MWEB CEO Rudi Jansen’s “uncapped” legacy

Thanks for the article.

“The move was dismissed by rivals who said it was not truly uncapped or was unsustainable, but once the option was out in the open, it could no longer be forced back under covers. Uncapped 3G services available today, for example, would probably not have happened without that initial move”.
Click to expand...
Some had to eat their humble pie :erm:
 
I guess I am still one of the lone opposing voices who feels that he does not deserve the accolade.

The truth is that uncapped was already well established in the market.
He was definitely not the first one to introduce it.
At that time I was subscribed to OpenWeb's Uncapped Express+ product which gave me 4 mbps uncapped after hours (and 192 k during business hours) for R999.00 a month.
Axxess had a similar product and the prices were ranging between R999.00 and R899.00 a month.
The prices had been steadily declining over the past few years from over R2000 to R1699, then to R1399, then to R999.
That is a value of about R1.11 per Megabyte to me. And the service was unshaped and not very heavily contended.
I was consistently able to download between 900 Gb and 1 Terabyte a month using that service (after hours only).

Then along comes Rudi Jansen and "frees the web".
But in order to do this at the lower prices he has to restrict the service.
So he launches what he calls "Uncapped", but if you read the fine print you realise that it is actually "Fake Uncapped" because it is heavily restricted.
And in so doing he undercuts the nice work that other ISPs had been doing over the years in reducing true uncapped.
If he had not brought his fake uncapped to the market, the real uncapped (with no restrictions) would have continued to decline in price.
But now that decline has stopped to give way to all these fake uncapped products.
Some people claim to be able to do about 600 Gb a month on these fake uncapped products (although the risk getting booted off for "abuse").
That is a value to them similar to mine, but it comes at a heavy price.
But by far the more average figure is around 100 to 200 Gigs a month, making it a value of more than R2 per Gig.

Sure, some of you will say that the upper products are marketed more at consistently heavy downloaders, and that might be true.
But the point I am trying to make is that the value point of R1 per Gig or less could have been available to everybody had Mweb not short circuited the process.
Today we might be enjoying true uncapped (albeit after hours), but at a much better rate than what Mr. Jansen can offer it - AND with no restrictions, shaping and with far less contention.
Look at all the bad PR Mweb has gotten because of the complaints of abuse and false advertising and people getting booted off the network.
That could have also been avoided.

I have no reason to applaud him. To me it is just more of Mweb's bad business practices.
 
Garyvdh said:
And in so doing he undercuts the nice work that other ISPs had been doing over the years in reducing true uncapped.
If he had not brought his fake uncapped to the market, the real uncapped (with no restrictions) would have continued to decline in price.
Click to expand...
I would like to know about these isps. All of them part openweb had some form or another usage policy mixed with different hour downloading schemes. We've been through this loop before and if I remember correctly you only managed to supply one isp outside RSA which is true uncapped.

Also which one of these isps made free peering a reality? Which one of them had the balls to STFU with telkom and went ahead with free peering. None.

:edit
The motion of the ocean might have started with Afrihost and stupidly cheap capped options, but it was not them or any isp like webafrica or vodacom clinging to exuberant pricing that pulled us into the deep waters.
 
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Pr⊕phet said:
I would like to know about these isps. All of them part openweb had some form or another usage policy mixed with different hour downloading schemes. We've been through this loop before and if I remember correctly you only managed to supply one isp outside RSA which is true uncapped.
Click to expand...

There were at least three that were selling Internet Solution's Uncapped Express products. OpenWeb, Axxess and I forget who the other one was.
Yes, they had standard Terms and Conditions against "abuse" like almost every ISP in the world.
But they way they enforced "abuse" and the way Mweb enforces "abuse" is a world apart.
Surely even the most simple person can see that? There are hard facts for you to compare.
People were averaging far more on those accounts than they are on Mweb.
Simple reality.

Pr⊕phet said:
Also which one of these isps made free peering a reality? Which one of them had the balls to STFU with telkom and went ahead with free peering. None.
Click to expand...

Are you that naive to think that Mweb (and Multichoice) do not have an ulterior business plan up their sleeve that will need that free peering in order to become profitable to them?
Do you REALLY think that Mweb did that out of the goodness of their hearts?
The result is great for users yes, but do not be deceived.
Mweb has a plan in all of that, and it has to do with Video on Demand Streaming at some point in the future.
At that point in time we might see some of the other ISP's coming back and complaining about Mweb's abuse of the free peering arrangements. ;)
 
Garyvdh said:
I guess I am still one of the lone opposing voices who feels that he does not deserve the accolade.

