Two breakthroughs made uncapped broadband possible in South Africa

The launch of Seacom and the late former Mweb CEO Rudi Jansen’s decisive stance on peering initiated a chain reaction that forever transformed the South African broadband market.

In 2009, Seacom launched and introduced the first substantial competition to Telkom-controlled undersea fibre cables in South Africa.

Fixed-line broadband services at the time had three major cost components: international data, local data, and the wholesale prices charged by infrastructure providers for network access.

Before 2009, some Internet providers used satellite connectivity as an alternative to Telkom’s SAT-3/SAFE cable to reduce international data costs. However, this came with performance drawbacks.

When Seacom came online, it disrupted the international bandwidth market by significantly reducing costs.

This allowed companies like Afrihost to launch ADSL services for R29 per gigabyte — half the prevailing rate at the time.

While Afrihost saw an opportunity to drastically lower the price of capped ADSL, Mweb’s CEO Rudi Jansen envisioned a complete game-changer.

He aimed to tackle another major cost component: local data.

Before free and open peering became common in South Africa, telecommunications operators were highly protective of their networks.

Peering — where two operators exchange data traffic — was subject to strict conditions. Operators evaluated peering arrangements using complex metrics to determine network size and benefit.

If the networks were roughly equal in size or offered equivalent commercial advantages, they would peer; otherwise, the larger network would charge the smaller one for access.

Without a peering agreement, smaller players had to pay transit fees when sending or receiving data from larger networks.

“Nobody wanted to open up as they thought their own growth would stop, and they charged a fortune for transit between networks,” Jansen once explained.

“It was easier to get peering in Europe than in South Africa.”

This scenario gave Jansen an idea. He decided to take a bold approach — any local ISP that wanted to exchange traffic with Mweb had to agree to peer; otherwise, Mweb would route the traffic internationally.

This was more expensive for the other ISPs but not for Mweb, thanks to the affordable international bandwidth provided by Seacom. Mweb also established peering links in Europe, which were nearly free.

With these strategies in place, on 22 March 2010, Mweb achieved what many thought was impossible: it launched uncapped ADSL products starting at R219 per month, shaking up the South African ISP market.

Industry chatter suggested that Mweb had “lost the plot.”

Critics argued that uncapped ADSL was unsustainable and would never work, with some competitors dismissing it as a mere marketing stunt. However, they all eventually followed in Mweb’s footsteps.

Jansen proved the sceptics wrong and permanently altered the South African broadband landscape. His firm stance on peering paved the way for Teraco’s NAPAfrica Internet exchange point, which offers free peering to local and international network operators.

This development has enabled Internet service providers in South Africa to offer affordable uncapped, unshaped broadband, even as video streaming drives bandwidth usage to new heights.

Major international content providers like Netflix, Facebook, and Google — which owns YouTube — all peer at NAPAfrica, reducing the cost of bandwidth in South Africa to near zero.

Thanks to the efforts of teams at Seacom and Mweb, particularly Rudi Jansen, uncapped broadband has become the standard for fixed-line connections in South Africa.

This advancement has ignited several online industries in the country, including gaming, streaming, and e-commerce.

Sadly, Rudi Jansen passed away after suffering a heart attack on Friday, 3 September 2021.

His achievements were recognized in Parliament on Tuesday, 7 September 2021, in a motion brought by Al Jama-ah party leader Ganief Hendricks.

Hendricks worked with Jansen as a human resources director at Mweb until 2008 or 2009. Hendricks’ email address listed on the Parliamentary website still ends with @mweb.co.za.

Jansen’s significant impact on the industry was also acknowledged with the MyBroadband Maverick of the Year Award in 2010 and the MyBroadband Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.