Businessinsider.co.za | How much data Vodacom, MTN, and Telkom give you on ‘uncapped’ deals – before they cap you

• Mobile service providers in South Africa have come under fire for placing data and speed limits on plans they’re advertising as uncapped.
• This is nothing new – at least as far as speed restrictions go.
• But at least one service provider is planning on cutting off users who download too much on its "uncapped" LTE service.
• Here’s how much data Vodacom, MTN, and Telkom will let you download on their home uncapped bundles before they start restricting you.
• For more stories, go to www.BusinessInsider.co.za.

Fair usage policies, or FUPs, are nothing new in the world of internet service providers. For many years they’ve used these euphemistically-phrased terms and conditions to stop some people from downloading too much.

However, FUPs become particularly contentious when service providers apply them to data plans they market as “uncapped”. And even more so when they don’t just throttle speeds at a certain level but place a hard lock that entirely restricts the service.

Most service providers who offer uncapped plans defend the concept of a fair usage policy as a way of protecting the integrity of the network - and are quick to add that the majority of users will never come close to hitting the FUP caps. Given that providers operate on limited bandwidth, it's a common way of ensuring that one user doesn’t hog all of this at the expense of others.

Customers who use more than a specific, somewhat arbitrary and predetermined limit will be in breach of the service provider’s fair usage policy - and will likely find themselves restricted in at least one manner. Most service providers use a multiplier of the average user to determine the limit, though many choose not to disclose how they arrive at the threshold.

Quite how service providers choose to hold heavy users back is also unregulated. 

Most - including non-LTE providers - will start to slow download speeds at a certain level during peak times. Others will do it at all times. Some will slow speeds and make some services that strain the system unusable. 

But the most contentious of all, which found Vodacom fighting social media battles last week, is a hard lock that essentially prohibits further usage - in direct contradiction with the use of the word "uncapped".

Although it's unlikely any uncapped package will allow all users to download wildly and at will without monitoring and restriction, the hard lock after a certain gigabyte threshold - especially on packages advertised as uncapped - is more concerning to heavy users.

But in digging through the terms and conditions of all service providers, the hard cap may be better than a blanket speed reduction that makes a vital application unusable, for example. And how quickly and much providers throttle speed - even on a soft cap - may frustrate a service.

Here's how much data Vodacom, MTN, and Telkom give you on 'uncapped' deals before they cap you.

Vodacom

Vodacom offers an uncapped home product by way of 24 and 36-month contracts - and says it reserves the right to change the details of this contract at any time. This might include adding or removing a hard cap - or how much data this “uncapped” product includes.

As of 15 February this year, Vodacom says all users will be subject to a “hard lock” - even those on the uncapped package. According to Vodacom, this means “that once the soft cap FUP has been reached, as per respective price plan, data usage will no longer continue". 

Users who reach their limits within the “uncapped” plans will need to purchase additional data bundles in amounts of 100GB or 200GB.

Vodacom’s 10Mbps tariff will slow the line down to 2Mbps once users hit 400GB. After 600GB, they impose a hard lock. The 20Mbps tariff increases to 600GB on the soft cap and 800GB on the hard lock. And users on the 30Mbps tariff will be soft-capped at 700GB and hard-capped at 1TB.

In essence, this means that, at best, users who pay for the product Vodacom markets as Home Internet LTE Uncapped can only download a maximum of 1TB before they disable the service.

MTN

MTN has offered a Home Uncapped Plan since October 2021 - and, like competitors, reserves the right to change, update, or remove the plan. MTN has a FUP in place on these plans - which includes rate limiting that applies when customers reach the “tiered FUP values, based on the priceplan [sic] selected”.

MTN does not have a hard cap fair use policy in place - and instead will limit the line speed of users who breach a certain threshold. 

Users with line speeds up to 10Mbps face a soft cap at 400GB, 20Mbps at 600GB, and 30Mbps at 700GB.

Telkom

Telkom offers an uncapped LTE package that it calls SmartBroadband Uncapped Wireless. Like others, this too uncapped package also comes with a cap. Telkom offers the service at full speeds for all traffic types “except bandwidth intensive protocols or applications which shall be at full speed between 12am – 6pm if within the 50GB cap”. 

Once subscribers reach the 50GB cap, Telkom throttles “bandwidth intensive protocols or applications” to just 128kbps speed for the rest of the month. Telkom reiterates in its terms and conditions that it will only throttle “bandwidth intensive protocols or applications” - and offer uncapped data for all other traffic types.