Vodacom will have a system in place to stop 5% of BlackBerry users from abusing its fixed-fee Internet service by the end of the year, in a bid to prevent degradation for the bulk of the 1.6 million users.
The cellular company, SA's largest with 28.9 million subscribers, says it cannot keep up with the amount of data going down the BlackBerry pipe, and has no option but to cut back on users that are degrading the service for the rest of the customers subscribing to the offering.
About 50 000 users generate the same volume of data as the rest of the 1.6 million BlackBerry subscribers on the operator's network, says Vodacom CEO Pieter Uys. One client managed to use a record amount of 332GB of data in a month, he adds.
However, while Vodacom will clamp down on subscribers that abuse the service, Cell C is not having any problems and MTN says it will communicate any plans when it makes changes that affect consumers.
Vodacom previously threatened to throttle the connection speeds of BlackBerry Internet Service users who consumed more than 100MB per month. Uys later explained that throttling had not been implemented and the company was talking to BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) about possible solutions.
The initial announcement led to a backlash from angry BlackBerry subscribers. Uys notes the threat to throttle users was “wrong”. He adds, however, that it is vital to make sure that a small minority cannot affect the service for everyone else.
Uys says Vodacom is working with RIM to develop a solution to stop subscribers abusing the fixed-fee Internet service. The clampdown should be in effect by the end of the year, although the exact details of how it will work have yet to be wrapped up, he adds.
RIM can determine when the handset is being used as a modem, explains Uys. He says it is vital that the abuse is stopped. “There is no other way we can fix it; there isn't a big enough pipe.”
Wasted data
Uys approached some of the high-volume users and discovered they were using the smartphone as a modem and letting it download 100 movies in the background, which they never watch. “They have competitions to see who can download the most movies.”
Vodacom has tripled the size of the pipe to BlackBerry in the past six months, but is battling to cope with volumes, comments Uys. He says the 1.5Gbps pipe is full around the clock and the company is adding between 60Mbps and 100Mbps a week to cope. “It is not sustainable.”
BlackBerry is meant to be an “eat as much as you want” on-device service, not a modem to download movies, Uys points out.
Uys says Vodacom is not the only operator having to deal with the issue. However, Cell C, which had 8.2 million subscribers at the end of December, is not experiencing abuse on its network.
Steve Boiles, Cell C's executive head of network engineering, says the mobile company “currently has adequate capacity with redundancy” through Seacom and SAT-3. Cell C carries about 350Mbps of BlackBerry data at peak times for roughly 200 000 users of the service. “We are committed to giving those customers the best service we can.”
MTN, SA's second-largest operator with 20.97 million South African customers, says it continuously seeks to provide a “seamless experience to all its data users,” including those using BlackBerry's Internet offerings.
“MTN continuously reviews price plans provided. MTN will communicate at the appropriate time to the market when changes affecting its customers are made,” says MTN SA.
RIM says it is “working closely with our carrier partners to offer BlackBerry customers the best possible BlackBerry experience”. The company did not provide specific details as to how it would curb abuse.
Data explosion
Vodacom's bid to trim the amount of abuse by BlackBerry customers comes in the midst of a data explosion. Ericsson yesterday said there would be a 10-fold increase in mobile data traffic by 2016.
Ericsson says, based on recent research, mobile broadband subscribers will reach almost five billion in 2016, up from the expected 900 million by the end of this year. This represents 60% year-on-year growth.
The telecoms infrastructure company says the amount of data used by smartphones is “surging” and total smartphone traffic is anticipated to triple this year.
Uys predicts Vodacom will have a total 25 million data customers by March 2014, up from the current 10.5 million, and that smartphones, now at 4.1 million handsets, will soon be ubiquitous.
Vodacom sees mobile data as the key to future growth. Uys says the company saw active data customers increase 38.1% year-on-year at the end of the six months to September.
Group data revenue now accounts for 14.1% of service revenue, which was R27.8 billion in the first half of the year. Uys says data use on smartphones increased 150% year-on-year, and the handsets account for a third of all data use on the network.
Vodacom is upgrading its network to enable it to be more resilient as data use explodes, says Uys. The company spent R3 billion on SA alone in the first half of the year, and is on track to spend R6.3 billion by year-end, he adds.
Uys says Vodacom can accommodate more data users, as the new equipment being rolled out uses spectrum more effectively. However, the company will need more spectrum to make the leap to the next-generation LTE technology.
There will be a day when voice disappears and people use data bundled to make voice over IP calls, comments Uys.
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