Broadband services in South Africa normally come as either a capped or uncapped product.
Many ADSL and fibre Internet service providers offer “uncapped, unshaped” accounts, promising unfettered connectivity any time of the day.
However, not all uncapped, unshaped accounts are equal.

“What I find most amusing are the terms prioritised unshaped, or managed unshaped,” said Cybersmart CEO Laurie Fialkov.
“In either case it paradoxical.”

MWEB’s head of product Rihana Hoosain agreed with Fialkov, saying that unshaped means there is no prioritisation on any of the traffic on that account.
“The Internet activity that is started first will be served first,” said Hoosain.
Contention vs throttling vs shapingWhile an unshaped connection offers flexibility, it does not have unlimited bandwidth, said Hoosain.
If your account is uncapped and unshaped, you won’t always get the maximum speed your line and account allow.

“There is a lot of confusion between shaping and contention,” said Fialkov about the issue.
Contention is a measure of how many subscribers are using a service.
Giving each subscriber their own 4Mbps or 10Mbps, for example, of bandwidth would be prohibitively expensive.

If a few subscribers share that bandwidth, however, an ISP can make its ADSL and fibre accounts more affordable.

Fialkov added that throttling is not the same as shaping.
“If I slow everything down without discriminating, I am throttling. If I slow some things down, I am shaping.”
He said shaping lets ISPs increase contention without the majority of users noticing.
Generally, shaped services are more contended, which creates the impressions that unshaped services are faster.
“In this case the unshaped services are faster because they have lower contention [and tend to be less congested] not because they are actually faster,” said Fialkov.

The graphic below details the differences.

Uncapped, unshaped fair use policiesCybersmart has certain fair usage thresholds, and if a subscriber reaches them, it shapes those accounts and will eventually throttle them.

“To be truly correct, we should only throttle on unshaped, uncapped accounts if we want to consistently and correctly use the term unshaped,” he said.

MWEB said it doesn’t have usage thresholds on its uncapped, unshaped products.
“But all products are subject to our wider acceptable use policy,” said Hoosain.

All rights to Mybroadband