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.

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’s no secret that when it comes to innovation and setting standards in the local broadband market, MWEB is at the forefront. MWEB, the company that revolutionised uncapped Internet in South Africa, has now gone and done another first in South Africa by upgrading all 512k customers to 1Mbps.

This news comes after rumours have been doing the rounds that Telkom will be doing away with their 512k ADSL lines and upgrading all customers to 1Mbps, however no promises have been made by Telkom as to when the switchover will happen.

MWEB has taken the lead, and from today the 512k option will be obsolete from their product line. MWEB will be upgrading all current 512k customers to 1Mbps speeds at no extra cost and the new 1Mbps uncapped products will also be priced the same as the previous 512k products.

Users that are already on a 1Mbps data only option will get a price reduction and from now on only pay R299pm, while the new 1Mbps All Inclusive package will be priced at R599pm.

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.

MWEB the company that stunned the local ADSL market exactly a year ago by offering South Africans cheap uncapped ADSL is at it again and this time they are taking on expensive hosting prices.

Hosting your site locally could set you back quite a few bucks, and thus many people running sites has opted to rather host internationally than locally, but MWEB is again changing the landscape of the local Internet space.

MWEB has just announced their new uncapped local hosting offering, bringing local hosting prices in line with that of international ones. The new MWEB Uncapped Hosting will allow users to host their sites locally without any bandwidth or storage restrictions from as little as R19 per month.

The new local uncapped hosting offering is aimed at small businesses and individuals and includes a free “co.za” domain which will automatically renew every year, plus a free email address with up to 5 aliases and will operate on a shared hosting environment.

It has to be noted that although the service is uncapped there is a acceptable usage policy in place to prevent users from setting up media farms where they can download movies and share it amongst others.

Good news for MWEB ADSL subscribers is that they may make use of the Uncapped Hosting package free of charge for the first 12 months, after which the R19/month fee may apply, this excludes 1GB customers.

I for one am happy to see this change in the local hosting space as it was long overdue, now its just a matter of time before other hosting providers like WebAfrica, Afrihost and RSAWEB respond to this and we will see the whole ADSL price war all over again but this time for hosting.

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?

This morning while listening to the radio I noticed an advertisement saying you can get 12GB of free Internet.

The Free ADSL offer is a promotion by @lantic giving customers 12GB of free ADSL. The 12GB of free ADSL are split up over a period of 6 months meaning you will get 2GB per month for 6 months.

What is the catch? From what I understand the main catch is that once you reach your 2GB cap in a month you will not get capped, instead @lantic will start to bill you for every megabyte you use after your first free 2GB. All the out of bundle data will be billed at 5c per MB which works out at R51.50 per GB. The offer is also only open to new clients.

If you sign up for the Free ADSL promotion also be aware that once your six months of free usage are over @lantic will automatically continue the service and you will be billed R49 p/m. You need to give at least 30 days notice to terminate the contract.

So what are you waiting for? Go grab that free ADSL while you can, just be sure you do not over use and to cancel on your 5th month.

Telkom started roll out of its 10Mbps ADSL network the past weekend. The upgrade of about 19000 4Mbps ADSL subscribers to 10Mbps started on Friday at round about 8PM and will last up to 7 days to complete.

Users that are approximately 1.5KM from the exchange can expect to be upgraded to the higher 10Mbps speeds while other users further away will be bumped up to 8Mbps. Should you not be able to sync at these speeds Telkom will try and sync at lower speeds decreasing at 1Mbps each try.

Apparently the 10Mbps upgrade is only available to current Telkom 4Mbps users that are on the new Metro-Ethernet and ADSL2+ exchanges, where these exchanges are located is unknown but according to reports on the MyBroadband forums users are being upgraded in certain areas of Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, Port Elizabeth and Pretoria.

The big question on everyone’s’ lips are still will lower-end users also be upgraded to higher packages like Telkom did previously with the upgrade from 192Kbps to 386Kbps? And also will the 512Kbps user again be left out?

Have your line been upgraded to 10Mbps yet? To find out if your line has been upgraded to 10Mbps head on over to SpeedTest.Net and do a speed test or log into your router and check the speeds at which your line is syncing.

Telkom must surely be feeling the pressure since MWEB stunned the local ADSL market by introducing cheap uncapped Accounts, and with Afrihost offering 1GB ADSL bundles for a mere R29 per GB doesn’t make it easier for them also.

Telkom unveiled their new Do Broadband packages and prices, but its not that a big improvement. Prices stay the same with just increased bundle sizes, and their attempt at lowering top-up prices is disgusting.

Telkom Internet subscribers will from 1 August 2010 see their packages increase with a few GB and top-up prices will drop to R49 per GB, still way above the R29 per GB offering we are used to nowadays from ISPs like Afrihost.

Telkom is yet to announce pricing of their new 10Mbps service, and there are allot of questions regarding whether Telkom will automatically upgrade current 4Mbps users like they did in the past with 1Mbps users, or if the new 10Mbps service will cost extra.

Still I feel Telkom’s attempt at reducing ADSL prices is pathetic, what’s your thoughts on the price reduction?