Free ADSL local bandwidth trial continues
MWEB recently started a ‘free local bandwidth trial’ where ADSL subscribers are allowed unlimited local traffic after hitting their cap.
The company said that during the trial, which began on 1 February, MWEB will pass the benefits of Telkom’s free local bandwidth promotion on to MWEB members.
“In line with Telkom’s promotion, MWEB ADSL customers will continue to receive free local bandwidth after their monthly data cap is reached, enabling them to send and receive e-mail, surf any website hosted in South Africa and access Internet banking without having to purchase additional “booster” bandwidth,” said MWEB.
MWEB is still monitoring the situation to ascertain the commercial viability of an uncapped local bandwidth solution.
“It is still very early on in the trial and we only have one month’s stats to work on so far, but the browsing experience after switching to the local-only cap is in line with our expectations. We would like to continue the trial for a while longer before we take any decisions around a commercial local-only service.”
MWEB does not want to commit to launching such a service, but it is clear that the company is in favor of offering their subscribers an unlimited local bandwidth solution.
“There are some customer experience issues with the local-only product related to the definition of a 'local' website and the resultant errors experienced by the customer. But to answer the question: yes we do have plans for such a service, but only after we have a better understanding of customer patterns using the Local-Only service,” MWEB said.
There is no official end date for the current trial, and MWEB indicated that it will run until they have enough information to build a commercial service.
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