Uncapped mobile broadband in South Africa — why networks throttle your connection

Running truly uncapped mobile broadband services is a tricky business, as the spectrum assigned to each mobile operator can only translate into a certain amount of data bandwidth, hence the need for fair usage policies (FUPs).

However, following the conclusion of the Independent Communication Authority of South Africa’s (Icasa) spectrum auction, the new spectrum could be used by mobile operators to improve their uncapped offerings.

MyBroadband reached out to MTN, Vodacom, Rain, and Telkom regarding their plans for uncapped mobile data. Only MTN and Rain had answered our questions by the time of publication.

MTN SA’s executive for corporate affairs, Jacqui O’Sullivan, said that MTN believes the availability of the new spectrum will enhance mobile operators’ ability to offer broader services, including uncapped data plans.

“MTN believes that the availability of high demand spectrum will play a crucial role in ensuring that network operators meet customers’ demands in an ever-growing data environment, not only to offer uncapped data plans but also to offer broader services,” she said.

O’Sullivan explained that MTN currently offers fixed-LTE and 5G uncapped data plans under its MyMTN Uncapped product lines, which are subject to a FUP.

“The FUP is used to protect the integrity of our network,” O’Sullivan stated.

“As with all acceptable use policies, if the customer uses more than a certain, predetermined ‘fair’ amount of data in a given timeframe, their line speed could slow down during peak times, in order to allow other users to access the network fairly.”

Rain said that all of its 5G Home products are uncapped.

“Our 5G Home products are all unlimited (uncapped), with their primary differentiators being speed and streaming quality,” it said.

“We offer different speeds and streaming resolutions to enable different price points to match customer needs.”

Why uncapped mobile broadband is a challenge

The table below shows how each mobile operator’s spectrum allocation increased following Icasa’s auction.

We have included the theoretical maximum capacity of O-band fibre as a comparison to illustrate the bandwidth constraints under which wireless networks operate.

This is why mobile operators are unlikely to do away with FUPs for uncapped services, as there is essentially an upper limit to the amount of bandwidth a single cellular network can provide.

Examples of operators that launched uncapped wireless products that ran into challenges include Rain, Telkom, and Sentech.

Sentech ultimately canned its uncapped MyWireless product in November 2009.

In July 2020, Rain slipped down MyBroadband’s ISP rankings to replace Telkom as the lower-ranked Internet service provider in South Africa.

This was likely because Rain oversubscribed its 4G towers with uncapped customers. Subscribers complained about severely degraded speeds and unstable connections. Some said they could not use the Internet at all during certain hours of the day.

Telkom launched a nationwide uncapped LTE product in December 2015 after testing it with a specific base station.

The network operator soon had to implement a FUP as network performance began to degrade.

Uncapped LTE and 5G products available in South Africa and their FUPs are summarised below.

Now read: Telkom’s R229 uncapped LTE service tested — with great results