40Mbps bonded ADSL held back by Telkom
In June last year MWEB Business surprised the market when it launched its bonded ADSL offerings at rates of less than half the price of existing services in the market.
MWEB’s bonded ADSL service combines up to four ADSL lines into a single router that creates a single channel, high speed link, effectively multiplying the speed of each line by the number of bonded lines.
“It provides very high speed broadband thus allowing for high upload and download speeds at an affordable price. MWEB Business’s Bonded ADSL offering allows customers to choose from a variety of packages, including capped and uncapped options. All products include five usable static IP addresses,” MWEB explains.
MWEB currently offers 8Mbps, 12Mbps and 16Mbps bonded ADSL products, and according to MWEB Business GM Andre Joubert, product sales have exceeded their expectations.
Joubert said that the initial installation setup of the service can be time consuming to ensure that clients get the best possible service (hence good quality ADSL lines and connectivity), but after the setup has been done the service runs like clockwork.
Joubert further explained that businesses purchasing the MWEB Business bonded ADSL solution have a need for higher downlink and uplink speeds, begging the question: why have they not launched a bonded 40Mbps solution yet?
In August last year Telkom launched their 10Mbps ADSL service, and it would make sense for MWEB to launch a 40Mbps bonded ADSL solution aimed at companies looking for as much speed as possible.
Joubert said that they have successfully tested a bonded solution using 10Mbps lines and a more advanced router, and they are technically ready to launch a 40Mbps solution at a reasonable price. However, the problem is Telkom’s slow rollout of 10Mbps lines.
Joubert explained that such a high speed solution may create unrealistic expectations among MWEB Business’ clients, and they simply cannot guarantee that a client can get these speeds as it is reliant on Telkom’s infrastructure rather than MWEB Business.
According to Joubert they are experiencing a ten to twenty times higher demand for 10Mbps ADSL connections than the number of connections they can offer their clients.
Telkom has previously indicated that they are continuing 10Mbps ADSL rollouts, but details remain sketchy. Joubert said that they are also in the dark as to Telkom’s 10Mbps rollout plans.
Questions have also been raised as to whether Telkom’s infrastructure can support the 10Mbps ADSL upgrades, and here Joubert said that they do see sporadic problems at certain exchanges when it comes to ADSL speeds.
According to Joubert, one of the most challenging aspects for them is the fact that they do not know where the problem may lie with an ADSL line which performs poorly. “It can be anywhere between the MWEB IPC node and the clients ADSL line,” Joubert said.
Telkom previously said that their high-capacity and flexible Metro-Ethernet backbone ensures that bottlenecks are easily resolved when they occur.
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