Web Africa's new ADSL pricing revealed

wamatt said:
its also very easy to hate on us. But yes we've put a lot of money into our new network. What about the other large providers? We are the only ones dropping prices.

And we committing to dropping them again mid year.
Click to expand...

so now you want us to feel PITY for you guys..wait..we heard that one before..from telkom I think..or maybe MWEB..
 
wamatt said:
its also very easy to hate on us. But yes we've put a lot of money into our new network. What about the other large providers? We are the only ones dropping prices.

And we committing to dropping them again mid year.
Click to expand...

How is it relevant whether a provider is "large" or not? What defines large?

I think asking us to judge you against other "large" providers is wishful thinking. You're not just competing with them - you're competing with GConnect, SAINet and Afrihost as well. I don't know what their subscriber numbers are, but the services they offer appear to be solid, which is all that matters to the MyBB crowd.

We don't need a support line to help us set up our routers correctly. The bottom line is that WA is no longer a provider for power users, which is fine. The anger seems to stem from a lot of people feeling mislead that WA had drastic price cuts in the works as a result of the new network. You're wasting your time trying to convince people of the value WA offers. The people posting here measure value very simply - cost per GB.
 
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wamatt said:
And we committing to dropping them again mid year.
Click to expand...

Is that because of EASSy? To me it feels like the problem is that you don't have a SEACOM offering at the moment. All of the "cheap" providers listed in this thread are using some sort of SEACOM offering. I remember your argument against SEACOM in an earlier thread where you said that you could not use SEACOM because there was not a fail over for business clients. Is there not a gap in the market here for both types of solution? 3GB SEACOM @ A and 3GB Business @ B.
 
wamatt said:
Was definitely a mistake on our side to not squash more rumours and hype but honestly we didn't say prices are going to drop through the floor. It is a business decision though to grow our base and to still be relevant in 5 years. We simply cannot afford to suddenly halve our revenue, while our cost staying the same.

That said we are trying to appease the masses and we DO have a lot of innovation lined up. Steam, freezone, upgrades mid-year again. Yes we would have liked everything ready to be in time for 1 March.

That would have had a bigger impact, but quite honestly we feel with the major ISP's we are offering very good value. Now you may say "I don't care". And that's fine. I'm simply putting it in context. We not out of touch and we have always been very involved with the MyBB community.

We have also been very aggressive on certain products:

DSL Complete price average per /gb drops:
64% ,48%, 23%, 44%, 33%

Unshaped - 29%
Click to expand...

Strangely enough - I actually agree with you that the DSL Complete offerings are very good. The other advantage is that WA is now slowly becoming a 1-stop shop. If I have problems with Telkom, it all gets logged and tracked on my DSL Complete account - now only if I can include my Telkom 3G with my ADSL account, that would be great. When are these prices active - because WA website still have the old prices on it ?
 
@Matt

This is where you go back to the drawing board. This is where you call all your staff in for a crisis meeting and you write on top of the White Board in big letters DAMAGE CONTROL. You dropped the ball and lost momentum five months ago. Everything else in between then and now has just been fluff. If you are serious about staying cutting edge in this market, you start shedding excess baggage and getting back to basics. Steam Server, Game Servers... sound nice... but they are just fluff. If bandwidth is cheap enough we will find a place to get the fluff from. What we care about is rock bottom prices. Call us fickle, but yes... that is what we are after. Our loyalty only extends as far as our wallet. So there is your choice. Leave this mess as is, and try to deal with the bad PR. Or go back to the drawing board, be innovative, slash everything and bring us a plain bandwidth product at a price that is rock bottom.
 
Krayon said:
@ rsd, whether you are with Telkom or Web Africa you will be charged R152 for your adsl line at the moment. Web Africa could be your line provider and your data could be with Afrihost for example.
Nobody is tied into anything, no contracts, transferring a line is only a support ticket away.
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If there is a problem with my ADSL line, who comes to fix it? WA or Telkom?

I have an ADSL line where the over head cable is broken, and Telkom refuse to fix it. So when ever it rain it goes down. While I love WA and their support. It doesn't make sense to move something over when I still have to rely on Telkom to fix a broken line. So until then its pointless to switch to the complete package.

Further more. The main reason I moved years ago to WA was for the prepaid option. Some months I may use 40 gigs, Other times I may only use 1. Or when I go overseas for work for a month or two I don't use any. Hence why I loved the prepaid.

The pricing drops I feel are not bad if you are on one of the package schemes, but the prepaid is kinda pathetic. It seems like this announcement and structure is an attempt to get more customers transferred over for the complete package options. So at least my company will be happy that I moved them from Telkom to WA. But I'm not seeing any of it at home.

The unshaped data has come down nicely. But come on. R1 for the prepaid 1 gig compared to the R11 for the package is a slap in the face.

I wont be jumping ship to Afrihost as I love WA's service. Just disappointed as I think many others are as well.
 
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Garyvdh said:
@Matt

This is where you go back to the drawing board. This is where you call all your staff in for a crisis meeting and you write on top of the White Board in big letters DAMAGE CONTROL. You dropped the ball and lost momentum five months ago. Everything else in between then and now has just been fluff. If you are serious about staying cutting edge in this market, you start shedding excess baggage and getting back to basics. Steam Server, Game Servers... sound nice... but they are just fluff. If bandwidth is cheap enough we will find a place to get the fluff from. What we care about is rock bottom prices. Call us fickle, but yes... that is what we are after. Our loyalty only extends as far as our wallet. So there is your choice. Leave this mess as is, and try to deal with the bad PR. Or go back to the drawing board, be innovative, slash everything and bring us a plain bandwidth product at a price that is rock bottom.
Click to expand...

