Vodacom says it will discontinue its uncapped 4G and 5G products following criticism about implementing hard caps on these services.<\/p>\n
The company launched its Home Uncapped 5G range<\/strong><\/a> in July 2022.<\/p>\n However, despite these products being labelled \u201cuncapped\u201d, Vodacom included what it termed \u201chard lock\u201d limits in its Fair Usage Policy (FUP).<\/p>\n Despite criticism about this misleading practice, the company informed existing uncapped 4G subscribers in January 2023 that it would be amending their FUPs<\/strong><\/a> to also include \u201chard locks\u201d.<\/p>\n Consumer journalist Wendy Knowler confronted Vodacom about the issue on Talk Radio 702 after affected subscribers contacted her about the change.<\/p>\n MyBroadband highlighted that calling a hard-capped product \u201cuncapped\u201d clearly violates previous Advertising Regulatory Board (ARB) findings and Internet Service Provider Association guidelines<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n The ARB\u2019s accepted definitions are simple:<\/p>\n This unfortunately leaves some wiggle room for the abuse of the term \u201cuncapped\u201d to describe soft-capped services, but it does make clear that companies can\u2019t \u201chard-lock\u201d something they advertise as uncapped.<\/p>\n While Vodacom is pulling its uncapped products off the market, it said existing contract subscribers will be given fair opportunity to cancel or migrate their package to a suitable alternative.<\/p>\n \u201cFollowing a review of our recently launched uncapped data products, Vodacom South Africa has taken a decision to discontinue the sale of these products,\u201d a Vodacom spokesperson said.<\/p>\n Vodacom said it is busy removing these products from its website and dealsheets, and promised to complete the process as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n \u201cThose that are impacted by the recently-announced change in our Fair Usage Policy will be provided with an opportunity to cancel their contract \u2014 without any cancellation charges \u2014 or to migrate to a more suitable plan,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe vast majority of customers that are subscribed to these uncapped products won\u2019t reach the hard lock thresholds \u2014 for example 600GB on the 10Mbps tariff \u2014 so they will continue to enjoy an uninterrupted experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Vodacom explained that it decided to transform its uncapped services into large-cap products to tackle increased network congestion caused by Eskom power cuts.<\/p>\n \u201cThe change in Fair Usage Policy on uncapped products, which will be introduced from 15 February 2023, targets usage that congests network resources,\u201d Vodacom stated.<\/p>\n \u201c[This is] so that we ensure the best quality connectivity for all our customers, particularly during heightened load-shedding,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe take full responsibility for the ambiguity and confusion that our change in Fair Usage Policy has created and apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.\u201d<\/p>\n Vodacom has responded to criticism about adding “hard locks” to its uncapped services with a clear statement \u2014 it is discontinuing uncapped and replacing them with large-cap products. It promised to give contract subscribers a fair shake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":467667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62528,4,14],"tags":[35,63663,64593,34765,41],"class_list":["post-478003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-5g","category-broadband","category-cellular","tag-headline","tag-uncapped-4g","tag-uncapped-5g","tag-uncapped-lte","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478003"}],"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\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\nNow read: Vodacom ignored Shameel Joosub\u2019s advice \u2014 and is paying the price<\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"