Uncapped ADSL: The perfect solution for bandwidth hogs
Affordable uncapped ADSL services finally arrived in South Africa in March when MWEB launched their 384 Kbps, 512 Kbps and 4 Mbps uncapped accounts. Since then numerous companies followed suit with prices dropping as low as R159 for an uncapped ADSL account.
Most of these services carry some form of shaping and/or a fair use policy –practices which high end users are not particularly happy about. Afrihost’s tiered shaping and throttling strategy, for example, was slated by their subscribers, with many jumping ship opting for ISPs like MWEB who does not throttle their accounts.
High end users – often referred to as bandwidth hogs by broadband providers – are directly targeted by ADSL ISPs with shaping and throttling policies.
Bandwidth typically costs between R20 and R30 per GB at wholesale level, and subscribers who consume tens or even hundreds of Gigabytes per month are clearly hurting the business models of uncapped ADSL providers.
What to do with bandwidth hogs
High bandwidth usage is typically associated with Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing services like Bittorent or Limewire – services which can easily consume all available bandwidth on a network if not controlled.
This dilemma is not unique to South Africa, broadband providers across the world are battling with similar challenges that our ADSL ISPs now face with uncapped accounts. Certain broadband providers in the US and UK have even started to impose caps on their subscribers to try to curb what many see as a plague eating away at the core of their service.
These so called bandwidth hogs are clearly a problem for ISPs, but there may be a solution to preserve valuable Internet bandwidth.
Most of the high end users make use of P2P services to download and share audio-video content and other large files like applications and Linux distributions.
If another system or network (other than the Internet and ADSL network) can be found for these users to easily download and share this type of content at high speed the bandwidth hogs will move a lot of their P2P activity to this new network, alleviating pressure on the ADSL network.
The beauty is that such networks and systems already exist in all major cities across South Africa.
WUGs to the rescue
Numerous tech savvy individuals have flocked in droves to Wireless User Groups (WUGs) in Pretoria, Johannesburg, Cape Town Durban and other cities and town. The WUG network offers a fast and completely free method to share content, play games and communicate with each other.
While the WUGs are not Internet access providers, they provide their members with many services which one would typically associate with Internet based services like VoIP communication, online gaming, P2P file sharing services, YouTube-like video hosting and sharing websites and even online radio in some cases.
These wireless networks also provide subscribers with superior speeds, typically much faster than the fastest ADSL services available in South Africa, making it more attractive for a broadband subscribers to use their WUG connection to access content than their uncapped ADSL connection.
With these facts at hand even the simple minded can put two and two together. Put the ‘hogs’ on the WUG networks to alleviate the impact of P2P file sharing services. It’s cheaper, faster and best of all it’s a win-win situation for most parties.
At a cost of less than R2000 per installation and free bandwidth thereafter it is an investment which will show a return very quickly. An ISP can even charge a setup cost for their uncapped 4 Mbps ADSL service – which includes a WUG kit rather than a snazzy new ADSL router.
The beauty of this solution is that the WUG networks will see increased growth, and this in turn makes these networks stronger and enhances the attractiveness for others to also connect to these networks.
Will this ever happen? It is unlikely.
But it doesn’t hurt to dream of an ideal situation where it is unnecessary for ADSL subscribers to use expensive and relatively slow Internet access for their file sharing needs because they can use the WUG to access this content faster and more economically.
Please note that this is a tongue in cheek column about the battle uncapped ADSL providers have with so-called ‘bandwidth hogs’.
What to do with bandwidth hogs? Comments and view
Related links
Uncapped ADSL prices versus Telkom tax
ADSL uncapped at R219 per month
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