The connections between my computer and the web sites that I maintain, visit and publish to are many. Most of the sites that I interact with are hosted internationally as a result of exhorbitant costs locally. Believe me that most people would prefer to host locally and the price differential is shrinking albeit slowly.
When the ‘cost effective’ Seacom cable was launched to much acclaim and hailed as the saviour of cash strapped bandwidth consumers we saw people migrating in their thousands to even lower bandwidth prices. Even more embarrasing is the number of people I have to now face in the street after reffering them to the Axxess offering of uncapped bandwidth extolling it’s virtues only to see that the FARGING SEACOM FARGING CABLE has continuous ‘challenges’ as Seacom’s head of business development, Aidan Baigrie, admited recently of the Seacom cable system, which runs along Africa’s east coast from South Africa to Europe and India, has had “some challenges since its inception”.
Added to the above problem is the continued blaming of Internet Solutions (IS) by Axxess for extremely slow speeds.
Let me put some of these ‘challenges’ into perspective for you, Adrian as well as you, Axxess as my ISP and IS as ‘co-defendant’:
- All consumers had become used to the idea of having at least some connectivity 24 hours a day BEFORE the arrival of Seacom.
- Now the Seacom cable providing that expectation of minimum service has become a joke.
- In order to stay connected small guys like myself have to resort to purchasing emergency bandwidth at R119.00 a gig and more.
- In addition I keep my 3G card going with at least 1 gig of prepaid.
- The ‘challenges’ that you face lead to serious loss of income from many small web site owners in my position – traffic to sites is down, advertising earnings (in my case) are down by 30% in comparison to the one or two periods when the Seacom cable actually worked.
- Research of articles grinds to a halt.
- Accessing Gmail is an exercise in patience.
- Productivity grinds to a snails pace.
- Dogs get abused, children sold, cats go hungry and the conjugal bed lies cold and loveless.
And, do we get an apology?
NO FARGING WAYS, all you say is; “Thank you for your patience.”
What the hell, patience my bloodied eye with a knife sticking out of it – you just cost me something extremely precious, My TIME dickhead, and you do not even offer to compensate me in any way for my continued patient acceptance of your incredible abuse of my time and patience!
One piece of advice to my THREE links in the chain (Seacom, IS and Axxess) – please monitor each other and keep your channels of communications as well as network status notifications current (with a history of past incidents) so that we can minimise the BLAME GAME. Remember the Consumer Protection Act allows the aggrieved consumer to tackle every link in the chain until satisfied. You have been advised to clean your act up and I suggest that you do so very quickly before someone takes you all on.
Alan Straton
Latest posts by Alan Straton (see all)
- Why Digital Equity Is South Africa’s New Frontier for Women’s Empowerment – By Matebe Chisiza-Asukile and Natasha Mboyisa - 25 September 2026
- New Champions Rise at the 2026 Street Lines Skate Tournament - 23 September 2026
- When Manufacturers Have a ‘Beef’ Then Both Suffer - 23 September 2026
- How Much Are You Worth per Year to Your Bank? - 23 September 2026
- Better Business Processes. Stronger Workplace Skills. Smarter AI. Greater Business Productivity. - 23 September 2026
I have to agree. I have been a subscriber to Axxess for only a month now, and I’m not a “happy camper”. I understand the concept of “you get what you pay for” and R296.00 a month is indeed a very attractive offer for an uncapped service. However the difference in speed compared to what I had with my previous ISP is huge. I have experienced a 60% to 70% drop in speeds since moving over.
That is why I have remained with MWeb since the 90’s. Tried IS for less than one month and scuttled back to MWeb as fast as possible.
Help I screamed – reactivate my account I said to MWeb- I am so sorry I even considered leaving you for a moment!
Professional service, timeous notifications of any anticipated down time, and amazing support and ongoing updates during a crisis,which happened with a break in the Seacom cable and they went sourcing new cables and connections so fast to ensure that all their customers were not severely impacted.
Their support team can talk even the most technologically challenged being like myself through any problem that I may have caused to get me back up and running again.
All I can say is that the only time you part me from MWeb is when they shut up shop!
I am always online, unless there is a Telkom problem – and their service in our area is fantastic.
Need a new ISP anyone – well look no further.
@Homeleigh Halt
I think it’s great that you have a positive experience with Mweb, but I know allot of people including myself that have not had such a good experience with Mweb. The offers from Mweb and Axxess’s uncapped solutions are very attractive and no-doubt cost effective, but when it comes to high volume users, like myself and Alan (MyPE) their speeds just don’t “cut it”
Farked,that was well said Alan,the farking scum sucking scumbags!!!!