Web Africa's new ADSL pricing revealed

I can't say I have a reason to be angry at WA, I mean I don't use any of their services but I've been holding my breath since their trial and this is it? This is a greater disappointment than Neotel. I guess I'll stick with Telkom and Afrihost. WA sucks big time, I hope they loose most of their subscribers.

Edit: Judging from the number of posts (almost all of which are negative) I am not the only one disappointed. I mean do they think we are stupid?
 
Im cancelling my 3GB/27GB IS account and im getting a Afrihost 5GB account for almost half the price!!! Goodbye WA!!
 
Not to high jack this ! but.... Afrihost also has a competition running :) I'm hoping I win the 20k or apple mac :) in a few days !

Maybe W.A Can come out with a better competition ?
 
I have some sympathy for WA: when they started this exercise, their R69/GB was a good price. I'm sure that their business plan was along the lines of throw in some extras and charge R40 or R50/GB and everyone will be impressed. And just after they had committed themselves to spending money on a new network, the SA scene changed, and R30/GB became normal so they're up the creek with no way of recouping their expenditure except hope that there are enough ignorant people around to keep them in business. However, sympathy doesn't get them my business. I don't buy the line that Afrihost are selling at below cost and will soon cease to exist - if my logic is correct, then it is more likely that WA will disappear due to not having enough customers to repay their investments.

Besides, I don't really care if an ISP disappears - last year I foresaw that it was going to be a time of change, so I went for maximum flexibility : I buy my line from Telkom, and my data from whoever is cheapest. Started with WA prepaid, and when they delayed their announcement till Feb, I took a contract with Afrihost at R29/GB. I've had absolutely no problems with Afrihost except finding an SMTP server (which Afrihost sorted out PDQ) and I've still got unused prepaid with WA if I want. I had been expecting to give Afrihost notice today that my time with them was over, but it looks like I'm there to stay (until something better comes along). I reckon that Afrihost should have no problem using their advertising budget to finance bandwidth so long as people like WA do their advertising for them with announcements like this one. I mean, with competition like this, who needs friends.

Fritz
 
I was waiting for something big, but it looks as if i will just go to Afrihost for normal internet, and somewhere else for unshaped.

Pity.
 
I think this community response has been a little bit too harsh - but personally I'm glad this has happened: ultimately, the response is justified. It may be a price drop, which means something in our favour for which we should be grateful, but there's clearly a lack of gratitude... Why? Because the price drop is essentially meaningless: clearly the aim wasn't to be innovatively competitive (like Afrihost) FOR the clients, but rather to cater for a market that's ignorant (ie: the 'less tech-savy' masses). While that may make sense from a company's point of view of it's goal to make a profit, there happens to be another important counter-factor which is massive in this country's broadband market and which was obviously overlooked by WA: we've all been raped by Telkom/Mweb-esque monopolistic techniques, so anything like that will be quickly shunned by all (word-of-mouth publicity is probably the strongest factor besides price for an ISP, especially in SA) of a community that's been shafted before and is not so gullible anymore, especially now that there are other, more cost-effective options available. In particular, the R1 price drop is laughable - comes across as somewhat of an insult to intelligence decorated in a colourful flyer.
We know that in general, tier-1 ISP's buy their traffic by line capacity and not usage capacity, and it's been revealed that this is the case for WA and their new network... I expected that during the free bandwidth trial those many users (including myself) must have done a pretty good job at pushing their new network to its LINE CAPACITY limit. Because the bandwidth was free, I can imagine most of the trial users consumed their cap on bandwidth-intensive applications like P2P downloads. Now from what I saw, the network coped quite well in fact. So why continue to sell bandwidth at SAIX-like prices using your new network? You guys aren't so restricted anymore... surely you could at least match Afrihost's (clearly the prime competitor here) cost per GB instead...? Don't you think that a consumer-oriented move like that would change that figure of lost clients (not to mention company integrity) you've had to deal with today, around?
 
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What today has shown me has been good (or alla south park: "I've learnt something today") :p

A few years back we were all too greatful for every crap we could get...now, we no longer accept a big pile of dung...we will no longer "settle"...we want quality now, where this time last year, we were still happy to simply put up with it.

