Web Africa pulls FreeZone for uncapped ADSL subscribers

[kdub]

+1 this really isn't the end of the world!

Dude I've been above my threshold for the better part of the time since this product was launched. I still download as much as I want. You're just looking for a reason to bitch. And I'm not giving you any more bait, peace out.

 

[Zewp]

Dude I've been above my threshold for the better part of the time since this product was launched. I still download as much as I want. You're just looking for a reason to bitch. And I'm not giving you any more bait, peace out.

Then why bitch about the bitchers? Why not just pass the thread by instead of coming in to insult the people who are complaining?

Also, see my edit to the previous post.

Also, I seem to have midread this part the first time

incorrectly accounting all usage as FreeZone,

Either way, I don't quite get it. FreeZone was broken back when I used a capped WA account as well.

 

[acrobat]

Dude I've been above my threshold for the better part of the time since this product was launched. I still download as much as I want. You're just looking for a reason to bitch. And I'm not giving you any more bait, peace out.

Joe, I have to agree with Graal, if you are a heavy gamer and play competitively you don't want the subjected to a line that might be throttled. If I was just downloading programs and multimedia I wouldn't care because latency is not an issue and I would agree with your statement. Steam is an important part of our gaming experience in the house, we have multiple computers and we mainly purchase through Steam. If you take into account that new games are now running >10GB downloads you can see that you will be eligible for throttling on the first day.

 

[acrobat]

The point we are making is we joined WA based on a criteria of requirements that they fulfil, and WA have changed the condition of the agreement.

 

[Stoner]

I can promise you guys that we're not removing FreeZone because of any abuse or the traffic being pushed through our network - that isn't the problem here. We are no longer offering this because of the fact that our accounting system wasn't working correctly.

As a company, we can't continue offering something that isn't working properly.

Jeff,

Just for interest sake. Why wasn't this tested before the uncapped accounts became available? It looks like the freezone feature was added to the uncapped accounts because people were complaining that large downloads like games from steam throttled them which I agree should not be the case.

I would have assumed this type of complaint would be made and should have been accounted for before implementing the freezone feature as a solution or quick fix to the problem.

Not being funny but just looks very unprofessional that this wasn't potentially expected and tested or should have been strictly not applied so that users can make a better decision if they want to use your uncapped product or not.

 

[Chevron]

Jez, I was literally about to sign up for a 1 meg line because it suited my downloading habits. Although R480pm isnt bad. Anybody have any other suggestions?

Openweb Gold. Definitely. Loving it.

 

[Vegeta]

As a company, we can't continue offering something that isn't working properly.

The Xbox 360 had the red ring of death problem but customers wanted 66MILLION of them!
I'm a WebAfrica Uncapped client I want FreeZone please it works perfectly fine for my steam downloads thank you. I assume you wont listen to an actual client...

 

[latro]

You are able to track the amount of uncapped subs that use the service, but not the traffic? If abuse is not the problem, i'd say it's time to upgrade WA's usage counter Jeff

 

[WAJeff]

Jeff,

Just for interest sake. Why wasn't this tested before the uncapped accounts became available? It looks like the freezone feature was added to the uncapped accounts because people were complaining that large downloads like games from steam throttled them which I agree should not be the case.

I would have assumed this type of complaint would be made and should have been accounted for before implementing the freezone feature as a solution or quick fix to the problem.

Not being funny but just looks very unprofessional that this wasn't potentially expected and tested or should have been strictly not applied so that users can make a better decision if they want to use your uncapped product or not.

I can agree with you on some points here Stoner.
To summarise, FreeZone was already available for our Capped accounts - so when we listened to the community and ran through a few days of planning to get FreeZone implemented onto our Uncapped products.

Because we had an existing framework for FreeZone, we weren't expecting the system to conflict so much with the way Uncapped is setup on our systems. Only later, when we spotted a trend with customers querying FreeZone allocated/ non-allocated usage did we discover an underlying bug in the system. It's because of this, we've decided to discontinue FreeZone for Uncapped. The additional of FreeZone to the Uncapped products didn't see a lot of exposure - as mentioned earlier, only 30 customers are using this feature, an extremely tiny overall percentage of the Uncapped customer base.

