Enter Flexicell, Flexicell has innovated the prepaid landscape in South Africa by introducing prepaid month to month contracts, it’s a contract but not really cause it runs from month to month. You decide the amount of airtime you require each month, pay Flexicell and come each new month your phone is credited with the amount of airtime.

With this month to month offer from Flexicell you get all the flexibility of being on prepaid, while still having the convenience that contract customers have, like being assured that come beginning of the month you will have you airtime loaded automatically with the added benefit of not having to sign a 24 month contract.

You get to choose whatever amount you feel comfortable with spending each month on airtime and Flexicell will simply deduct that amount from you account and load the airtime, once you feel you can not afford it anymore you simply need to give one month’s notice and your done.

Social Networks and Technology forums are a buzz with speculation as to what MWEB might announce later today.

Some users are speculating that MWEB will do away with capped accounts and lower the price of their uncapped offering even further where others suggest that MWEB will offer unshaped bandwidth after hours.

MWEB will be making the announcement around 10:30AM this morning so keep an eye out.

I for one am really curious as to what this exciting news is that MWEB will be announcing, I am looking forward to see how they will further Free The Web in South Africa.

What is your thoughts? Do you have an idea as to what MWEB’s announcement will be?

UPDATE: MWEB and DSTV launces Video On Demand

The past couple of months South Africans has seen tremendous reduction in ADSL bandwidth pricing since Afrihost started the per-GB ADSL price war by offering ADSL bandwidth at R29 per GB, a few months after that  MWEB’s followed by introducing ridiculous uncapped pricing in an effort to free the web.

During these price wars WebAfrica made one attempt to reduce their pricing but it still came in at almost double that of the standard that was set by Afrihost. WebAfrica has now finally come to the price war party by dropping their per-GB prices.

WebAfrica has now introduced their Titan DSL Special available to both new and existing WebAfrica customers. With the Titan DSL Specials, you’ll be able to make use of fast, reliable internet and massive amounts of bandwidth at your business or home. The Titan DSL Specials come as monthly accounts with fixed life-time special rates.

The WebAfrica Titan DSL Special comes in 3 packages namely Titan Data 1, Titan Data 2 and Titan Data 3.  For R199 users will get 15GB worth of Data, R299 gives you 25GB of data and for R499 you will get 50GB of data. These new prices undercuts the current industry trend of R29 per GB by giving users data at R13, R12 and R10 per GB respectively. WebAfrica also has Titan Complete packages available for those that need a line included.

I do however need to point out a few things, this is a special meaning that the price can change, although if you sign up your price will be locked in. Then there is also the limit of only 1 concurrent connection and the fact that top-ups will be changes at WebAfrica’s normal rates which is R59 per GB.

Although the per GB price looks appealing you have to take note that you are stuck with a minimum of 15GB of data, so a no go if you are only looking for say 5GB per month.

All I have to say is that I am glad WebAfrica has finally joined the local broadband price wars, and lets hope they will soon introduced a uncapped offering to compete with the likes of MWEB.

Just last year Seacom completed construction of their underwater fibre cable and soon after that they went live bringing the first true competition to the SAT3 undersea cable system that for long had the monopoly.

The final splice which joins the two segments of the EASSy cable took place a few days ahead of schedule at 00:40 in the early hours of Monday 19th of April 2010.

Chris Wood, CEO of WIOCC said: “Now that this critical stage of the project has been completed successfully and ahead of time, we will start system testing almost immediately. Once this is finalised, we are looking forward to connecting our first customers to the network from July 2010.”

The key difference between EASSy and the other undersea fiber cables currently providing South Africa with Internet access is that EASSy deliver connectivity to Europe via a direct line through the Red and Mediterranean seas ensuring for faster and shorter distances for data to travel to reach European countries.

“EASSy’s affordable pricing and open access structure also promise to revolutionise many African markets, bringing flexible, cost-effective international connectivity to fixed line, mobile and data network operators and ISPs throughout east, central and southern Africa”. According to James Wekesa, WIOCC’s Chief Commercial Officer

It’s great to see another cable nearing completion and getting ready to launch, who knows before the end of the year we may have uncapped unshaped bandwidth with low content ratio’s for under a R100. What do you think? Will the EASSy cable contribute further to lower broadband prices in South Africa?

