Telkom's freeze on network build during the Soccer World Cup cost MWeb a lot of money, says group CEO Rudi Jansen, but it also forced the ISP into new infrastructure investments sooner.
Jansen says that as a result of the “freeze”, MWeb had to pay at least R29 per gigabyte of data, after temporally transferring at least 50 000 of its ADSL subscribers to Telkom's SAIX wholesale Internet service. This compares to the R19 it would have paid by having them all on its own network.
“However, Telkom really did try to come to the party. Unfortunately, they were not able to supply us with more IPCs [Internet Protocol connections] in Johannesburg. This meant we had to take the second option of taking up more in the Cape Town area, forcing us to make that investment sooner rather than later,” he says.
Subsequent to the World Cup network-freeze period, Telkom embarked on a major network build and the first available IPC will be delivered in Cape Town. As a result, MWeb has invested significantly in new equipment to enable the additional IPC capacity for its subscribers. It also means latency for Cape Town subscribers will improve dramatically.
Jansen says: “We are happy to make this investment in the best interests of our customers. We wanted to bring permanent change to Internet usage in this country and we have achieved the first part of our goal.”
The investment in Cape Town will also be used to bring additional redundancy into the network. MWeb will also land additional international bandwidth in Cape Town.
Uncapped rise
Naspers-owned MWeb has been building its own Metro Ethernet networks and buys international capacity directly from East African coast cable Seacom. It launched an uncapped ADSL service in March, and this has also contributed to the rise in data demand by its clients.
Jansen would not divulge exactly how much MWeb is investing in its network rollout, bar saying it runs into multiple tens of millions of rands.
“It may seem chicken feed to some of the operators, but it is a substantial investment,” he adds.
Jansen says that moving some of its customers to Telkom's SAIX service meant MWeb would have to swallow the cost, but it was necessary to ensure speed and reliability of service.
“It is three times more than the cost of keeping customers on our own network - money that we would have gladly spent on additional capacity on our existing network if it were available.”
He notes that since the launch of the uncapped service, data usage grew dramatically, but MWeb has noticed that after two months it does settle back again.
Variable experience
“The migration back onto our own network will enhance the regular Internet user's browsing experience,” adds Jansen. “The migration will take effect over a few days to ensure stability in the network and ensuring optimal network performance for the end-user.”
An added benefit will be that MWeb anticipates latency for Cape Town-based users to improve with the new IPC.
Although MWeb will continue to invest in its own network capacity at regular intervals, Jansen remains concerned about the last-mile infrastructure.
“We are aware of numerous 'hotspots' at exchanges around the country where users are getting vastly different experiences. This problem has been further compounded by the recent upgrade to a 10Mbps service on certain exchanges. More investment in last mile infrastructure is needed to make SA a broadband state and MWeb will keep on working towards that goal,” he says.
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