thought these products (1Mbps ISP Connections) where asynchronous .. isnt it max 1Mb/s up and 1Mb/s down (at the same time) ??? If this is true .. then the real cost is closer to 11 per gig ... but Im not sure .. could someone clarify ??
 
At this point the one or ten users who are happy and claim good service doesn't matter since there are just as many (or more) users complaining about severe service decreases (I say service to include any part of the whole ADSL experience here). If the ISPs will absolutely and clearly explain and state the fair usage rules and what you need to do to be a good user and guarantee yourself good service levels, I would consider this kind of uncapped access. Until then, when I need to join a VOIP meeting at 19:00 or so when the network is cringing and my ISP decides I should be throttled then and there, I won't be very happy. I suppose it all comes down to whether or not you want a lot of traffic or just want the little you use to be really reliable (which, I suppose, is a fairly obvious statement around here).
 
I was honestly horrified when suddenly my 384k connection was throttled to between 4-8k MAX......Not what I expected & Not what I paid 4............ISP's make make the statement CLEAR about throttling & shaping in big writing, not in some other place that you have to go read through to discover later.....
 
Edinetz said:
Why does an ISP pay Telkom for the IPConnect service. I mean that is what the ADSL line rental is for - to provide you the service and path to connect you to your ISP. Clearly Telkom is making money by double charging the consumer and ISP (and telephone line too) - your ADSL line charge is not just to connect you to Telkom.
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I might have the cat by the tail but I thought most of the ISP's (well afrihost that I'm with at least) were running the uncapped service through IS. Is the IS service at the end of the day just a product purchased from Telkom?
 
I see a few threads here about people complaining about being throttled etc., but it will be helpfull if they state which ISP. I does not help to generalise if some ISP perform very well (by managing theire shaping etc) and others throttle to death
 
I'm happy with Mweb's product. I'm on the 4mb uncapped and I've downloaded about 60gig since the 1st of April, and that's only downloading afterhours. I switch my PC off when I go to work so I'm not too worried about service levels during the day. I expect doing about 100GB this month and then, as expected, not having a lot left to download, I'll probably do around 30/40GB next month and every month after that.
 
informative article! from the responses mweb seem to, despite their terms of use, provide a customer centric product.
looking forward to moving over promptly :>
 
Quite Frankly I disagree. Mweb has advertise these uncapped products during prime times on tv. We don't know how many people has signed up for the uncapped.

I bet there will be at least 200 that either switch the internet or pc off at night. I bet that 50% of the 200 simply just twitter/facebook ect ect.

We need to find out how many uncapped accounts Mweb has sold and how much currently the Average Usage per person is. Until we know this fact all the claims we make is merely speculation.
 
Why are the comments and criticism so general. I think there should honestly be an article giving some of the facts of the worst host of them all right now. Afrihost. Their throttling and shaping deception is far worse than anything else I have read or heard. My 384 connection is completely worthless. Shaped to around 6kb/s and no longer downloads anything from a torrent or newsgroup even if left on for 24 hours. It is shameful.
 
Not to step on anyone's toes, but if everyone would just download realistic amounts then we wont have poor service levels. There is no need to go above 100Gb every single month.
 
THEX said:
Not to step on anyone's toes, but if everyone would just download realistic amounts then we wont have poor service levels. There is no need to go above 100Gb every single month.
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Yes, but with afrihost, the limit is 15gb!
 
jetlee said:
Also .. I thought these products (1Mbps ISP Connections) where asynchronous .. isnt it max 1Mb/s up and 1Mb/s down (at the same time) ??? If this is true .. then the real cost is closer to 11 per gig ... but Im not sure .. could someone clarify ??
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AFAIK, asynchronous refers to timing of up- and download data, meaning that you can up- and download at the same time. They're not at the same speed, though (i.e. asymmetrical). To the best of my knowledge, current upload speeds are 128Kbps on a 384Kbps link, 256kbps on 256Kbps, and 512Kbps on 4Mbps. From a cost point of view, ISPs also charge (and get charged) for both up- and download data usage.
 
