MWEB launched their Free The Web initiative last year just before they stunned the market with the introduction of cheap affordable uncapped Internet, now the company is using their initiative to get to the next step in affordable Internet in South Africa.

MWEB’s Free the Web (FTW) initiative has taken up the cause of Naked ADSL, calling on South Africans to take a stand and add their vote to remove mandatory landline billing with ADSL lines. Currently if you request a ADSL line from Telkom you are required to take out a land line as well, this adds an additional fee to your account even if you are not interested in making phone calls.

“Since a landline is not required for ADSL connectivity, Naked ADSL calls for Telkom to unbundle landlines from ADSL lines, ensuring that ADSL customers who don’t want a telephone line don’t end up having to pay for one unnecessarily,” says Derek Hershaw, CEO of MWEB ISP.

Hershaw further added “The FTW initiative has therefore taken up the call for Naked ADSL. South Africans can visit theFreeTheWebSA facebook page, watch a quick video which explains the concept and campaign, and show their support for Naked ADSL via an Appeal Mosaic”

You can pledge your support for Naked ADSL by joining the Facebook Page and signing the petition.

Everybody was waiting in anticipation for Web Africa to launch their Uncapped Internet packages for home users when the slew of other Internet Service Providers jumped onto the band wagon and introduced uncapped packages, but the company had other plans and kept a close eye on the market.

Good things comes to those who wait, and with the introduction of Web Africa’s new Uncapped Internet for home users this is the case.

In an effort to combat poor internet service delivery, Web Africa has launched a spoof political party, the WA party, which is positioning itself as the organisation that will make things happen online and provide uncapped internet to Web Africans ‘from Boksburg to Bafokeng from Benoni to Bishopscourt’.

Web Africa is planning not just to target the tech savvy with the launch of their new Uncapped Internet for home users, but want to make unlimited Internet available and affordable to the average user without any contractual obligation.

Web Africa Uncapped Internet for home users pricing below.

Pricing shows that Web Africa means business and coupled with their reliable network and excellent support one thing you can be assured of is that Web Africa has set a new benchmark in Uncapped Home Internet in South Africa.

Web Africa has just launched a new Home ADSL product range that is sure to shake up the local South African ADSL market. The new product called Home Connect gives users double the bandwidth for the same prices compared to other ADSL providers.

Having analysed home user ADSL bandwidth trends, Web Africa have come up with the Home Connect product that offers users peak and off-peak usage allowances, resulting in low prices starting from R29 for 2GB of ADSL bandwidth.

I have to point out that the off-peak usage allowances is not like other broadband providers’ where you only get to use the bandwidth when you would normally be asleep, but rather when you would use the internet most as a home user, between 7pm and 7am.

Head of Product and Marketing, Cliff Hazell, says: “We have specifically designed this product for home users who are looking for good value for their money and don’t want to spend a fortune on quality ADSL. The majority of home users’ bandwidth is utilised outside of business hours or on weekends, allowing us to offer ‘off peak’ usage at much lower rates, whilst still providing sufficient bandwidth for normal peak-time usage and pass the value on to our customers.”

Web Africa Home Connect pricing

For more details visit the Web Africa Home Connect ADSL product page.

It seems like just about every company out there are joining in on Vodacom’s Red campaign, first there was Cell C, then Afrihost and now the latest company to launch a red promotion is local ISP Web Africa.

For the whole week until Friday, Web Africa will be giving the first 30 customers who sign up through their Red Alert page access to 30GB of bandwidth for only R199 per month.

Web Africa will open registration every day at 12:00 and give the first 30 customers 30 gigs of bandwidth for only R199, they will also throw in 100GB of free Download Plus bandwidth which can be used between 12am and 6am in the morning.

For more information about the Web Africa Red Africa promotion view the Red Africa page.

Uncapped ADSL is no new phenomena amongst South African ADSL users, we have been having it for longer than a year already, but one ISP I have been following closely since MWEB and many other local ISP’s released their Uncapped ADSL is WebAfrica.

WebAfrica has always been a pioneer in the local Internet market, but with the introduction of Uncapped Internet they somehow failed to deliver and instead focussed more on building their very own Tier 1 network.

After almost a year, WebAfrica has finally introduced their very own Uncapped ADSL product, Business Uncapped provisioned through the SAT-3 cable system and not Seacom.

“Web Africa Business Uncapped ADSL is intended for those who want the best possible performance from their ADSL line for their business. Furthermore, redundancy is par for the course with SAT3 bandwidth being primary and SEACOM bandwidth for failover.” said Web Africa CEO Matthew Tagg.

Tagg also added that “What also sets our product apart is our transparency, in terms of excessive usage and AUP rules clearly laid out in the online console with a graphical meter.”

WebAfrica’s Business Uncapped product offers clients lower content ratio’s, prioritised bandwidth, 24 hour business support, 10 email addresses and a usage management interface all without the need to sign a contract.

WebAfrica Business Uncapped ADSL is priced starting from R499 for 384kbps data only or R599 for the complete 386Kbps package that includes ADSL line rental. For more details about pricing view the WebAfrica Business Uncapped ADSL page.

I am glad to see WebAfrica is starting to move into the Uncapped ADSL market, but it looks like we will have to wait a bit longer for a consumer Uncapped ADSL offering from them.

SEACOM the undersea cable notorious for bringing South Africans cheap international bandwidth has broken down yet again, leaving lots of South African with limited or no international Internet connectivity at all.

Clients of ISPs making use of SEACOM started reporting connectivity issues from 23:30 last night. MWEB released a statement on Twitter that the cable break is in Cairo and related to a curfew in region engineers delayed to fix.

MWEB is currently running at 65% of its international capacity and in an attempt to provide customers with a pleasant browsing experience during the outages, has cut all P2P traffic. This means that service like bittorrent will not function during the outage.

Many ISP’s has raised concern with one SEACOM client saying that they must really get off this cable system as the “failure rate is ridiculous”.

What are your thoughts? Can you live with cable breaks as long as you have access to cheap Internet?