Frontier Communications has quietly begun testing an Internet Overcharging scheme in Minnesota designed to charge confiscatory prices to residents who exceed the company’s usage allowances, demanding customers pay up to $249.99 a month to keep their broadband service running.

Stop the Cap! has learned Frontier has begun measuring customers’ broadband usage, and for those in Minnesota who exceed 100GB of usage during a month, Frontier is dispatching e-mail messages telling them they’ll have to agree to pay more — much more — or their service will be cut off in 15 days.

Two e-mail messages are being sent to customers who break the 100 and 250GB usage barriers.  Both reference Frontier’s 5GB usage allowance that Stop the Cap! has strongly and repeatedly criticized the company for implementing in the first place.  Using that usage allowance as a baseline, Frontier calls out its customers using more demanding they switch to a higher priced service plan if they want to continue service with the company.

• For those achieving 100GB of usage, the new monthly rate is $99.99 per month
• For those achieving 250GB of usage, the new monthly rate is an incredible $249.99 per month

Sources tell Stop the Cap! the Internet Overcharging scheme Frontier is running is an experiment to gauge customer reaction.  If the furious customer e-mail reaching us is any indication, it’s another public relations disaster for Frontier Communications.  One customer didn’t even realize there was a 5GB usage allowance to begin with, much less a vastly higher new monthly price if he wants to stay with Frontier DSL.  He’s not.

"You can earn this much money just from overcharging Minnesotans for their Internet service!"

Ironically, the experimental pricing plan comes at a time when Frontier is still trying to get state regulators to approve its deal with Verizon to assume control of landline and broadband service in several states.  Residents in West Virginia and a dozen other states might be a bit concerned that their unlimited Verizon DSL broadband service, often the only service provider available, could be replaced with a company that is willing to punish its customers with $250 in monthly charges once a customer hits 250GB in usage.  Even worse, Frontier takes the overlimit penalty concept to a whole new level, telling customers that new high price represents their new monthly rate plan, not just a temporary penalty.

To add insult to injury, Frontier continues to mislead its customers about the experimental pricing on its own website.  As of this writing, Frontier’s Acceptable Use Policy still states:

Customers may not resell High Speed Internet Access Service (“Service”) without a legal and written agency agreement with Frontier. Customers may not retransmit the Service or make the Service available to anyone outside the premises (i.e., wi-fi or other methods of networking). Customers may not use the Service to host any type of commercial server. Customers must comply with all Frontier network, bandwidth, data storage and usage limitations. Frontier may suspend, terminate or apply additional charges to the Service if such usage exceeds a reasonable amount of usage. A reasonable amount of usage is defined as 5GB combined upload and download consumption during the course of a 30-day billing period. The Company has made no decision about potential charges for monthly usage in excess of 5GB.

For customers receiving Frontier’s Scare-o-Gram, it sure sounds like they made up their minds… to charge a lot more for the exact same level of service.

For state regulators, watching Frontier charge ludicrous pricing for broadband service that would make most providers blush should be more than enough evidence that approving Frontier’s plans to take over Internet and landline service in their state is not in the best interests of consumers.  For many, it saddles them with a broadband provider that can charge these kinds of prices knowing full well many customers have nowhere else to go.

Copy of E-Mail Sent to Minnesota Customers Exceeding 100 GB of usage a month [emphasis in bold is ours]:

Dear [Customer]:

Frontier is focused on providing the best possible internet experience across our entire customer base.  We bring you a quality service at a fair price, dependent upon an average monthly bandwidth usage of 5GB.  Over the past months, your account is in violation of our Residential Internet Acceptable Use Policy.

Our policy states that Frontier reserves the right to suspend, terminate or apply additional charges to the Service if such usage exceeds a reasonable amount of usage. A reasonable amount of usage is defined as 5GB combined upload and download consumption during the course of a 30-day billing period.

We realize there are times when our customers use the internet for services such as video and music downloads, however your specific usage has consistently exceeded 100GB over a 30 day period.