 

[WAJeff]

You are able to track the amount of uncapped subs that use the service, but not the traffic? If abuse is not the problem, i'd say it's time to upgrade WA's usage counter Jeff

We can track the amount of customers using FreeZone yes - it's tracked on an entirely different system. A review of sorting the problem out was looked into before we came to the decision but it proved not possible.

 

[burn]

Is the need for a ""freezone" on an uncapped product not indicative of a poor offering?

 

[Necuno]

Is the need for a ""freezone" on an uncapped product not indicative of a poor offering?

RollingWindows does that.

 

[Lounger]

Morning everyone,

First and foremost, I'd like to extend my personal apologies for two things.
1) We haven't yet sent out a notification to our customers, this is planned to go out at 9am this morning. The customers currently using FreeZone on our Uncapped products are only 30, which is a very small portion. I'm the first to admit, that having a public article published before we notify customers is definitely not the way to like to run things.

2) Initially, FreeZone was a good idea on our part as it was already a standard offering on our Capped packages. The accounting system that calculated FreeZone usage and allocates the traffic is an extremely complicated one - and does have conflicts with how our Uncapped packages work. It wasn't seen as fair to continue offering as for one month you may have 100% traffic towards Freezone, but other months FreeZone traffic would been seen on the normal usage.

Jeff, WebAfrica has had a problem with measuring how much data a customer uses for years. When I was on your capped service I was billed for using FreeZone and had to be refunded. Of course WA denied it at first. Then months later I read the same problem was still present.

This is just a similar manifestation of a very old problem. Surely, surely, surely there is someone employed there who can fix it after all this time?? Why not import someone who can fix it?

 

[waroop]

Wasn't Freezone added afterwards after so many folks asked for it on the discussion thread? I seem to remember some QQ about that shortly after the service was launched.

In which case they didn't plan on it / techs said up front that there's an issue with it, but PR wanted to satisfy the customers and expected Engineering to do magic. For some reason this isn't working so well, probably why it wasn't included in the first place.

Yup that's right Conack, Freezone was added after we launched the product, from many user requests. Nonetheless, we've let our customers down.

Its a classic case of under-delivering and over-promising , which we're whole-heartedly sorry for. We always want to give as much as we can to our customers, but unfortunately due to technical limitations, in this case, it was impossible for us to offer Freezone.

 

[Lounger]

Ok wait, so people are freaking out just because their Steam downloads will now be attributed to their thresholds IF you download outside of DL+ hours? Really? Do you guys ONLY use Steam? Is it THAT important? Had a look on the WAGE FTP and reeeeally not that many interesting stuff...

I use steam for games/gaming and last time I checked you only download/install a game once. And guess what? If you want to remove the game you can always download it again, without worrying about a cap, because it's UNCAPPED

In any case, exclusion of freezone doesn't make any difference to the line speed/line quality/amount I can download. So I really couldn't care less. You moaners should relax and go release yourselves in some apple pie.

Some games update every few weeks, sometimes more. It all adds up. I'd be interested to know what games you have that don't need updates.

 

[Diesal]

Where there is a will there would be a way to fix it.

 

[WAJeff]

Where there is a will there would be a way to fix it.

Agreed, however in this case - when we originally launched the FreeZone system it was specifically based off our Capped product models. Adding Uncapped doesn't work.

 

[waroop]

Where there is a will there would be a way to fix it.

Unfortunately, it would require re-architecting our entire Network, and considerable configuration changes, its a complex problem. We thought about it every which way, and at the end of it reached the conclusion that it simply wasn't feasible.

It was a tough decision, but we always want quality of service and to do things 100% properly, for our users.

 

[Lounger]

Agreed, however in this case - when we originally launched the FreeZone system it was specifically based off our Capped product models. Adding Uncapped doesn't work.

Is this related to the problem you had/have with FreeZone on capped?

 

[WAJeff]

Is this related to the problem you had/have with FreeZone on capped?

Nope.
The only "issue" if you want to call it that is Steam on FreeZone. Again, that's out of our hands due to the way Valve have their download sessions setup on the Steam client.

Other than that, FreeZone is 100% on our Capped products.