So, the biggest news today is that MWEB has just announced their prices for uncapped Internet and it’s going to amaze you!
384k line – R219/month for uncapped data
512k line – R299/month for uncapped data
4096k line – R539/month for uncapped data
Now, we’ve had other ISPs offering uncapped Internet, but these ISPs have failed due to their size and unexpected volume, but when a big company like MWEB launches something, you have to think that this is going to work!
I’ve spoken to a very reliable source at MWEB and he’s confirmed that there are no catches, this isn’t an early April Fool’s joke; all you need is an ADSL line (although, there are options for rental too) and you’re good to go.
And the best part – It’s month to month, no 12 or 24 month contracts!
Oh man, it’s happening in South Africa, w00t!!!
Shaping and capping
MWEB uncapped business products have been said to be completely unshaped and uncapped, however, port prioritization may apply to consumer accounts during peak hours, the reason of this is to ensure that email and browsing speeds are optimized.
Off-peak hours will see completely unshaped and uncapped access, so in the evenings you can do as you please. This means that peer-to-peer (p2p) usage and large downloads are possible in off-peak hours, but may be controlled during peak hours.
Naturally, they will be trying to avoid port prioritization, but need to ensure that email and browsing is at its optimal during office hours.
Everyone’s saying it’s the real deal, but I feel it’s too good to be true. But I suspect that’s me just being paranoid. I’m gonna give it two weeks, if there’s no major complaints I’m gonna sign up for sure!!! :D
@Johann – It is the real deal dude. :) Trust me
it will happen, it has to. South Africa has lagged behind the rest of the world in this regard for far too long.
My guess is that Virgin Media has shown their intention to bring it and the likes of MWEB have been forced to jump on this very quickly if they want any hope of maintaining market share.
Virgin Media are taking over here and will do the same in SA.
Its onwards and upwards from here for internet services in South Africa! Enjoy!
@DChetty – Thanks, yeah I’m reading everything I can on all news sites/forums, and it seems you’re right. This is fricken brilliant!!!
definitely too good to be true. i’m sure it is shaped 24/7 to a gap the size of a needles eye. try and stuff your torrent sausage through that! it will be like going back to a 56k modem line, true uncapped at affordable prices is still years off. You are a Sucker if you take these packages.
@Johann – :) It is VERY exciting.
Follow @MWEBConnect on Twitter to stay in the loop.
Just took a squizz at the breakdown of the T&C on mybroadband.co.za and a few valid points are raised, including:
No abuse of P2P
No unmonitored audio/video streaming
No excessive FTP
So, firstly, I audiostream my radio from Germany and leave it running the entire day. Ex-nay on that one.
While the offer seems absolutely brilliant, my past experience with MWEB has been draconian at best. I’m just worried that signing over to MWEB will make things like VOIP, ftp, and streaming useless because of the way it’s throttled.
I’ve been given a free account for 30 days, so I’ll see how it performs.
As mentioned in my post, there have been a lot of attempts from companies in SA trying to do this, but they’ve been small entities, so when a power house like MWEB takes a go at it, I can honestly say that the chances of this working are far greater.
I must say, a huge client base potential would be those who are into P2P/FTP/Torrents, so although they’re not banned, we would need “abuse” defined more accurately.
In terms of businesses, I think it’s an awesome solution, for web surfing, emailing and every day tasks, it will be perfect.
@Tony – Ye, the streaming radio thing would be a concern of mine as I love streaming radio stations as well.
I’ve signed up for the 30 day trial and if that goes well, I’ll convert!
I didn’t read up too much, how many concurrent connections are allowed?
Unfortunately until there is other infrastructure everyone goes through Telkom (That’s what I have been told)? Going through another company that is reliant on Telkom doesn’t make sense to me. I know it’s cheaper, but if Telkom goes down, so does MWEB?
Nevermind trying to get support from MWEB, no better than Telkom, so I wouldn’t do it…
@Chris – only 1 connection, according to mybroadband.co.za = but they sound like a bunch of real sour grapes this morning.
MyBroadBand always goes like that lol, moan, moan, moan ;p
Hey,
To answer some of the questions above:
Consumer products allow for only 1 connection.
Business products allow for 5 concurrent connections.
The product is shaped for consumers and unshaped for business. Naturally with cost implications.
Shaping is set on priority of services during peak times but no ports are blocked. Shaping is not aggressive though. On the website, check out the pdf doc for more product info.
@Chris – This is the game changer. This is what South Africa needed to become a SERIOUS web centric country. The fact that my mother has an online business now is testimony to the fact that we have come a long way in recent years & by driving access numbers with low prices, we are stimulating a web economy that is only JUST becoming pubescent. Hang on tight, cos things are going to get VERY exciting!