The truth is that uncapped was already well established in the market.
He was definitely not the first one to introduce it.
At that time I was subscribed to OpenWeb's Uncapped Express+ product which gave me 4 mbps uncapped after hours (and 192 k during business hours) for R999.00 a month.
Axxess had a similar product and the prices were ranging between R999.00 and R899.00 a month.
The prices had been steadily declining over the past few years from over R2000 to R1699, then to R1399, then to R999.
That is a value of about R1.11 per Megabyte to me. And the service was unshaped and not very heavily contended.
I was consistently able to download between 900 Gb and 1 Terabyte a month using that service (after hours only).

Then along comes Rudi Jansen and "frees the web".
But in order to do this at the lower prices he has to restrict the service.
So he launches what he calls "Uncapped", but if you read the fine print you realise that it is actually "Fake Uncapped" because it is heavily restricted.
And in so doing he undercuts the nice work that other ISPs had been doing over the years in reducing true uncapped.
If he had not brought his fake uncapped to the market, the real uncapped (with no restrictions) would have continued to decline in price.
But now that decline has stopped to give way to all these fake uncapped products.
Some people claim to be able to do about 600 Gb a month on these fake uncapped products (although the risk getting booted off for "abuse").
That is a value to them similar to mine, but it comes at a heavy price.
But by far the more average figure is around 100 to 200 Gigs a month, making it a value of more than R2 per Gig.

Sure, some of you will say that the upper products are marketed more at consistently heavy downloaders, and that might be true.
But the point I am trying to make is that the value point of R1 per Gig or less could have been available to everybody had Mweb not short circuited the process.
Today we might be enjoying true uncapped (albeit after hours), but at a much better rate than what Mr. Jansen can offer it - AND with no restrictions, shaping and with far less contention.
Look at all the bad PR Mweb has gotten because of the complaints of abuse and false advertising and people getting booted off the network.
That could have also been avoided.

I have no reason to applaud him. To me it is just more of Mweb's bad business practices.
Click to expand...

I know you always say the above, but I would rather pay R539 for 4meg uncapped and be able to download when and what I want at 4 meg speeds than only have after hours for R899. For me its not a race to download as much as I can, but that said I do have days where I do push my line. I'm not a heavy hitter though, between 100 and 200GB a month I'm more than happy to pay R2.69 and R5.40 per GB, over the past year my cost per GB has been R3.24 which is largely inflated due to the fact that I was actually on 512k package for most of the year and In my calc I used the 4meg pricing.

Anyhow each to his own, I'm sure many will agree to disagree with both you and me. Personally I've had zero problems!
 
Garyvdh said:
I guess I am still one of the lone opposing voices who feels that he does not deserve the accolade.

The truth is that uncapped was already well established in the market.
He was definitely not the first one to introduce it.
At that time I was subscribed to OpenWeb's Uncapped Express+ product which gave me 4 mbps uncapped after hours (and 192 k during business hours) for R999.00 a month.
Axxess had a similar product and the prices were ranging between R999.00 and R899.00 a month.
The prices had been steadily declining over the past few years from over R2000 to R1699, then to R1399, then to R999.
That is a value of about R1.11 per Megabyte to me. And the service was unshaped and not very heavily contended.
I was consistently able to download between 900 Gb and 1 Terabyte a month using that service (after hours only).

Then along comes Rudi Jansen and "frees the web".
But in order to do this at the lower prices he has to restrict the service.
So he launches what he calls "Uncapped", but if you read the fine print you realise that it is actually "Fake Uncapped" because it is heavily restricted.
And in so doing he undercuts the nice work that other ISPs had been doing over the years in reducing true uncapped.
If he had not brought his fake uncapped to the market, the real uncapped (with no restrictions) would have continued to decline in price.
But now that decline has stopped to give way to all these fake uncapped products.
Some people claim to be able to do about 600 Gb a month on these fake uncapped products (although the risk getting booted off for "abuse").
That is a value to them similar to mine, but it comes at a heavy price.
But by far the more average figure is around 100 to 200 Gigs a month, making it a value of more than R2 per Gig.

Sure, some of you will say that the upper products are marketed more at consistently heavy downloaders, and that might be true.
But the point I am trying to make is that the value point of R1 per Gig or less could have been available to everybody had Mweb not short circuited the process.
Today we might be enjoying true uncapped (albeit after hours), but at a much better rate than what Mr. Jansen can offer it - AND with no restrictions, shaping and with far less contention.
Look at all the bad PR Mweb has gotten because of the complaints of abuse and false advertising and people getting booted off the network.
That could have also been avoided.

