{"id":277351,"date":"2018-10-03T11:55:15","date_gmt":"2018-10-03T09:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=277351"},"modified":"2018-10-03T11:56:41","modified_gmt":"2018-10-03T09:56:41","slug":"this-is-why-we-cannot-have-nice-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/277351-this-is-why-we-cannot-have-nice-things.html","title":{"rendered":"This is why we cannot have nice things"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>MTN recently<a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/it-services\/276983-mtn-stops-free-twitter-changes-whatsapp-bundle-prices.html\"><strong> stopped offering<\/strong><\/a> customers free Twitter data, explaining that it is no longer feasible to offer the service due to the cost and demand it places on the network.<\/p>\n<p>MTN launched its free Twitter promotion in May 2014, offering subscribers who loaded any of its MTN Internet Services free access to Twitter.<\/p>\n<p>The cancellation of the free Twitter service followed MTN placing a 500MB daily usage cap on the offering.<\/p>\n<p>A big reason for the fair use policy (FUP), and MTN ultimately stopping its free Twitter service, was abuse by a small group of users.<\/p>\n<p>Certain subscribers exploited a weakness in the system to share and download video content, with some users consuming well over 1TB of data per month using free Twitter.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe capped usage of the free Twitter service at 500MB because of the exploitation by a handful of users,\u201d Jacqui O\u2019Sullivan, executive for corporate affairs at MTN SA said.<\/p>\n<p>These users were using the unlimited free data on downloads and other platforms.<\/p>\n<p>This meant huge files and videos were being transferred via \u201ctunnelling\u201d, which was never the intention behind the free Twitter service.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Why free and flat-rated services get canned<\/h3>\n<p>This scenario is not unique to MTN, and many mobile operators have faced the same challenge when they launch free or flat-rated services.<\/p>\n<p>Vodacom spokesperson Byron Kennedy told MyBroadband that there are generally two factors that will result in a change in fair usage terms on flat-rated or free data products.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>When certain users are recording extraordinary usage outside of the solution that a product or service was intended to provide.<\/li>\n<li>When extraordinary usage by certain users significantly deteriorates the experience enjoyed by the vast majority of customers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This was seen over and over again in the local telecoms market, and ultimately killed many free or flat-rated offerings by mobile operators.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Now read: <a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/it-services\/276983-mtn-stops-free-twitter-changes-whatsapp-bundle-prices.html\">MTN stops free Twitter, changes WhatsApp bundle prices<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A small group of people who abuse services are often behind companies stopping their free or flat-rated offerings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":76194,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[35,42,405,41],"class_list":["post-277351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-headline","tag-mtn","tag-twitter","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277351"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277351"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":278205,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277351\/revisions\/278205"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}