Vodacom’s product development team ignored their CEO Shameel Joosub’s warning that providing an uncapped service on a 4G network does not make sense and is now paying the price.
Two years ago, Joosub warned that providing uncapped data at affordable rates on Vodacom’s network would be to the detriment of the larger customer base.
“Trying to provide an unlimited wireless service on a 4G network is not very economical and doesn’t really make sense,” Joosub said.
“It will not be long before all your customers will start suffering from those unlimited services because you can’t keep up with the capacity.”
Vodacom’s product development team ignored Joosub’s advice and launched uncapped LTE products last year.
It was not long before Vodacom’s network started to suffer from high-end users consuming large amounts of data.
The mobile operator’s solution to this problem was to impose a “hard lock”, also known as a hard cap, on its uncapped products.
Hard caps will occur at 600GB, 800GB, and 1TB on its uncapped 10Mbps, 20Mbps, and 30Mbps products, respectively.
Once subscribers reach this hard lock limit stipulated by the price plan, Vodacom cuts off their services unless they buy more data.
“In order to continue data usage, customers should purchase a 100GB or 200GB bundle,” Vodacom said.
The operator first introduced “hard locks” with its low-key Home Uncapped 5G product launch last year.
Despite being heavily criticised for calling a hard-capped service “uncapped”, Vodacom doubled down and now aims to use the same misleading terminology with LTE.
Instead of admitting it made a mistake by launching uncapped LTE products, Vodacom is promoting hard-capped LTE products as uncapped.
Besides misleading consumers, Vodacom is going against the South African advertising authority’s guidelines.
It also breaches the Internet Service Providers Association’s “Guidelines and Recommendations on Broadband Terminology”.
Vodacom argues that the vast majority of customers won’t reach the hard cap, which means it is “effectively providing an uncapped service”.
This argument makes no sense. Vodacom falsely claims that its capped LTE products are uncapped, and no corporate spin can change this fact.
Source: My Broadband
