“This, in turn, would suggest that the complainant’s expectation of an unrestricted free-for-all service – even if it compromises the quality of other customers – is neither reasonable nor justifiable,” the ASA said. “This means that, when the complainants did so, they effectively agreed not to abuse the system in a manner that would prejudice other customers.”Ĭiting information that Mweb had sent the complainants multiple warning letters, and accepting that they are hypothetically reasonable people, “persisting with impermissible actions despite being warned to stop is not indicative of reasonable behaviour,” the ASA said.Īccording to the ASA, a hypothetical reasonable person would presumably alter their behaviour when receiving warning letters from a service provider that they are abusing the system. “The respondent pointed out that when the complainants signed up for this contract, they had to actively accept the AUP and agree to abide by it,” the ASA said. In this particular instance, the ASA said its Directorate “is faced with a conundrum, in that the amount of data used by the two complainants appears to be excessive.”Īccording to the ASA, the one complainant had used enough data to fill roughly 174 DVDs (around 817GB), while the other could fill just under 64 DVDs (300GB) with the amount of data they had downloaded. no throttling or shaping and no restrictions on use. Unlimited refers to instances where there are literally no limits, i.e. However, it is accepted that instances of throttling or shaping may well occur at some threshold levels to ensure sustainability of the service for all customers. Uncapped refers to packages where your connection is never terminated, irrespective of how much data you use. In its ruling on the matter, the ASA laid out the following definitions it uses for broadband products:Ĭapped refers to packages that allow you a predetermined amount of data, but terminate connection once you reached this predetermined limit. “We’ve always managed abusive behaviour in the past and, even though we’re enforcing our fair-use policy a little bit more strictly now, it’s still a very small portion of customers who are affected,” Hershaw said. “When that starts to have a negative impact on the experience of the rest of your customers, you have to intervene,” he said. “As is the case with all networks, you have a mix of users, and at the very top-end you have a small group who consume a significant and disproportionate amount of your capacity,” Hershaw told MyBroadband at the time. When asked about the change, the head of Mweb Internet service provider (ISP), Derek Hershaw said that the ISP was clamping down on the minority of users consuming a disproportionately high amount of bandwidth. The ISP also explained that its manual methods of enforcing its AUP had proven ineffective in managing excessive usage patterns, so it had to automate it by imposing speed limits on users based on a 30-day rolling window metric. Responding to criticism online, a spokesperson for Mweb said that only 3% of its users have received warning letters. These most recent complaints come after a fierce online backlash in August 2013 when Mweb first started sending such warning letters to some of its customers. The complainants said that the product (in this case 1Mbps uncapped for R199/month) should not be described as “Uncapped” when Mweb is actually monitoring use and terminating connections based on the volumes of data consumed. The Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa (ASA) has dismissed complaints from two Mweb subscribers, centering around the enforcement of its uncapped ADSL acceptable use policy (AUP).Īccording to the ASA, the essence of the complaint was that the two subscribers had received warning letters for “… repeated instances of continuous bulk downloads over prolonged periods”, while failure to address this will result in Mweb taking “… steps to cancel your service”.
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