Internet service provider MWeb is expanding its capacity by adding extra last-mile access on Telkom’s network. MWeb CEO Rudi Jansen says since the launch of uncapped broadband earlier this year, customers are flooding to the service. “The uptake on our uncapped product has been incredible,” he says.
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In a surprising move, MWeb is lobbying government to give Telkom the more than R1bn in cash stashed away in the universal service fund so that it can plough that money into upgrading its network. CEO Rudi Jansen is especially keen for the money to be used to upgrade the so-called last mile of copper cables that connect customers to Telkom’s network.
MultiChoice has added three additional Internet service providers as distribution partners for its DStv On Demand Internet streaming service. They are Vox Telecom, Neology and Cybersmart. The company launched its first online on-demand video offering through MWeb just two months after the Internet service provider came to market with an aggressively priced uncapped broadband service.
MWeb’s uncapped broadband products have hammered the margins of many local Internet service providers, says BMI-TechKnowledge director of research Brian Neilson. And some might not survive. Speaking at a BMI-T telecommunications briefing in Johannesburg on Tuesday morning, Neilson said the uncapped model, and the price war it sparked had turned broadband provision into a volumes game.
Seacom, the undersea cable, may be offline until 22 July. A Seacom spokesman warned on Friday that repairs may only be finalised much later than initially thought because of various factors, including the depth under the ocean of fault. Seacom went offline on Monday, cutting off broadband users whose service providers buy capacity on exclusively on the Seacom system. The service disruptions have hit MWeb, part of Naspers, and downstream service providers from Dimension Data’s Internet Solutions particularly hard.
Seacom has secured alternative capacity options for its customers, but Internet service providers will be charged a “small premium” to use them. A fault on the Seacom cable between Mumbai in India and Mombasa in Kenya cut off many Internet users on Monday, with repairs expected to take a week or more.
Internet service provider MWeb, part of JSE-listed media group Naspers, is urgently seeking an alternative solution for its broadband customers…
Telkom has sent its customers a newsletter with their bills this month in which it tries to rubbish the uncapped broadband offerings introduced by MWeb and other service providers. Instead, it shows how Telkom is still stuck in the past. The newsletter article — headlined “Broadband: put a cap on it!” — doesn’t once
Telkom has hit back at the introduction by MWeb and other Internet service providers of uncapped broadband, accusing rivals of “not delivering on their promise”. In a newsletter sent out to Telkom subscribers with their monthly bills this month, the incumbent fixed-line operator climbs into its competitors without naming
Is a price war looming in the local Web hosting market? It appears that big changes may be coming that…