This is why I thought I would give you a nice breakdown of all the available uncapped internet options currently available in South Africa. Please note that this summary of uncapped internet accounts is data only options and not all-in-one uncapped packages.

Please note all uncapped packages above was quoted as is from the respective ISPs’ websites, all quoted uncapped packages is shaped unless otherwise stated in the notes section.

This is all the uncapped packages I could find on the Internet currently available in South Africa. If you know of any other ISP or changes in prices or usage policies please let me know and I’ll gladly update the table.

The free Internet access trial will be open to all iBurst contract and month-to-month wireless subscribers. The subscribers will be able to access the Internet for free during midnight and 8 am in the mornings, with no traffic being counted towards their monthly cap.

This announcement comes just weeks after numerous ISP’s introduced cheap affordable uncapped solutions, iBurst will be the first ISP to do something about their wireless products since the announcement of the uncapped accounts.

The service will first be launched as a free trial starting from July and if successful will become a value added service to iBurst products.

According to iBurst this is only the first of a number of initiatives which consumers can expect from them over the next three months.

“We are launching even more services to provide wireless Internet services at wireline-like pricing,” said Van Zyl.  “In addition, exciting new wire-line services are on the cards.”

Axxess has joined the hordes of ADSL ISP’s in response to MWEB’s uncapped announcement last week by offering uncapped ADSL at the most affordable rate at the moment just undercutting Afrihost with a few rands.

Axxess’ uncapped offering is a Internet Solutions based uncapped account first introduced this week by Afrihost, Axxess is selling 2 types of uncapped ADSL accounts.

1. 384Kbps [192Kbps upload] @ R196.00
2. 4096kbps [512Kbps upload] @ R496.00

This is currently the cheapest uncapped offering on the market undercutting Afrihost by just R1 on both packages.

I will still be holding on to my 10GB Afrihost capped account for a while as I believe there is still a few ISP’s that needs to respond to these new uncapped ADSL offerings like WebAfrica for example that made a pathetic attempt at price reductions earlier this year.

If you have jumped ship tell us how your experience has been so far with these new uncapped ADSL accounts.

[UPDATE]
Current Axxess clients will need to cancel their account via email before 31st of March and sign up for uncapped account on the 1st of April to avoid being double billed.

First MWEB stunned the local ADSL market with their introduction of really cheap uncapped Internet, and then just days later Afrihost followed suit by undercutting MWEB and introducing even cheaper uncapped ADSL. But what is the difference between this uncapped and capped ADSL and what should you use?

To put it simple uncapped ADSL allows for unlimited browsing, email, videos etc whereas capped ADSL only allows for a certain amount of data to be used. Typically uncapped ADSL will be used if you are a heavy downloader or like to watch YouTube allot or stream Internet radio whereas capped is ideal for more critical applications like browsing, Skype, gaming, remote desktop, VPN’s or Emails.

Uncapped ADSL makes use of high content ratios that allow ISP’s to give it to the users at cheaper costs, although capped ADSL also makes use of this content ratios the uncapped ratios is significantly higher than that of capped. What is content ratios you ask? Think of it like this, say the ISP has 10mbps bandwidth available to them, a content ratio of 10:1 will then see that 10mbps being shared amongst 10 users. If all 10 users start using high bandwidth applications at the same time theoretically they will only have 1mbps available to them even if they all have 4mbps lines.

As you can see the higher the content ratio the slower your Internet can become, and this is where capped ADSL beats uncapped ADSL for critical applications.

Conclusion is if you only use the Internet for browsing, email and gaming I would suggest sticking to capped ADSL at around R29 per GB it is still a steal, but if you are more into downloading large amounts of data or streaming YouTube constantly then I would urge to you go for one of these new uncapped accounts. I am in no way saying that services like gaming, Skype etc wont work on uncapped, I’m just saying that it works better on a capped account.

