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THE latest attack on the intellect of South African consumers comes from internet service providers who claim to provide what we've always wanted - unlimited internet access - but in reality are offering limited connectivity. Perhaps an intellectual assault is taking things a bit far, but there certainly is a level of disingenuousness.
This isn't a South African phenomenon. All over the world internet service providers offer so-called uncapped or unlimited connectivity that actually does have a limit on it, enforced by a "fair use policy". Once the fair use limit is reached, subscribers are either cut off or slowed down. In the USA, for example, AT&T offers "unlimited" 3G broadband, but applies a fair use policy of 5GB.
In South Africa MTN has just introduced "uncapped" mobile connectivity, but this comes with fair use polices of 3GB or 10GB, depending on the package you choose, after which your connection is slowed down to 128kbps - half of the speed of the slowest ADSL connection available from Telkom.
In fact, iBurst has been offering a similarly packaged version of its own wireless service for ages, but didn't call it uncapped.
In MTN's case it's hard to argue false advertising. The connection is technically uncapped in that you can consume as much data as you want on it, but is so slow that you wouldn't get very far.
ADSL service providers also claim to provide uncapped connections, but in their case the fair use policy specifies closer to 100GB per month in general. Here it is more difficult to find international counterparts doing the same thing.
In the USA caps of around 250GB have been discussed by cable and DSL providers, but met with fierce criticism each time and, to my knowledge, have not been introduced by anyone. Limits are regularly applied to mobile, but very seldom to fixed line connections.
Unlike MTN, however, ADSL providers will more often than not cut you off at the fair use limit. Which means their connections are in no way uncapped. It's also debatable whether you're getting more for your money than you would from a premium capped ADSL connection.
The only uncapped offering I have tested so far is that of MWEB which offers decent enough speeds and high enough caps to make it almost seem worth it, although I would probably be better served by a 10GB premium service for the same price.
And that brings us to the point of it all; I don't mind having a limit on my internet connection, as long as whatever I do get is fairly priced. What I do mind is being sold the illusion of no limit - when there actually is one. As someone who knows the difference between a kilobit and a megabit I can navigate around the marketing guff, but consumers who can't be bothered with the technicalities are being exploited by the more limiting providers in the market. The only limit that should exist is in what I can afford; I could just buy more bandwidth when I hit the ceiling, after all.
Paying for premium internet connectivity, albeit capped, seems to be the sane option for consumers in the short term. It won't be long before the economies of scale in South Africa, especially in terms of domestic networks, reach a level of maturity that makes it possible for something closer to a really uncapped connection (or one with a cap so high it ceases to matter) to become a reality - and at a price that makes sense.
Most people aren't highly demanding in terms of bandwidth; they need to speak to family and friends on Skype, send and receive e-mail and browse the web. They don't need an infinite cap but they do need their connection to work, and stay working.
The reality is that South Africa is nowhere near ready for the likes of high definition IPTV and other more progressive internet services. If you tried accessing such a service on even the best of our uncapped solutions, you would push the limits with your provider in a couple of days. We'll have this talk again a year from now, however, and that stage things will likely be very different - for the better.
- Fin24.com