We would like to provide you with the option of keeping your Frontier internet service at a monthly rate of $99.99 which is reflective of your average monthly usage.  Please call us within 7 days of the date of this email at 1-877-273-0489 Monday – Friday, 8AM – 5PM CST to review your options.  If you do not wish to switch to this new rate plan, you can have your service disconnected.  If we do not hear from you within 15 days, your internet service will be automatically disconnected.

We continue to manage our network to ensure all of our customers have equal access to the internet and the ability to enjoy all of its available content, at our committed level of service quality.

Sincerely,

Frontier Communications

Copy of E-Mail Sent to Minnesota Customers Exceeding 250 GB of usage a month [emphasis in bold is ours]:

Dear [Customer]:

Frontier is focused on providing the best possible internet experience across our entire customer base.  We bring you a quality service at a fair price, dependent upon an average monthly bandwidth usage of 5GB.  Over the past months, your account is in violation of our Residential Internet Acceptable Use Policy.

Our policy states that Frontier reserves the right to suspend, terminate or apply additional charges to the Service if such usage exceeds a reasonable amount of usage. A reasonable amount of usage is defined as 5GB combined upload and download consumption during the course of a 30-day billing period.

We realize there are times when our customers use the internet for services such as video and music downloads, however your specific usage has consistently exceeded 250GB over a 30 day period.

We would like to provide you with the option of keeping your Frontier internet service at a monthly rate of $249.99 which is reflective of your average monthly usage.  Please call us within 7 days of the date of this email at 1-877-273-0489 Monday – Friday, 8AM – 5PM CST to review your options.  If you do not wish to switch to this new rate plan, you can have your service disconnected.  If we do not hear from you within 15 days, your internet service will be automatically disconnected.

We continue to manage our network to ensure all of our customers have equal access to the internet and the ability to enjoy all of its available content, at our committed level of service quality.

Sincerely,

Frontier Communications

The 'Prince of Wales,' one of Inter-Island Ferry Authority's boats that connect the island to the mainland (Courtesy: Inter-Island Ferry Authority)

Providing broadband to 6,000 residents of Prince Wales Island, located along the western strip of Alaska that borders on British Columbia, Canada is the ultimate challenge.  Parts of the island don’t even have access to traditional landline phone service, relying instead on fixed wireless service.

Residents have complained loudly about the poor quality of phone service on the island for years, particularly when it is provided to the 1,000 residents of Klawock, Craig, and several adjacent communities served by Alaska Communications Systems (ACS).  Ten percent of ACS customers are stuck with fixed wireless, which guarantees no Internet access, and sub-standard phone service.  What perturbs many of them is the fact another phone company’s landlines are within the sight of their homes and communities, but they can’t get service from that company.  Those lines are owned by ACS competitor Alaska Power & Telephone (AP&T), an employee owned utility that serves many areas ACS doesn’t.

Friends and neighbors served by AP&T are happy with their telephone service.  Residents served by ACS are not.

The Alaska Dispatch tells the story:

Every three months Ron Fitch drives five miles down a state highway so he can use a friend’s telephone to monitor his pacemaker.

Fitch, who lives on Price of Wales Island, has a phone at home, but he gets his service via fixed wireless, which is similar to a cell phone signal but is routed through a box mounted in the house. Since you can’t recalibrate a pacemaker over a wireless signal, Fitch makes the drive four times a year.

“Times have changed, and it doesn’t seem right that we can’t get Internet or a fax or anything over our phones,” said Eric Packer, a builder who lives outside Klawock. “It’s like living in the dark ages.”

ACS customers on the island have been complaining about their phone service for years, and for some the frustration is sharpened by the view of lines — owned by ACS competitor Alaska Power and Telephone — running near their homes. Two years ago the Regulatory Commission of Alaska opened an investigation into ACS service on the island, citing numerous customer complaints and a request from Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

With all of the negative press focused on ACS, the company relented, telling the Regulatory Commission it will offer to connect those fixed wireless customers to landline service, but will only pay for up to 1,000 feet of wiring between the nearest ACS junction box and the customer’s home.  ACS will bill customers the balance of costs beyond 1,000 feet if a customer insists on landline service.

