Telkom has been investigating the feasibility of an uncapped ADSL solution, but early indications are that businesses should not expect an uncapped ADSL solution from them anytime soon.

Dr Brian Armstrong, Senior Managing Executive for Enterprise Markets at Telkom, told MyBroadband that they researched the demand and facility of an uncapped ADSL solution, but found that there is not sufficient demand for an uncapped ADSL solution.

Armstrong added that only 3% of their current 9GB ADSL subscribers exceed their cap, which tells them that the current account sizes are adequate for most of their subscribers.

Armstrong added that they are careful not to create a product where a large group of their subscribers are subsidizing a small group of high end users.

When quizzed about the success of MWEB’s uncapped ADSL offering, Armstrong said that while he would not like to speculate about MWEB’s business model, it may make sense to a bigger Naspers strategy which is different from Telkom’s strategy.

It is understood that for Telkom (hence Telkom Internet) to offer an uncapped ADSL solution to the market they will have to use an IPConnect solution (a product used to provide wholesale ADSL services) instead of their usual SAIX reseller model.

The high cost of an IPC has long been a contentious issue among ISPs, and it may well be that this cost can be prohibitive in Telkom’s investigation into the feasibility of an uncapped ADSL solution.

Armstrong did however point out that they have products like ‘Usage Based Realms’ which are aimed and the business market, and which provides totally uncapped and un-contended bandwidth.