MWEB to Finally Launch New ADSL Product

South African ISP MWEB has announced that its long-rumoured 10Mbps uncapped ADSL products will finally be available in September.

The company has explained that the delay is down to incumbent PSTN operator Telkom’s hesitant upgrades of MWEB’s IPC platform – the bandwidth that connects MWEB customers to Telkom’s last-mile network.

Although 4Mbps ADSL subscribers in certain areas have already been upgraded to 10Mbps, users in cities such as Pretoria, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth are only reporting speeds in the region of 6Mbps. As things currently stand, MWEB has to make use of additional capacity on its SAIX network in order to meet its total ADSL demand. It is reported that the additional SAIX capacity costs MWEB ‘a great deal of money’.

A spokesperson for MWEB commented: ‘Firstly, we want to satisfy ourselves that Telkom has addressed some of the congestion problems on its own network, to cater for this additional demand. Then, we are waiting for Telkom to finalise an upgrade to our own IPC platform.

These upgrades were put on hold during the World Cup, but work has now resumed and will hopefully be completed within the next three to four weeks. Until we have this additional capacity in place we are not comfortable of being able to offer a product that lives up to our own high standards, and meets your expectations in terms of performance and reliability.’

Mweb Targest SME's With Uncapped WiMAX Service

Mweb has launched an uncapped WiMAX offering targeted at the SME market. Speeds of up to 512kbps will be charged at ZAR299 (USD37.79) per month, speeds of up to 1Mbps will cost ZAR999, and a 4Mbps line will cost ZAR2,795, which is comparable to the costs of an uncapped ADSL package. The WiMAX service will be available in selected areas, including Sandton, Boksburg, Isando and Midrand, in Johannesburg and N1 City and the central business district in Cape Town. The company said it was using an open spectrum band for the service initially, while hoping to obtain spectrum in the 2.6GHz and 3.5GHz bands when the anticipated spectrum auction takes place.

In July 2009 the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) published draft regulations which outline the procedures and criteria for granting spectrum licences and suggested that four operators will be allocated 30MHz each in the 2.6GHz band, while licences in the 3.5GHz band will be awarded covering specific geographic catchment areas, with each operator receiving a maximum of 28MHz of spectrum per region.