ACS is a major recipient of universal service funds which subsidizes phone service in rural areas to keep it affordable.  ACS receives about $4 million a year.  ACS fixed wireless customers on the island pay about $26 a month.

ACS customers perennially without broadband have complained to the Regulatory Commission, according to the Dispatch, suggesting it hurts the island’s economic development.  Some customers have managed to switch to cell phone service and dropped landline/fixed wireless service, and a select few are trying to rely on satellite Internet service, which customers characterize as expensive and slow.

Pricing for landline DSL service from either ACS or AP&T is itself slow and expensive, and AP&T service is usage limited:

ACS promotes the fact their service is unlimited.  Includes local and long distance telephone service.  One year contract term required.  Pricing may be higher in rural areas not specified on the ACS website.

The 1Mbps service tier is currently available in select areas dependent upon local infrastructure.  Each additional gigabyte of usage is pro-rated at $5.00/GB.  AP&T provides wireless broadband in selected rural areas.

Milton, Vermont

Jesse and his nearby neighbors on the west side of Milton are frustrated.  They live just 20 minutes away from Burlington, the largest city in the state of Vermont.  Despite the proximity to a city with nearly 40,000 residents, there is no cell phone coverage in western Milton, no cable television service, and no DSL service from FairPoint Communications.  For this part of Milton, it’s living living in 1990, where dial-up service was one’s gateway to the Internet.

Jesse and his immediate neighbors haven’t given up searching for broadband service options, but they face a united front of intransigent operators who refuse to make the investment to extend service down his well-populated street.

“After many calls to Comcast, they eventually sent us an estimate for over $17,000 to bring service to us, despite being less than a mile from their nearest station,” Jesse tells Vermont Public Radio.  “They also made it very clear that there was no plan at any point in the future, 2010 or beyond, to come here unless we paid them the money.”

Jesse and his neighbors want to give Comcast money, but not $17,000.

For at least 15 percent of Vermonters, Jesse’s story is their story.  Broadband simply remains elusive and out of reach.

Three years ago, Vermont’s Republican governor Jim Douglas announced the state would achieve 100 percent broadband coverage by 2010, making Vermont the nation’s first “e-State.”

Vermont Public Radio reviewed the progress Vermont is making towards becoming America’s first e-State. (January 20, 2010) (30 minutes)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

<

p style=”text-align: center;”>

Gov. Douglas

In June 2007 the state passed Act 79, legislation that established the Vermont Telecommunications Authority to facilitate the establishment and delivery of mobile phone and Internet access infrastructure and services for residents and businesses throughout Vermont.

The VTA, under the early leadership of Bill Shuttleworth, a former Verizon Communications senior manager, launched a modest broadband grant program to incrementally expand broadband access, often through existing service providers who agreed to use the money to extend service to unserved neighborhoods.

The Authority also acts as a clearinghouse for coordinating information about broadband projects across the state, although it doesn’t have any authority over those projects.  Lately, the VTA has been backing Google’s “Think Big With a Gig” Initiative, except it promotes the state as a great choice for fiber, not just one or two communities within Vermont.

[flv width=”480″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Google Fiber Vermont 3-22-10.mp4[/flv]

Vermont used this video to promote their bid to become a Google Fiber state.  (2 minutes)

Some of the most dramatic expansion plans come from the East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network.  ECFiber, a group of 22 local municipalities, in partnership with ValleyNet, a Vermont non-profit organization, is planning to implement a high-capacity fiber-optic network capable of serving 100% of homes and businesses in participating towns with Internet, telephone and cable television service.  In 2008, the group coalesced around a proposal to construct a major fiber-to-the-home project to extend broadband across areas that often don’t even have slower speed DSL.

