Cape Town Internet service provider (ISP) Dotco says it is overwhelmed by the response to its R480 per month uncapped ADSL offering, which it is providing with Telkom`s blessing.
The offer, however, is only valid until the end of March after which the price jumps to R980 per month for a one-year contract. Details of the offer can be accessed at www.allyoucaneat.co.za. The price also excludes the rental of the ADSL line from Telkom.
Dotco MD Johan Ferreira says the product is offered with Telkom`s approval, but entailed some hard negotiations.
"The discussions took some time as Telkom wants to protect its 3GB cap, in order to protect its international bandwidth, but after a lot of grinding of teeth, they approved it," he says.
Ferreira will not divulge details of how Dotco manages to deliver the offering, but says it is "stringing three 3GB accounts together. However, for the end-user they only have one Dotco account. The rest is exactly the same as a normal 3GB account with the same shaping and same profiling."
Ferreira would not comment on observations by other ISPs that Telkom allows for proxy authentication, meaning that an ISP implements its own cap or not.
"Basically, an ISP resells Telkom`s services, but you have to manage your own cap, so you effectively share the cap between your users, assuming that most will under-use the available bandwidth. It looks like Telkom may have opened a can of worms," one observer says.
Ferreira says the response has been overwhelming, although he refuses to divulge user figures.
He says the service is aimed primarily at the small and medium business segment, particularly companies that run Internet caf'es and Web design services.
"Having one account and one password is a great convenience for these small companies as they don`t have to worry about exceeding their monthly 3GB cap and then having to use different passwords to keep their service going," Ferreira says.
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