MWEB Connect with big broadband push
MyBroadband met with Natalie Thayer, general manager of MWEB Home to discuss new developments regarding the company’s position within the market place as well as its plans to rebuild the brand in the coming months.
After years of branding the consumer arm of its business as MWEB Home the company name is to be changed to MWEB Connect with immediate effect and will exist to offer services to both the general consumer and small businesses. Thayer says that both market segments have a similar approach to service provider pricing levels, which has forced MWEB to rethink its approach to this sector.
She said that 2009 would see MWEB increasing its profile as a reseller by engaging with new players in the market. According to recent statistics, dial-up connectivity in South Africa has levelled off and she says that MWEB is seeing “exponential growth” in the broadband sphere.
When questioned on how this had affected the company’s profit margins she commented that it was important for MWEB to “actively migrate customers to ADSL”, adding that they would rather retain a “slightly less profitable customer than no customer at all”.
A key focus for MWEB in the future will be to forge exclusive deals with major players such as Telkom, Vodacom, MTN and iBurst. Although Neotel have proven reasonably popular among consumers in recent months, Thayer specifically stated that MWEB would not be brokering any deals with the provider in the near future, adding that she felt that Neotel had made “little impact on the consumer market”.
The mobile market is also a strong focus for MWEB Connect. Thayer said that the iPhone was “a biggy” for her and that “smartphones as a whole are going to change the way that people access the internet”.
According to Thayer SEACOM would add “more bang for your buck” in terms of bandwidth, saying that she felt consumers would soon “pay for 2 gigs what you used to pay for one”. Thayer said that it would typically take around 60 days for an upstream price decrease to trickle down to a consumer level, although she gave no indication of any significant decrease in the foreseeable future.
It was also revealed that MWEB is planning to roll out one major product in each quarter of 2009 with the support of a flanking product each month for the rest of the year.
MWEB ADSL subscribers will be glad to hear that there are no plans as yet to discontinue unlimited local traffic. MWEB customers will therefore still be able to access all local content despite the status of their overall cap. Thayer said that MWEB was still gathering data in regard to this offer and had no intention to put a stop to it in the near future.
MWEB Connect – give your views
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