The ECFiber project brought communities together to provide the kind of broadband service private companies refused to provide. Vermont Public Radio explores the project and the enthusiasm of residents hopeful they will finally be able to get broadband service. (March 8, 2008) (24 minutes)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

<

p style=”text-align: center;”>

ECFiber's Partner Communities

The Vermont towns, which together number roughly 55,000 residents, decided to build their own network after FairPoint Communications and local cable companies refused to extend the reach of their services.  Providers claim expanding service is not financially viable.  For residents like sheep farmer Marian White, interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, that means another year of paying $60 a month for satellite fraudband, the speed and consumption-limited satellite Internet service.

White calls the satellite service unreliable, especially in winter when snow accumulates on the dish.  Unlike many broadband users who vegetate for hours browsing the web, White actually gets an exercise routine while trying to get her satellite service to work.

“I open a window and I take a pan of water and, a cup at a time, I launch warm water at the satellite dish until I have melted all the snow off the dish,” Ms. White says. “It works.”

Other residents treat accessing the Internet the same way rural Americans plan a trip into town to buy supplies.

Kathi Terami from Tunbridge makes a list of things to do online and then, once a week, travels into town to visit the local public library which has a high speed connection.  Terami downloads Sesame Street podcasts for her children, watches YouTube links sent by her sister, and tries to download whatever she thinks she might want to see or use over the coming week.

A fiber to the home network like ECFiber would change everything for small town Vermonters.  The implications are enormous according to project manager Tim Nulty.

“People are truly afraid their communities are going to die if they aren’t on the communications medium that drives the country culturally and economically,” he says. “It’s one of the most intensely felt political issues in Vermont after health care.”

Despite the plan’s good intentions, one obstacle after another has prevented ECFiber from making much headway:

• The VTA rejected the proposal in 2008, calling it unfeasible;
• Plans over the summer and fall of 2008 to approach big national investment banks ran head-on into the sub-prime mortgage collapse, which caused banks to stop lending;
• An alternative plan to build the network with public debt financing, using smaller investors, collapsed along with Lehman Brothers on September 14, 2008;
• An attempt by Senator Pat Leahy (D-Vermont) to insert federal loan guarantees into the stimulus bill in February 2009 was thwarted by partisan wrangling;
• Attempts to secure federal broadband grant stimulus funding has been rejected by the Commerce Department;
• Opposition to the plan and objections over its funding come from incumbent providers like FairPoint, who claim the project is unnecessary because they will provide service in those areas… eventually.

For the indefinite future, it appears Ms. White will continue to throw warm cups of water out the window on cold winter mornings.

Vermont Edition takes a comprehensive look at where the state stands in broadband and wireless deployment. (April 8, 2009) (46 minutes)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

<

p style=”text-align: center;”>

For every Tunbridge resident with a story about life without broadband, there are many more across Vermont living with hit or miss Internet access.

Take Marie from Middlesex.

Most residents in more rural areas of Vermont get service where they can from FairPoint Communications

“I am in Middlesex, about a half-mile off Route 2, and five minutes from the Capitol Building. Yet up until just recently, we had no sign of high-speed Internet. I understand that my neighbors just received DSL a few weeks ago, but when I call FairPoint, they tell me it’s still not available at my house, which is a few hundred yards up the hill. Hopefully, they’re wrong and I’ll see DSL soon,” she says.

Marie is pining for yesterday’s broadband technology — FairPoint’s 1.5Mbps basic DSL service, now considered below the proposed minimum speeds to qualify for “broadband” in the National Broadband Plan.  For Marie, it’s better than nothing.

Geryll in Goshen also lacks DSL and probably wouldn’t want it from FairPoint anyway.

“We have barely reliable landline service. A tech is at my house at least three times per year. I was told the lines are so old they are decaying. Using dial-up is impossible. I use satellite which is very expensive and is in my opinion only one step up from dial-up. I am limited to downloads and penalized if I reach my daily limit,” he says.

Many Vermonters acknowledge Douglas’ planned 100-percent-broadband-coverage-by-2010 won’t come close to achievement and many are highly skeptical they will ever see the day where every resident who wants broadband service can get it.

