January 26th, 2009
Web Africa – Top Class South African ISP
After I was without internet due to crappy Telkom (customer) service a few weeks back I decided to go looking for a new ISP. In South Africa we have a ton of different companies offering ADSL bandwidth but the funny thing is that they are mostly all running off the same backbone! So basically when deciding on a provider it really only comes down to one thing: customer service! (Prices are very similar between companies too).
In 2009 international bandwidth prices are generally expected to decrease as a new undersea cable will arrive here in June called “Seacom” and it will enable companies to buy cheaper international bandwidth. Beyond 2009 and into 2010 an additional 2 undersea cables will have landed here and there is talk of operators joining together to lay even more cables! All very good news for the South African consumer 
So I started looking at various different ADSL offerings during my downtime and was really impressed with Web Africa. I liked that their site didn’t look like it was built in 1995 and their ADSL bandwidth packages are fairly competitive. They also offered a prepaid account which is what I really wanted. I decided to sign up with them in the end and I am really glad that I did.
The Web Africa sales and customer support team is excellent. They generally respond to your queries within minutes and are extremely friendly. I ran into a few issues when I ordered my first gig of bandwidth as it was not setup correctly. So I gave them a call and the guy on the phone was extremely friendly and sorted my problem out in 5 minutes. I was then up and running smoothly. (I wish I could remember his name to give him some kudos)
4 days later my 1 gig account ran out and I ordered a 10gig account. It was also setup really quickly by one of their friendly consultants.
I only have two minor annoyances but I can definitely live with them because of the great service. I am more than willing to pay for good service
The first annoyance is that the prepaid bandwidth is a lot more expensive than the month by month contract packages. I can understand this but it would be nice if the prepaid bandwidth was a little cheaper 
And the second annoyance is basically that when your account gets capped you cannot access the local bank websites to top it up. You can access the Web Africa website but if you want to do a bank transfer you wont be able to do it online with your capped account. Apparently (not sure how true this is) if you top your account with 1 gig it is activated immediately and you can then go pay for it.
Other than that I give them 10 out of 10 for service and friendliness. I definitely will be using them a lot in the future.
Hallo Matt!
I am very pleased to hear about your pleasant Customer Service experience and welcome you to our rapidly expanding base of well looked after customers!
At Web Africa Customer Service is most definitely our top priority!
In response to the “annoying” factors you mentioned
1)The prepaid bandwidth does not expire and can be carried over month to month for when it is needed. It is therefore a little more expensive to preserve the small profit margin that ISP resellers make on the bandwidth.
On that note, we are trialing an IPC connection model with SAIX shortly. This will enable us to have total control over our customer’s data quality and speeds and also result in cost savings as we are not merely reselling anymore.
At that point we will be able to offer to offer more competitive data rates!
2)After the IPC infrastructure is implemented we are also going to rework the capped procedure. Customers will automatically be taken to the “recharge” console for credit card payments. Provision for internet banking access even if capped will also be addressed!
Kind Regards,
Christiaan van Schalkwyk
Product Development Manager, Web Africa
Thanks for the comment Christiaan
I am extremely excited that you are going to be working out the issues I raised. Once they are implemented I will definitely use you guys exclusively.
- Matt