I think this is the important point. The value adds like steam servers don't justify a higher price. You need to match on price and then get people to move for the value added services.

I'm not going to move to WA even if they match Afrihost - I'd rather support the company that made the first move. But match their price, throw in steam content servers and I'm there.
 
rsd said:
I think this is the important point. The value adds like steam servers don't justify a higher price. You need to match on price and then get people to move for the value added services.
Click to expand...

+1

I'm not interested in all the drivel. Just give me plain bandwidth - even a cheap local only package which has access to the news server and I'll be happy! And no - I don't want to wait until July.
 
wamatt said:
its also very easy to hate on us. But yes we've put a lot of money into our new network. What about the other large providers? We are the only ones dropping prices.

And we committing to dropping them again mid year.
Click to expand...

R1 doesn't really count as a price drop
 
rsd said:
How is it relevant whether a provider is "large" or not? What defines large?

I think asking us to judge you against other "large" providers is wishful thinking. You're not just competing with them - you're competing with GConnect, SAINet and Afrihost as well. I don't know what their subscriber numbers are, but the services they offer appear to be solid, which is all that matters to the MyBB crowd.

We don't need a support line to help us set up our routers correctly. The bottom line is that WA is no longer a provider for power users, which is fine. The anger seems to stem from a lot of people feeling mislead that WA had drastic price cuts in the works as a result of the new network. You're wasting your time trying to convince people of the value WA offers. The people posting here measure value very simply - cost per GB.
Click to expand...

RSD This is partially true. And some have said "leave mybb behind they not worth it". But I can't accept that. If you don't participate and are able to to stand up in the fire then what are you? We have always welcomed criticism. Far from out of touch we know exactly what you guys want. It's simply not possible to give it at our size.

It's a check and balances system. Ultimately we still going to run specials here and participate. But yes the focus will become more mainstream.

So the decision now to not obliterate our revenue and risk going under and to focus on long term value. I know people are impatient. But lets see 2 years down the line if it paid off. I know we will achieve what we set out to: Not only be the ISP you can recommend to your mom and pop but also the one that has something for the power users.
 
wamatt said:
Was definitely a mistake on our side to not squash more rumours and hype but honestly we didn't say prices are going to drop through the floor. It is a business decision though to grow our base and to still be relevant in 5 years. We simply cannot afford to suddenly halve our revenue, while our cost staying the same.

That said we are trying to appease the masses and we DO have a lot of innovation lined up. Steam, freezone, upgrades mid-year again. Yes we would have liked everything ready to be in time for 1 March.

That would have had a bigger impact, but quite honestly we feel with the major ISP's we are offering very good value. Now you may say "I don't care". And that's fine. I'm simply putting it in context. We not out of touch and we have always been very involved with the MyBB community.

We have also been very aggressive on certain products:

DSL Complete price average per /gb drops:
64% ,48%, 23%, 44%, 33%

Unshaped - 29%
Click to expand...

What I find scary is that we, in South Africa, are now in a position where bandwidth costs are coming down.

Are you telling us, your potential customers, that you have taken all those savings and spent them already, and now you cannot afford to pass them on to us?

You should be very, very afraid if your business is so bloated that it can no longer afford to pass savings on to your customers.

Sorry WA, but you are setting yourselves up for an epic fail.
 
wamatt said:
We simply cannot afford to suddenly halve our revenue, while our cost staying the same.
Click to expand...

Let me know how this superior strategy of losing all your loyal customers is contributing to sustaining your revenue.
 
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meh...well....this was the final straw

just got my account with afrihost....WA can suck my you-know-what
 
I have been waiting for this "Steam" server since December... it hasnt happened... who says its ever going to happen, you cannot justify high costs now, on a product that you MAY have sometime in the future.

People want to pay for things they get NOW... I will be canceling my account from the end of the month and moving to Afrihost aswell, seems WA subscribers are going to be taking a radical reduction this month, and afrihost is going to be very popular by month end... wamatt.. i thought you wanted to grow your customer base? not send it crashing through the floor at one heck of a speed...

Agree with the post on time for an emergency meeting.. WA's name is now ("*(£*& in regards to the community, i hope you didnt think that 100 x 30gb accounts where going to save your bacon!

So the decision now to not obliterate our revenue and risk going under and to focus on long term value. I know people are impatient. But lets see 2 years down the line if it paid off.
Click to expand...

if your expecting us to hang around for 2 years, you are sadly mistaken, if WA does not do some drastic about this PR disaster, they are not going to see 2 years time, you have already started to obliterate your revenue by chasing away loyal customers
 
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wamatt said:
RSD This is partially true. And some have said "leave mybb behind they not worth it". But I can't accept that.
Click to expand...
No that's harsh. You guys know full well that without what MyBB has done for the Broadband community in SA, You wouldn't even be where you are now. I think who ever said that should be fired.
 
I topped up twice for 4 gig at the begining of the month and another 6 a week ago on AFRIHOST at R14.50/gig and its only the 15th! Last month I topped up 3 times. The R14.50 thing is there almost everytime I look. And everytime I look I say, "hey wow it's still on, let me get a few more". Yay for Afrihost!!
 
I have only one question for WA how much did SAT3 drop when seacom went live? (was it only 10%?)
 
Very disappointing to say the least. Really expected more from you WA. This has now made up my mind to move all my accounts to Afrihost.
 
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