Chip in Cabot is among them, jaded after six years of arguments with FairPoint Communications and its predecessor Verizon about obtaining access to DSL.  It took a cooperative FairPoint engineer outside of the business office to finally get Chip service.  His neighbors were not so lucky, most emphatically rejected for DSL service from an intransigent FairPoint:

“I laughed when Governor Douglas announced his e-State goal “by 2010” three years ago. Now I’m thinking I should have made some bets on this claim. It took years of legal battles and a zoning variance to obtain partial cell coverage here in Cabot. Large parts of the town still do not have any cell coverage. Governor Douglas can perhaps be forgiven – he has no technical knowledge, and as a politician would be expected to be wildly optimistic about such “e-State” claims. The Vermont Telecommunications Authority and the Department of Public Service should know better however. We’re talking about rural areas where there is no financial incentive to provide either DSL or cell service. It will take a huge amount of money to provide service to those remaining parts of the state. I’m not optimistic.”

[flv width=”512″ height=”308″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Wall Street Journal Vermont Broadband Problems 03-02-09.flv[/flv]

The Wall Street Journal chronicled the challenges Vermonters face when broadband is unavailable to them.  ECFiber may solve these problems.  Some of the stories in our article are reflected in this well-done video.  (3/2/2009 — 4 Minutes)

Governor Jay Nixon has announced support for 12 different proposals from across Missouri that would expand broadband Internet access in rural and underserved parts of the state for health care, business, education and consumers.

As part of the MoBroadbandNow initiative, Missouri is coordinating efforts among private companies, local governments and rural electric cooperatives to extend broadband access to 95 percent of Missouri residents over the next five years.  Much of the funding to support rural broadband expansion would come through federal stimulus money from the Recovery Act, and those backing the Missouri effort hope a coordinated approach improves the state’s chances to secure funding.

“These proposals were closely reviewed, and we identified the ones we believe are most likely to receive federal funding and most closely aligned with the vision of MoBroadbandNow,” said Governor Nixon.

Five of the applications supported by the State of Missouri are for developing middle-mile infrastructure for broadband, which would help extend existing broadband service to additional homes previously deemed too rural; six are for developing last-mile projects which directly reach customers; and one is for developing public computing centers, which will provide broadband access in public locations, often targeting a specific vulnerable population such as low-income, minority, disabled or unemployed Missourians.

Gov. Nixon

The middle-mile proposals that received letters of support from the Governor included:

• BlueBird Media, of Columbia, which plans to build a middle-mile network in northern Missouri;
• Boycom Cablevision, of Poplar Bluff, which plans to build a middle-mile network along the U.S. Highway 60 corridor in southern Missouri and into the Bootheel;
• Sho-Me Technologies, of Marshfield, which plans to build a middle-mile network in central and south central Missouri;
• SpringNet, a division of City Utilities of Springfield, which would provide broadband to customers in the metropolitan Springfield area; and
• American Fiber Systems, of Rochester, N.Y., which plans to provide connections to several Metropolitan Community College facilities in Jackson County.

The last-mile proposals that received letters of support from the Governor included:

• Big River Telephone Company, of Cape Girardeau, which would provide broadband to households and businesses in southeast Missouri;
• Cass County, which would provide broadband to households and businesses in western Missouri;
• Co-Mo Electric Cooperative, of Tipton, which would provide broadband to households and businesses in west-central Missouri;
• Finally Broadband, of Seymour, which would provide broadband to households and businesses in south central Missouri;
• Socket, of Columbia, which would provide broadband to households in central Missouri; and
• United Electric Cooperative, of Savannah, which would provide broadband to households and businesses in northwest Missouri.

The public computing center proposal supported by the governor is being submitted by YourTel America, which would create eight public computing centers at retail centers, including five in the Kansas City area, two in the St. Louis area, and one in St. Joseph. These public computing centers also will focus on bringing broadband access to vulnerable populations of Missourians.

