SA to be a bandwidth desert no more

Keeping count: SEACOM cable bites the dust

One could be excused for thinking that the SEACOM undersea cable was planned as a plot by Telkom to make themselves look like a glimmering beacon of hope. A few days ago, about about 1.5KM under the sea somewhere up the east coast of Africa, a cable repeater has decided to commit suicide, leaving users of MWEB, Afrihost and various other ISPs with slower connections and wrinkled foreheads.

The cable - while a certain blessing - has been down numerous times since inception, forcing users who make use of ISPs that are on Internet Solutions' network to switch to a SAIX/Telkom-based ADSL account. As of yesterday though the bandwidth situation has improved to a degree, although some ISPs have noted that P2P speeds have been throttled even more than before to ensure decent speeds for 'normal' web users.

Whilst the ISPs scramble to find more bandwidth, it is estimated the cable could take up to 2 weeks to be repaired, which in Internet Time is roughly the equivalent of 17.3 eons, give or take a few light years.

Nonetheless, if you're staring at your screen waiting for webpages to load, fear not, for a ship is chugging its way to the deceased piece of technology. Hopefully the replacement has no I'm-gonna-take-my-own-life-underwater-cos-repeaters-get-no-respect tendencies.

Telkom releases DoUncapped ADSL

Telkom today announced the release of their much-awaited uncapped ADSL offerings.

Full details are still to be revealed, but the company did provide us with the main features and benefits of the service.

The DoUncapped packages will be available in 3 speeds, 384Kbps, 512Kbps and 4Mbps, while each package provides shaped bandwidth.

The 384Kbps package will be totally uncapped until the 3GB limit is reached, after which you have to purchase another uncapped account. The 512Kbps package is uncapped to 5GB and the 4Mbps package is uncapped to a "massive" 10GB.

Once you reach the uncapped usage limit, Telkom allows you to topup your uncapped account with another uncapped account at R395 for 384Kbps, R595 for 512Kbps and R1495 for 4Mbps which is, according to the company, market-related and extremely competitive.

Says a company spokesperson, "The advantage of the DoUncapped product is that you can download and upload as much as your connection is capable of before you reach the account limit. We have researched the market and have noticed that an uncapped product is an absolute necessity in the modern economy."

Telkom has also said the product is perfectly suited for light email checking, Googling once a day or so, telnet sessions and anything requiring less bandwidth than the entire Mongolia did in 1977.

Telkom's DoUncapped will only be available today, April 1.

OpenWeb releases Uncapped ADSL

Since MWEB announced affordable uncapped ADSL packages last week, Vox and @lantic have followed suit (with more ISPs to follow), and now OpenWeb have also announced uncapped ADSL from R219/mo.

The packages will, like MWEB, come in business and residential flavours. All packages let you use as much bandwidth as you like, so worrying about being capped all day has become a thing of the past. The residential packages don't require a contract and offer unshaped bandwidth after hours. The prices are very affordable in comparison to other uncapped services, costing R219/mo for 384Kbps, R299/mo for 512Kbps, and R539 for 4Mbps.

The business packages are unshaped, (available on 12 month contract) allow businesses to host their own servers and also offer 5 static IP addresses as well as a Cisco router. The 384Kbps business uncapped package costs R499/mo, the 512Kbps package costs R699/mo and the 4Mbps costs R1999/mo.

All packages are available from today -- pop over to www.openweb.co.za/adsl and make your ADSL line work for its money!

MWEB releases uncapped ADSL from R219/mo

Seemingly the pressure of cheap per-GB ADSL accounts have prompted ol' MWEB to double-check the grass they were leaving to grow under their feet.

They've taken the leap today and are now offering uncapped accounts in consumer and business flavours starting from as little as R219/mo. Not so long ago a mere 3GB from Telscum used to be R249, so this is very significant. Bandwidth is provided over SEACOM, which, if you've been using Afrihost's R29/GB acounts et al, provides great latency and speeds.

What you can expect:

MWEB Connect Uncapped ADSL (Consumer, no contract)

Uncapped ADSL 384kbps: R219

Uncapped ADSL 512kbps: R299

Uncapped ADSL 4096kbps: R539

All inclusive Uncapped ADSL (Consumer)

Uncapped All-inclusive 384kbps: R349

Uncapped All-inclusive 512kbps: R599

Uncapped All-inclusive 4096kbps: R899

MWEB Business Uncapped ADSL (12 month contract)

Uncapped ADSL 384kbps: R499

Uncapped ADSL 512kbps: R699

Uncapped ADSL 4096kbps:  R1 999

All-inclusive Business Uncapped ADSL

Uncapped All-inclusive 384kbps: R629

Uncapped All-inclusive 512kbps: R999

Uncapped All-inclusive 4096kbps: R2 259

All in all a great development from probably the last company anyone expected to rattle the cage. For more info pop over to MWEB. We can't find any of the expected 'what's the catch' fine print yet, so hopefully they've left that out for a change.

OpenWeb ADSL @ R49/GB

OpenWeb has been one of SA's more prominent providers of affordable uncapped ADSL services, and have now added equally affordable per-GB accounts to their lineup.

You can now get 1GB at R49 with packages up to 10GB at R490, and accounts feature instant activation if you pay using your credit card. These semi-unshaped ADSL accounts also allow 4 concurrent sessions, and P2P is enabled for rabid downloaders who don't use news servers or file sharing sites.

At R49/GB though the OpenWeb per-gig packages are some of the cheapest available in SA's overpriced bandwidth market (thanks Telkom!), and in case you were wondering, the accounts work equally well on 384k, 512k, and 4Mbps ADSL connections as they don't limit your line speed.

If you'd like to cast your eyes across the packages, head on over to OpenWeb.co.za.

Telkom upgrading ADSL users for free, mahala, bogerol and nothing extra

Telkom's ADSL users will be receiving a belated Christmas present this year. Telkom will be upgrading current 4Mbps ADSL subscribers to a minimum of 8Mbps by March/April. If your line quality is good enough and your exchange supports it, you could be upgrade to 12Mbps.

Upstream speeds will be in the region of 10% of the download speed, so 8Mbps ADSL will have around 800Kbps upload and 12Mbps likely around 1.2Mbps.

If your line doesn't quite cut it connecting at 8Mbps, the DSLAM (Digital Subscriber Line Access Module - the device to which the ADSL portion of your phone line is connected to at your telephone exchange) will attempty to sync at 1Mbps increments above 4Mbps. This means that if your line can keep a stable 5Mbps maximum sync, then that will be your line speed, but if it can sync at 6 or 7Mbps then even better.

The only bad news is that only areas with suitable exchanges will be upgraded, so unfortunately we won't all be getting the improved speeds all at once.

No word yet about 384K and 512K subscribers, but we'd imagine that 384K would become 1Mbps and 512K could become 2Mbps? Hopefully Telkom doesn't upgrade 384K to 512K and 512K to 4Mbps, that would just be a touch silly.

Oh, like the previous speed upgrades, the new ADSL speed upgrades will be free of charge.

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