THEX said:
Not to step on anyone's toes, but if everyone would just download realistic amounts then we wont have poor service levels. There is no need to go above 100Gb every single month.
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There is no need for uncapped accounts then...
 
Wasn't there something on Telkom Internet some years ago about when you pass your 3GB (or whatever you have) you have continued access on a slow 64kbps (but international) line? Sounds like exactly what everyone is now calling uncapped, but at least back then this 64kbps thing was not marketed as uncapped.
 
THEX said:
Not to step on anyone's toes, but if everyone would just download realistic amounts then we wont have poor service levels. There is no need to go above 100Gb every single month.
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I agree, I think the biggest problem is that most people want to push the ISP's offerings to the limits and download a majority of crap they don't need. Usually the biggest downloading is illegal anyway, so I have no sympathy for those complaining that they get throttled or shaped. If people actually paid for the product they were downloading, they probably would drop their usage dramatically.

I can't wait to get my MWEB subscription (based on all the good hype I've read / heard) and when I do I'm sure I too will download to test the line, but probably only for one weekend coz as with everything, in time the novelty wears off.
 
I changed my Mweb email account to uncapped (and dropped my Internet access) almost from get go
I have a 512meg link and thus far reasonably happy (I now notice that my access is more a question of line speed rather than cap). So far this month done 19Gig of useage. And now I have very little else to download unless I start running torrents. Must say though I am using the "internet" far more than I used to (in capped days ran around 7-9Gig per month) and the freedom of this uncapped service is great. The greatest frustration now is purely due to line speed limitations where if I run a download and mail and newsgroups I clearly see throughput issues which I suspect are due to line speed.

Download speeds during peak periods (around 20-25KB) are slower than early morning (around 50-55KB). Not tried it during "working hours"
 
I have a 4mb Mweb account (R899 - adsl rental included), during the day torrent downloads drop to 50kb/s which suites me as everyone else in the office would complains about internet speed if it was higher. During the weekend (5am) I saw 170Kb/s download speed. Mweb use the seacom cable and Mweb caught all the other ISP's off guard. They are are the only ones managing the throttling, and so far doing a good job. Once the early adopters get there fix of downloads, including myself I will probably only download when I need it, stopping me making a pig of myself, dropping my 50GB to 30GB usage a month then things will stabilize. To be honest the novelty has already gone and I am already starting to use the internet just for business just not having to worry about reaching my cap.
 
I don't see why people are getting upset about these accounts. It was abundantly clear from the start by reading the terms and conditions that this was the way it was going to be. It didn't take a degree in criminal forensics to figure out from the posted policies that these accounts were not suitable for heavy downloading. That is why many of us warned people back then and why we took exception with the usage of the term uncapped. But still, if you dived into one of these accounts hoping to pull several hundred gigs a month... you only have yourself to blame for not reading properly.

I still wish the ISPs would come up with a better product name for these accounts though.
 
cavedog said:
We need to find out how many uncapped accounts Mweb has sold and how much currently the Average Usage per person is. Until we know this fact all the claims we make is merely speculation.
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Wouldn't we all love to know that. That sort of is highly confidential, and I bet only a handful of people at MWeb know those figures. Good luck on trying to find that out.
 
internetless said:
AFAIK, asynchronous refers to timing of up- and download data, meaning that you can up- and download at the same time. They're not at the same speed, though (i.e. asymmetrical). To the best of my knowledge, current upload speeds are 128Kbps on a 384Kbps link, 256kbps on 256Kbps, and 512Kbps on 4Mbps. From a cost point of view, ISPs also charge (and get charged) for both up- and download data usage.
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Agreed .. but on my 384 I can download at 40kB/s while uploading at 11kB/s .. and ISP's dont get charged per mbit .. which means that if the lines behave the same as ADSL then the theoretical max is actually twice what is quoted in the article, and therefore a gross misrepresentation of the cost ...
 
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