Currently, 77 percent of Missouri residents can obtain broadband from DSL service from AT&T and smaller independent phone companies, cable modem service from providers like Charter, Mediacom, and Cable One, and mobile broadband provided by several carriers.  Most the remaining residents have little/no access to broadband service except through satellite fraudband, which promises far more than it delivers.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KYTV Springfield KOLR Springfield Rural Broadband Initiative 8-12-09 3-31-10.flv[/flv]

We have two reports – the first from KYTV-TV in Springfield which comes from August 12, 2009 exploring the state of Missouri broadband and the launch of the MoBroadbandNow coordinated stimulus funding effort and the second from KOLR-TV in Springfield discussing Governor Nixon’s announcement yesterday.  (4 minutes)

South Africa is the latest country on the way to finally discarding Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps and usage-based billing.

MWEB, one of South Africa’s largest residential broadband service providers, last week “threw down the gauntlet” and unveiled an unlimited broadband option among its various rate plans.

“We realized there’s a major gap in the market. South Africa doesn’t experience the Internet like the rest of the world does. It’s a fantastic opportunity to change the Internet in South Africa,” MWEB CEO Rudi Jansen told News24.

For a country that has never known anything but expensive, slow, usage-capped Internet, MWEB’s announcement is nothing short of a broadband revolution for 49 million South Africans.

“This is not the end. There are still probably three or four big things that have to change in this market and for us, this is the first step. The other things that have to change are we have to get the mobile operators to offer wholesale data. The more competition there is, the better it is for the market,” said Jansen.

For $73.50US per month, MWEB offers 4Mbps DSL service that is truly unlimited, which is a radical notion in a country used to usage caps averaging 3GB per month.  Customers willing to tolerate slower speeds can reduce their unlimited broadband bill considerably — 384kbps starts at $30 a month; 512kbps is priced at $41 a month.  The company does admit to throttling torrent services, but customers have managed to bypass the throttle by encrypting their torrent traffic.

Although these speeds and prices are terrible in comparison to North American broadband plans, for South Africans, MWEB’s announcement was big news.  That’s because the competition charges far higher prices, often for limited service:

• Telkom, South Africa’s state phone company, wants $35US monthly, five dollars more than MWEB’s lowest speed unlimited alternative, for its DSL service with a 3GB usage allowance;
• Paying $39.50US per month buys you 10GB of usage from Afrihost;
• Using 3G wireless mobile alternatives are for the deep-pocketed only.  Paying $65.50US per month nets you less than a 2GB usage allowance;
• South Africa’s ‘Screamer’ offers a pricey unlimited plan at $54US per month for 384kbps service;
• Neotel offers an unlimited service package, but it’s so confusing few customers can be certain what they’re getting.  (Read this South African blogger’s experience with Neotel.)

MWEB hired marketing firm Quirk to generate buzz about the company’s unlimited service option.  Earlier this month, a Facebook group called Free the Web popped up asking consumers what improvements were needed in South Africa’s broadband service.  It attracted more than 15,000 followers in just two weeks.

What were South Africans complaining about?  Usage caps. Broadband users despise them, especially in a country where 5-10GB allowances are considered ‘generous.’  But the lack of competition for monopoly state-owned phone company Telkom also featured prominently.  Most South Africans rely on DSL service that first starts with renting a line from Telkom.  Telkom prices those in accordance with its monopoly status, and requires consumers to pay line rental fees combining both data and voice services, even if a customer only intends to use the line for data.  Because ADSL broadband speed is totally dependent on the phone company, and Telkom has no incentive to upgrade, few in South Africa can expect to see broadband service exceeding 4-8Mbps.  Most obtain considerably less, often well below 1Mbps.

“Telkom has to allow users of ADSL to split the line rental for the telephone line and the line rental for ADSL. That absolutely has to happen; then this market will grow,” Jansen said.

Jansen

MWEB hopes the unveiling of unlimited broadband will transform South Africans use of the Internet and bring prices down.

“Ubiquitous broadband is what this country needs to grow. We want to do our part in getting South Africa there,” said Jansen. “I hope [our competitors] follow us because I think as a country we desperately need it.”