Afrihost launches SA cheapest uncapped ADSL from R197/month

Afrihost, the broadband Internet service provider (ISP) that sparked South Africa’s ADSL price war with its R29 per GB offer, has announced pricing for its first uncapped ADSL products.

Users will be able to source uncapped ADSL from Afrihost from as little as R197 a month for a 384kbps line. For uncapped data on a 512kbps you’ll pay R297 per month, and for uncapped data on a 4096 kbps line you’ll pay R497 per month. Prices are for bandwidth only and exclude line rental costs through Telkom.

“When we launched our R29 per GB offer almost six months ago, we knew that South African users craved more affordable ADSL. At the time, most ISPs charged around R70 per GB (and many still do) so our move really shook up the ISP industry,” said Gian Visser, CEO at Afrihost. “But we knew that many users wanted more. Over the past few months, we have been testing an uncapped product, which we are now ready to introduce to the market.”

Afrihost is surprised that another ISP has beaten it to the punch with an affordable uncapped ADSL offering, but is now ready to respond with a set of products that are now the cheapest on the market, added Visser. “Our intention when we introduce our R29 offer was to put pressure on the incumbents to lower their prices, and I think we can safely say that we have achieved that goal,” said Visser.

The Uncapped 4096 kbps product is available for purchase through the Afrihost website or Client Zone with immediate effect. Sign-ups will be limited for now, with accounts granted to users on a first-come, first-served basis.

Users who signup for the uncapped package in the initial beta testing stage will lock-in this package and price in for as long as they are Afrihost customers (although the company is not planning on increasing prices). The other uncapped offerings will be made available once the company has comprehensively tested the performance of its uncapped service and the impact on the Afrihost network.

Visser said that the uncapped service does have some restrictions and disadvantages that the capped packages from Afrihost does not have. The uncapped packages allow only one connection for each account while the capped packages allow many simultaneous connections from different locations for each account.

If you are accessing your ADSL account from several different locations (e.g. from home AND work), you will need to opt for a capped account or buy uncapped accounts for each location. The uncapped ADSL service will run off a higher ‘contention ratio’ than the capped ADSL service – which will be true of all ISPs in South Africa that offer uncapped services. This means more users are allocated to a certain chunk of bandwidth in uncapped than is the case with capped services. If many users are simultaneously making use of the network, then uncapped will be slightly slower than capped. “What that means is that people who value network speed and performance – especially during office hours – over cost may still find a capped package to be the best option for them,” said Visser.

According to Visser, with bandwidth priced at R29 per GB on a capped package it makes sense to move over to an uncapped offering if:

• You’re on a 384 kbps line and use more than 7 GBs a month
• You’re on a 512 kbps line and use more than 11 GBs a month
• You’re on a 4096 kbps line and use more than 17 GBs a month

“Unless you literally move hundreds of GBs per month this service will be uncapped for you with no catches at all,” said Visser. “However, we will take action on the minority who through their usage start affecting all of our other clients’ internet experience.”
The uncapped service is designed for humans who want to use the internet as much as they want – for some downloading, streaming media, browsing, and more. It is not designed for computer programs that are setup to continuously download 24/7, 30 days a month.

Great news is Afrihost is catering for those that has been bumped to the 8mbps trial, you can also obtain a 8mbps uncapped account from Afrihost. You can register your uncapped ADSL account from Afrihost here.

At the end of last year Afrihost started the broadband price war by introducing ADSL accounts at a mere R29 per GB, way lower than what the other ISP’s at the time was asking. Now they are targeting the power users, the guys using 50GB+ every month.

Afrihost today launched their ADSL Power Plans which allows purchases of high-cap accounts for only R9.50 per GB. This price compared to WebAfrica’s high end packages is a steal, WebAfrica charges R44.50 per GB for their high-end caps, that is even more than the normal Afrihost accounts.

Heavy users or businesses interested in obtaining one of these high-cap ADSL Power Plans from Afrihost can sign up here and get a all time low rate of only R9.50 per GB.