With as many as 70 000 Internet users listed on its books and re-registration hovering between 500 and 600 a day, Absa says it still has a long way to go to conclude the move from free Internet access to its new paid-for service.
As a result, the company has extended its Internet-only access offer for yet another month as it deals with a backlog of complaints from frustrated users who are either unable to re-register or collect their e-mail.
Dave Donkin, Absa group executive, e-business and information management, says the logjams of the past two weeks are largely dissipating as a result of the extra 80 call centre agents added to the support services since the logjam began earlier this month.
Donkin says "everything is not back to normal, yet it is very close to being back to normal", and adds that the current backlog of queries and complaints from users will be cleared within the next two days.
Absa users, both banking and non-banking clients, are required to re-register to take advantage of the new "premium" paid-for Internet service. Users who have not yet re-registered are granted Internet-only access to aid the registration process but are not able to collect their e-mail, although Donkin stresses that user mail will not be deleted and will be available when users re-register.
Non-banking clients are able to continue to use the Internet access service for R65 a month, while existing banking and free access clients will continue to access the Internet for free, once they have re-registered.
Donkin says almost half of the Absa access users are non-Absa clients, most of which the company is hoping will convert to the new paid-for service.
As Absa moves away from its free Internet access service to a paid-for one, there are a number of other service providers hoping to reap the rewards of the Absa fall-off - non-banking clients who decide not to continue to use the service.
Among these is ICL, whose Eject ISP service is already showing some signs of growth, according to Mike Semple, ICL infrastructure manager.
Semple says the Eject service has "experienced a 30% growth in users in the past month. Admittedly that comes from a low base but the growth is there." Eject currently has around 3 000 users, despite a low profile and a business model that "avoids marketing costs".
Semple is hesitant to attribute the growth in users solely to the change in Absa`s strategy, but says the bank`s free offer "grew the Internet market significantly in the past year".
ICL is the infrastructure provider underpinning the Absa free access offer. The contract between the two parties expires in September, and while users have already been moved from the ICL infrastructure to the new Internet Solutions infrastructure, ICL is "still responsible for providing some of the POPs for users," according to Donkin.
Another Internet provider hoping to win over departing Absa users is Woza founder Kevin Davie. A new entrant to the service provider market, Davie is pinning his ISP hopes on the budget Internet user and Woza`s access to years of online content. However, Davie admits that the flood has not yet started and sign-ups have been "relatively slow".
Davie notes that the company was not quite ready when it first opened for business, but "now has all its ducks in a row". He also stresses that the motivation to start an ISP was not only to sign up budget users, but "to come up with new products in the market," which he promises will be forthcoming. Nevertheless, he agrees with Semple that the potential for growth in the market still exists.
ICL is also the infrastructure provider for Woza`s ISP offering, but Semple and Davie stress that there are no immediate plans to merge the two Internet access providers.
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