Jansen may have his wish.  Hours after MWEB announced unlimited broadband, its competitors began to follow suit, meaning South Africans can finally follow Australians and New Zealanders discarding hated Internet Overcharging schemes.

Mybroadband.co.za took note of several broadband package changes coming as a direct result of MWEB’s new service (One South African Rand = 13.6 US cents):

Vox Telecom responded quickly and announced that @lantic will be launching bundled ADSL offerings – which include both ADSL access and an uncapped ISP account.  Pricing starts at R339 for a DSL384 bundle while a 512 Kbps service will cost R589 and a 4 Mbps solution R889.  This undercuts MWEB’s bundled pricing by R10 per month.

Openweb also joined the price war by announcing that they will resell MWEB accounts at the same rates as MWEB.

This is however not where it ends.  Afrihost said that consumers can look forward to their uncapped ADSL services next week, and G-Connect also indicated that they will respond to MWEB’s recent announcement with a competing service.

Even the state monopoly phone company Telkom has started talking about offering unlimited service.

“Uncapped speed-locked ADSL service consumer offerings are in development. However, no time-frames, offering specifications or price points can be disclosed at this stage. In the development process, Telkom is striving for optimal quality, reliability and affordability,” said Ajith Bridgraj, Telkom Senior Specialist for Media Relations.

MWEB expects a surge of new customers, which leads some to worry if the company can sustain its network under the burden of throngs of new customers.  Jansen says they can, noting their connectivity ultimately comes from Seacom, which is an important provider of international connectivity between Africa, Europe, and beyond.

Early tests by Mybroadband appear positive:

MyBroadband got its hands on an uncapped 4 Mbps test account to take the service through its paces – and early test results are very promising.

For basic email and surfing the MWEB uncapped account performed well, and results from Speedtest.net were on par with SAIX and IS based offerings.

Local Speedtest.net downlink speeds ranged between 3.28 Mbps and 4.13 Mbps while local uplink speeds ranged between 0.26 Mbps and 0.42 Mbps.

International Speedtest.net results – tested with servers in London, New York and Brussels – ranged between 2.96 Mbps and 3.61 Mbps while international uplink speeds were fairly steady at between 0.3 Mbps and 0.32 Mbps.

Local latency was fairly consistent and ranged between 17 ms and 41 ms in tests to Johannesburg and Cape Town based servers.  International latency was however less consistent, and ranged between 285 ms and 528 ms to the UK and US.

The MWEB uncapped account performed well with all bandwidth intensive applications.

YouTube videos streamed without any buffering, but some buffering was needed when moving to high definition video streaming (480p and more specifically 720p).

Standard file download speeds were quite consistent at between  2 Mbps and 3.4 Mbps while multi-threaded FTP and HTTP downloads sat at around 3.2 Mbps.

Good news for those keen on torrent services is that the MWEB uncapped account seems torrent friendly.  We selected 10 of the most popular torrents, and total download speeds ranged between 2.8 Mbps and 3.2 Mbps.

American broadband providers contemplating Internet Overcharging schemes of their own often point to usage limits and usage-based billing schemes that exist in other countries, implying they are well-tolerated by consumers abroad and should be likewise domestically.  The truth is, such pricing schemes are as despised abroad as they are domestically, and most countries seeking to improve broadband consider eliminating them a top priority.

[flv width=”448″ height=”356″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Carte Blanche Consumer – No Broader Than a Band.flv[/flv]

South African news program ‘Carte Blanche’ provides this general overview of the current state of broadband in South Africa, and the challenges that must be faced to improve it. (10 minutes)

[flv width=”384″ height=”308″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/News24 MWEB Unveils Unlimited Broadband 3-19-10.mp4[/flv]

South Africa’s News24 network reported on MWEB’s unlimited broadband package including an interview with MWEB CEO Rudi Jansen. (3 minutes)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/South African Broadband.flv[/flv]

As part of MWEB’s social marketing campaign, ordinary South Africans talk about their broadband experiences, what the Internet has done for them, and the things they hate the most about South African Internet Service Providers. (9 minutes)