GG
 
We were expecting so much thanks to Afrihost, hoping to see prices competing directly with Afrihost, oh well if I lose out on the special I'll stick with Afrihost anyway and keep my WA prepaid for freezone.
 
*sigh* I was hoping to be able to move back to WA (I had previously left them for the axxess R999 account - which is now stretching my small pocket just a bit too much), but it looks like I'll be giving g-connect a go.
 
Would be interesting to see by a poll who will definitely be leaving WebAfrica and who will be staying after this.
 
You know, in a day and age where you can purchase a 1 gig ADSL unit for R29 *wink wink*, these guys should seriously reconsider their pricing. Im sure the owner of Webafrica can relax on acquiring all those fancy cars and maybe, you know, contribute to local competition?
 
I was also holding out to if Axxess or WA would undercut Afrihost but I decided to go afrihost in Jan. I guess I'm feeling vindicated by that decision and lucky I didn't hold out.
 
fritzm said:
I have some sympathy for WA: when they started this exercise, their R69/GB was a good price. I'm sure that their business plan was along the lines of throw in some extras and charge R40 or R50/GB and everyone will be impressed. And just after they had committed themselves to spending money on a new network, the SA scene changed, and R30/GB became normal so they're up the creek with no way of recouping their expenditure except hope that there are enough ignorant people around to keep them in business. However, sympathy doesn't get them my business. I don't buy the line that Afrihost are selling at below cost and will soon cease to exist - if my logic is correct, then it is more likely that WA will disappear due to not having enough customers to repay their investments.

Besides, I don't really care if an ISP disappears - last year I foresaw that it was going to be a time of change, so I went for maximum flexibility : I buy my line from Telkom, and my data from whoever is cheapest. Started with WA prepaid, and when they delayed their announcement till Feb, I took a contract with Afrihost at R29/GB. I've had absolutely no problems with Afrihost except finding an SMTP server (which Afrihost sorted out PDQ) and I've still got unused prepaid with WA if I want. I had been expecting to give Afrihost notice today that my time with them was over, but it looks like I'm there to stay (until something better comes along). I reckon that Afrihost should have no problem using their advertising budget to finance bandwidth so long as people like WA do their advertising for them with announcements like this one. I mean, with competition like this, who needs friends.

Fritz
Click to expand...

Incorrect. All ISP's will need to make the leap to IPC at some point in time if they ever want to be sustainable in the long run.
We have made the investment early on in the game, something all the other smaller ISP's will eventually have to do, soon.
 
Krayon said:
Incorrect. All ISP's will need to make the leap to IPC at some point in time if they ever want to be sustainable in the long run.
We have made the investment early on in the game, something all the other smaller ISP's will eventually have to do, soon.
Click to expand...

This is a serious question, nothing funny or rude. However I would like to hear an answer from someone at Web Africa. I as a home user with a Telkom and Afrihost accounts. What advantage do I get paying R68 per a gig as opposed for R29. Please note I am not a huge gamer so that would not help me or convince me. I would be interested to know the answer to this.

Hope some one will answer this. Thank You
 
I am a Web africa Subscriber I purchase 30Gig Prepaid unshaped bandwidth from them every month now I can purchase 37 Gigs for the same price

Not to bad it is a bit better

I need unshaped bandwidth and I like prepaid due to it not expiring every month so if someone can give me an alternative I will seriously look at it

I think this is great Companies that go out of there way to give the consumer a good deal should be rewarded companies that don't should be punished this is the beauty of competition

So if you are unhappy with what web Africa has done don't just spend all your time complaining punish them by leaving that's the only way that they will change.

I just go with who has the best deal one thing I have been really Happy with Web Africa is the quality of there bandwidth I always get good performance and good stability which I struggled to get from Telkom and so on.

I was speaking to a Friend in the UK today and its so funny there he was complaining that BT had crap infrastructure in his area and he could only have 4mb/s and he was forced to take a 1 year contract and pay 20 pounds per month for an uncapped account including the phone line

All I could do is Laugh and think to myself we are so far away from this
 
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WA :/
Click to expand...

That's so cool! :D
 
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