I have no reason to applaud him. To me it is just more of Mweb's bad business practices.
Click to expand...

I can wholeheartedly agree with you my friend :)
 
Garyvdh said:
I guess I am still one of the lone opposing voices who feels that he does not deserve the accolade.

The truth is that uncapped was already well established in the market.
He was definitely not the first one to introduce it.
At that time I was subscribed to OpenWeb's Uncapped Express+ product which gave me 4 mbps uncapped after hours (and 192 k during business hours) for R999.00 a month.
Axxess had a similar product and the prices were ranging between R999.00 and R899.00 a month.
The prices had been steadily declining over the past few years from over R2000 to R1699, then to R1399, then to R999.
That is a value of about R1.11 per Megabyte to me. And the service was unshaped and not very heavily contended.
I was consistently able to download between 900 Gb and 1 Terabyte a month using that service (after hours only).

Then along comes Rudi Jansen and "frees the web".
But in order to do this at the lower prices he has to restrict the service.
So he launches what he calls "Uncapped", but if you read the fine print you realise that it is actually "Fake Uncapped" because it is heavily restricted.
And in so doing he undercuts the nice work that other ISPs had been doing over the years in reducing true uncapped.
If he had not brought his fake uncapped to the market, the real uncapped (with no restrictions) would have continued to decline in price.
But now that decline has stopped to give way to all these fake uncapped products.
Some people claim to be able to do about 600 Gb a month on these fake uncapped products (although the risk getting booted off for "abuse").
That is a value to them similar to mine, but it comes at a heavy price.
But by far the more average figure is around 100 to 200 Gigs a month, making it a value of more than R2 per Gig.

Sure, some of you will say that the upper products are marketed more at consistently heavy downloaders, and that might be true.
But the point I am trying to make is that the value point of R1 per Gig or less could have been available to everybody had Mweb not short circuited the process.
Today we might be enjoying true uncapped (albeit after hours), but at a much better rate than what Mr. Jansen can offer it - AND with no restrictions, shaping and with far less contention.
Look at all the bad PR Mweb has gotten because of the complaints of abuse and false advertising and people getting booted off the network.
That could have also been avoided.

I have no reason to applaud him. To me it is just more of Mweb's bad business practices.
Click to expand...
I agree
and at the moment i dont think there are any true uncapped all are so throttled it is better to get a capped account
 
Freaksta said:
I know you always say the above, but I would rather pay R539 for 4meg uncapped and be able to download when and what I want at 4 meg speeds than only have after hours for R899. For me its not a race to download as much as I can, but that said I do have days where I do push my line. I'm not a heavy hitter though, between 100 and 200GB a month I'm more than happy to pay R2.69 and R5.40 per GB, over the past year my cost per GB has been R3.24 which is largely inflated due to the fact that I was actually on 512k package for most of the year and In my calc I used the 4meg pricing.

Anyhow each to his own, I'm sure many will agree to disagree with both you and me. Personally I've had zero problems!
Click to expand...

Agreed, I am at least happy for the fact that for you and for many other users out there, the internet has become a much more pleasant experience.
 
Garyvdh said:
Agreed, I am at least happy for the fact that for you and for many other users out there, the internet has become a much more pleasant experience.
Click to expand...

That's really the bottom line though, and it was clear that immediately after MWEB did what they did, the rest were forced into action.
 
Garyvdh said:
There were at least three that were selling Internet Solution's Uncapped Express products. OpenWeb, Axxess and I forget who the other one was.
Yes, they had standard Terms and Conditions against "abuse" like almost every ISP in the world.
But they way they enforced "abuse" and the way Mweb enforces "abuse" is a world apart.
Surely even the most simple person can see that? There are hard facts for you to compare.
People were averaging far more on those accounts than they are on Mweb.
Simple reality.
Click to expand...
There is a clear difference between downloading 24.7 and downloading, Surely even the most simple person can see that?

I've yet to have any issues with mweb and uncapped in terms of how you paint the picture. Have you ever actually used mweb? Your true uncapped is to pillage the line as much as you can for as little as you can, that is abuse, the end. Uncapped is not there to serve you terabytes upon terabytes, it there so that you don't have to buy more that you don't have to worry reaching you can in normal ways. In normal ways I do not say it's just surfing and fapping, no it includes proper usage, which includes things like HD streaing or any large usage patters without the notice of getting an erection over how much you managed to download.

