Biggest bandwidth hogs. Giganators. Data Kingpins. The Big Bosses of Downloads. These endearing terms do little to hide the fact that these users are costing their Internet Service Providers thousands of rands each month.
Three of South Africa’s large consumer Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have released lists of the biggest ADSL data users on their networks.
The biggest data user on Afrihost’s network is an uncapped 20Mbps VDSL subscriber who consumed 1926GB of data over the last month.
Axxess’ top ADSL data user is using a 10Mbps uncapped ADSL account, and has used 1433GB in the last 30 days.
The biggest data user from Openweb used 1700GB on 10Mbps home uncapped ADSL account.
The following table provides an overview of the top ADSL data users from Afrihost, Axxess and Openweb.
| ISP | Account | Monthly data use |
| Afrihost | 20Mbps uncapped VDSL | 1926GB |
| Openweb | 10Mbps Home Uncapped ADSL | 1700GB |
| Afrihost | 10Mbps uncapped ADSL | 1612GB |
| Afrihost | 10Mbps uncapped ADSL | 1456GB |
| Axxess | 10Mbps uncapped ADSL | 1380GB |
| Openweb | 6Mbps Home Uncapped ADSL | 1300GB |
| Afrihost | 40Mbps uncapped VDSL | 1272GB |
| Openweb | 4Mbps Home Uncapped ADSL | 1200GB |
| Afrihost | 10Mbps uncapped ADSL | 1155GB |
| Openweb | 4Mbps Home Uncapped ADSL | 1100GB |
What these users are costing their ISP
According to feedback from ISPs the minimum cost to provide ADSL data to consumers is around R5 per GB. This means that the top users are hurting their ISPs’ business models.
The following table provides an overview of the losses incurred by the ISPs on some of the high end users listed in this article.
| Account | Data use | Cost of account | Data cost to ISP | Loss |
| Afrihost 20Mbps VDSL | 1926GB | R997 | R9630 | -R8633 |
| Openweb 10Mbps uncapped ADSL | 1700GB | R549 | R8500 | -R7951 |
| Afrihost 10Mbps uncapped ADSL | 1612GB | R797 | R8060 | -R7263 |
| Axxess 10Mbps uncapped ADSL | 1380GB | R495 | R6900 | -R6405 |
| Openweb 4Mbps uncapped ADSL | 1200GB | R295 | R6000 | -R5705 |
The need for low end users
Any uncapped broadband business model is based on low-end subscribers subsidising high-end subscribers who consume lots of data.
This model works well in an environment with many low-end users, where the profits from these users compensate for the losses incurred by a few high-end users.
However, when there are too many high-end users pushing the average usage beyond the cost of providing an uncapped service, the business model breaks.
To ensure that high end users do not consume too much data, which may cause big losses, ISPs employ tools like shaping, throttling and capping.
Article courtesy of MyBroadband
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Again the big user stick. The real problem is that the vendors did not asses the market properly when they offered a new product. They looked at how consumers were usimg available products and assumed that that particular trend would hold. A stupid assumption. With a capped account you are aware of the limit andbbrows appropriatly. With no cap, you stream video at your convenience instead of dance channels and miss things on the tv. You stream radio because the sound quality is better than the broudcast for whatever reason your location has. I really can’t see a situation where a traditional low end user transferes to uncapped and stayes low end. Its simply too illogical.