As excited as I am to have cheaper uncapped access in SA, I am taking the sour-grapes approach here. Not because of anything against MWeb or the internet in general, but because it almost seems that SA has taken 2 steps forward, and MWeb has taken one step back.
1. The TOS makes no mention of Uncapped. Plus there are restrictions against being online 24/7, throttling for p2p and other non-standard-port applications (Skype included).
2. Pricing – yes, the shaped uncapped is cheap. The unshaped uncapped is not, and actually compares to prices Axxess launched several months (if not years) ago. On top of that, Axxess grants you full linespeed after hours, which I haven’t seen MWEB make mention of – and Axxess does no afterhours ratelimiting, allowing people to download hundreds of gigs a month.
3. Nothing has been said about contention ratio, and their TOS is full of “best effort” and “upstream is not our problem”. It gives the impression that you might not get the full linespeed you pay for, especially if Mweb is as big as people think they are, and have tens of thousands of people switching to uncapped.
4. Their basic capped packages are very expensive (R69/1st gig) compared to, say, Afrihost, at R29/gig (+ monthly 50% discounts). If you’re a light user, Afrihost is still the cheaper option – since MWeb doesn’t even subsidize line rentals on their capped packages (at those volumes).
5. MWeb has a rather iffy reputation when it comes to ADSL. Very late to market, their local adsl venture tanked, and they were basically pushing dialup for a lot longer than they were supposed to. On top of that, they’re officially partnered with iBurst, which has made even worse progress as an ISP in SA.
Long story short, welcome to the 21st century. The most positive thing I see coming out of all this is the demystification around uncapped ADSL – that it’s actually not that expensive, and that it opens many more doors. And with any luck, people will start getting smarter with ADSL, and begin to switch ISPs when they realise how much access they actually need.
~ Wogan
1 concurrent isn’t the best, but then again, if you’re on a LAN, you could switch Bridge mode off in the router and just plug it in there and that would be good. The 5 concurrent on business is damn useful, especially if you have staff who work remotely!
Let’s not forget that Zuma pushed for this too. That’s a good thing too if it all works out…
Whoop whoop! (Or at least that’s apparently what the cool kids say!)
Apparently Vox has joined the fray and on top of this Duncan over at Tech Central says Afrihost also has announced coming next week.
Super exciting time for web entrepreneurs in South Africa and it says a lot about how badly this is needed when the front page of the Thursday Star newspaper has it as their lead story!
Yup, next week we’ll be seeing some interesting developments from Vox and AfriHost, it’s going to get interesting!
Hehe, this is awesome. Headlines from the homepage of MyADSL:
- Afrihost uncapped here next week
- Vox uncapped ADSL: Best prices yet!
- ADSL Uncapped at R219 from OpenWeb
Good ol’ competition FTW.
Ye, it’s exciting to see all these developments; I’ve been using OpenWeb for years now and have always enjoyed their service. I think OpenWeb has teamed up with MWEB for the whole uncapped thing, must research it a little more though..
“MWEB uncapped business products have been said to be completely unshaped and uncapped, however, port prioritization may apply to consumer accounts during peak hours, the reason of this is to ensure that email and browsing speeds are optimized.”
BUSINESS products are uncapped and unshaped. BUSINESS, NOT Private. BUSINESS ONLY. Careful here, we must not get our hopes up too high just yet.
We phoned MWeb at 17h30
Phone call taken at 17h50
I was told that there is no restrictions,but if I wanted more information I needed to speak to thier technical department
I signed up for R219 package – got my user name and password and end the call.
Tried to set up the ADSL to no avail. Error: Incorrect User name and password.
Phoned back twice, but due to large call volumes they were, waited 30 min and hanged up.
Called again at 19h40 – Service consultant said that there their authentication server is down. But someone will call back today still.
No reply by, 20h40, called back again, and was told that no time for a call back was noted on the system. But Authentication server still down. They will call back.
21h50 Still no call back and still no ADSL.
Notice board shows atleast 20 areas down, but you are not alowed to copy the information and distribute it not prohibited by their terms and conditions.
Is it just me,or have they lost the plot allready. My guess is by the end of the week we will have 10000 upset prospective clients that have had enough of waiting in a que for Telkom and would not want to do the same for MWEB.
I’m currently on a 4MB uncapped account for MWEB and I’m very pleased so far. In fact, I’ve started an 8 week journey, you can read the first entry here – http://imod.co.za/index.php/2010/03/25/week-1-my-8-week-journey-with-mweb-uncapped-internet/
The idea here is to provide all my readers with a real experience so they can decide whether it’s a solution that could work for them :)