I had business IS uncapped as well as the ave joe IS uncapped (before that sentech uncapped and was that lank kak) and it was worse than uncapped I have now in comparison on how much I actually can do a do if I really try. Just taking online gaming for example, they forced you to have a gaming account which I don't need to now with mweb uncapped to achieve 250-260ms rating in TOR MMO. This was because the uncapped was only good for downloading and basic surfing and nothing more. Wow latency was 300-900ms, no one can do proper raiding and pvp with that. No other isp part mweb did ask gamers if and what gaming traffic they should prioritize over other traffic that you are not forced to have multiple accounts as with IS uncapped.

So your true uncapped was gaming unfriendly well that's if you actually had few uncapped accounts to do a decent comparison and not on a whim of an idea of something.

Garyvdh said:
Are you that naive to think that Mweb (and Multichoice) do not have an ulterior business plan up their sleeve that will need that free peering in order to become profitable to them?
Do you REALLY think that Mweb did that out of the goodness of their hearts?
The result is great for users yes, but do not be deceived.
Mweb has a plan in all of that, and it has to do with Video on Demand Streaming at some point in the future.
At that point in time we might see some of the other ISP's coming back and complaining about Mweb's abuse of the free peering arrangements. ;)
Click to expand...
Beautiful RSA attitude right there, I mean everyone is just out to get you and do their worse to you. Do you practice business like that?

Surely you don't think mweb is the sole future provider of VOD?

Lastly what exactly have you contributed towards the moving forward of ADSL except moaning and bitching about TRUE adsl? Nothing, right ?
 
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Flowerhat said:
I can wholeheartedly agree with you my friend :)
Click to expand...
Stoepkakkertjie much? rather bark along with the big dog than have an opinion :rolleyes:

FNfal said:
I agree and at the moment i dont think there are any true uncapped all are so throttled it is better to get a capped account
Click to expand...
True uncapped is 24.7? You also one of those ?

copacetic said:
That's really the bottom line though, and it was clear that immediately after MWEB did what they did, the rest were forced into action.
Click to expand...
The rest was only interested in our pockets, how long did it take vodacom to come down with their pricing after CellC started to move. How long did they preach Quality and Price over actually doing something; sounds much like Webafrica and few others that went on and on and on about poor old me and how it ****ed us up.

No one really forced them to give NOW uncapped adsl, WA did carry perfectly well on without doing that and kept to their quality and price guns. If they could do that then surely no one was really forced.
 
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Gary those old uncapped accounts were never viable as products for the masses. They were created on a whim to flog internet solutions spare nighttime capacity. They only existed because so few people could afford them, and would never have worked at a price point low enough for mass adoption. You were living in a bubble, which admittedly was a beautiful bubble, but it never represented a fair picture of the what was viable on the network at the time.

The short term picture is that the mass adoption of fake uncapped has forced companies to invest a lot sooner in capacity upgrades than they would have done, because even fake uncapped generates a crap load of load on the network. Mweb lit a fire under the butts of the whole industry forcing them to find ways to give us a lot more for the same money.

It goes without saying that consumers will still jump on the next big thing(true uncapped at a lower price) when it gets released, so really, getting half a slice of cake sooner was better than the alternative of R29 a gig for an extra 2 years.

Telkom is already beginning the roll-out of fairly decent uncapped with their current uncapped offerings(with 4 meg in the works), and i think we can all agree they would have waited a lot longer without competition forcing their hand.

Thank you MWEB.
 
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Pr⊕phet said:
The rest was only interested in our pockets, how long did it take vodacom to come down with their pricing after CellC started to move. How long did they preach Quality and Price over actually doing something; sounds much like Webafrica and few others that went on and on and on about poor old me and how it ****ed us up.

No one really forced them to give NOW uncapped adsl, WA did carry perfectly well on without doing that and kept to their quality and price guns. If they could do that then surely no one was really forced.
Click to expand...

Which ADSL ISP does not offer some sort of affordable uncapped now?
 
Those are all fake uncapped accounts, sheesh guys. They are shaped heavily. Who wants that ? You can't even host a gaming server during the day or during the night for that matter. So for me cheap uncapped has meant nothing !!

I stuck with capped after trying the so called uncapped accounts and still with capped due to my needs today ;)
 
copacetic said:
Which ADSL ISP does not offer some sort of affordable uncapped now?
Click to expand...

Now is debatable.

Telkom and Web Africa only recently started, both didn't offer at that time which shows me that no one was forced because how else could they then not offer it. If mweb didn't do what they did we would still be paying through our ears for crappy IS uncapped which Zyzzyva rightly put as uncapped for a select few due to pricing and that product's quality left much to desire.
 
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