The penalties may be in the form of credit or a discount. Service Level Agreement (SLA): Some ISPs are willing to offer service level agreements (SLA) where they stipulate the expected performance of their network and the service offered, and commit to penalties that are applicable should they not meet the agreed standard. There are also smaller, localized and niche ISPs. In South Africa there are around 500 licensed ISPs, ranging from the national giants of Vodacom, MTN, Telkom, Cell, Rain, SEACOM and Liquid Telecom (all of who own their own networks) to mid-sized companies that deal mainly with subscribers such as Vox, MWeb, WebAfrica, Afrihost, Cool Ideas, Axxess, Supersonic et al. Internet Service Provider (ISP): An ISP is a company that providers broadband Internet services, usually amongst other value added services in their portfolio. When someone says that they are ‘buying data’ or have ‘run out of data’ it is the capacity of data that they are referring to. The average mobile user typically uses several hundred MB per month of mobile data. In the same way, this is a measure of the amount of data provided by a service provider. The size of a document or digital photo is usually measured in MB, the storage capacity of a cellphone in GB, and the hard-drive capacity of a computer in hundreds of GB or even TB. In turn, a million-Gigabytes is a Terabyte (TB). For mobile services, the broadband speed is rarely publicized and varies depending on many technical factors.Ĭapacity: The volume or capacity of data is measured in units of bytes (B), with a million bytes being a Megabyte (MB), and a million-MB being a Gigabyte (GB). A typical home connection is of the order of 10 or 20Mbps, while a business connection may be from 50Mbps to 1000Mpbs or more depending on the nature of the business and various other factors as detailed below.
MWEB 4MBPS UNCAPPED DOWNLOAD
Downloading and uploading of large files will benefit from a connection of many Mbps - the higher the speed, the quicker the download or upload. A voice call takes only a fraction of 1Mbps (so kilobits per second, or kbps), while a video call will consume a few Mbps.
Broadband speeds are measured in the unit of Mbps (Megabits per second). Moreover, many services involve a fixed connection to the network, and then distribution of the broadband service over wires (LAN = local area network) and/or wireless (WLAN = wireless LAN, using Wi-Fi).īroadband speed: The speed of a broadband connection determines how much information (data) is transmitted over a given period. Note that there are hybrid services such as fixed-wireless that provide services to a fixed (set) location using wireless technology (no wires or cables between the locations). Wireless services transmit signals through the air. Users ‘roam’ from one area to another.įixed and wireless: From above, for fixed services, the communications signals travel over a cable or wire, confining the service to a location. Here we can consider our cellphone calls which are available in most places of the country. Mobile services are generally available anywhere the service provider provides coverage.For example, a cordless phone can be used in most locations with a home, but does not work in the neighbouring property. Nomadic services can be used within a known, set area.Fixed services are available only at a specific location constrained as a result of a physical wire or cable connection.Note that these concepts are used widely and generalized definitions are provided below:įixed, nomadic and mobile: This refers to the location or locations where the service is available: There are several concepts that first need to be defined and understood before progressing to make the right choice of broadband option/s for your business. These last factors are mainly a consideration for ‘real time’ services such as voice and video calling, and where milliseconds make a difference to the experience e.g. In Internet terms, quality is characterized by the speed of the service, the amount of data that can be accessed within a given period and other technical parameters such as jitter and latency. Common to all of these is the need to have reliable and cost effective Internet access, at a sufficient quality to all the desired interactions to take place seamlessly.
MWEB 4MBPS UNCAPPED SERIES
As discussed on several occasions in this series of articles, there are considerable advantages to businesses of all sizes to trade online, and to take advantage of the multitude of services that are available online.
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