Today we are proud to announce the release of our new ADSL line rental prices, featuring the lowest ever line rental prices seen by the South African market since the service was introduced in 2002. The new prices offer savings of up to 30% and R1 092 per annum which we’re sure will come as welcome relief to local consumers plagued by a fragile economy, rising inflation and sky-rocketing fuel and electricity costs.

We firmly believe that the high cost of ADSL line rentals is the last barrier to providing affordable broadband access to all South Africans. Consumers have benefitted from the recent price wars over data, but when you add the cost of line rentals, the barrier still remains too high – especially for the lower income groups that have been hardest hit by recessionary pressures and rampant inflation.

Despite the steady fall of ADSL and mobile data costs due to healthy competition over the past two years, the cost of ADSL line rentals has not followed suit.

It’s true that ICASA is making strides in the right direction with LLU (Local Loop Unbundling), but the progress is too slow and too late in the game.

These new prices will not only benefit consumers, but the industry at large. By removing the barriers of high line rental costs, broadband penetration can grow at a faster pace, creating a much larger pool of Internet users. The new prices will also put pressure on the existing incumbents to lower the wholesale prices of line rentals, as we’ve seen was the case with the recent broadband data price wars.

The new prices are available on our consumer Capped ADSL products.

Moving your ADSL line from Telkom is quick and easy. Why not chat to one of our support consultants to get you started?

Check out the full details of our ADSL packages here.

A lifetime supply of ADSL and Web Hosting?

Nope, it’s not a typo. During the month of September, 10 lucky people will win a lifetime supply of ADSL and Web Hosting – plus we’ll throw in a FREE .co.za domain registration to get you started. Sound good?

The prize package includes:

• • A 10GB ADSL Account. (for life)
• • A Home Web Hosting Account with unlimited bandwidth. (for life)
• • 1 x FREE .co.za domain registration.

How to enter

It’s really easy. Simply wish us a happy 10th birthday via Twitter (wish must be sent to @RSAWEB) or Facebook (wish must be posted on our FB wall).

From the list of Twitter wishes, we’ll select 5 winners randomly. From the list of Facebook wishes, we’ll let our community decide on 5 winners – the wishes that get the most ‘likes’ by our fans wins. Simple.
You may enter using both Twitter and Facebook, but only one entry per person is allowed on each platform.

Are you a winner?

Winners will be announced each week (for 4 weeks) via Facebook and Twitter each Tuesday, starting with Tuesday the 6th of September.

Additional mystery spot prizes will also be given to entrants showing extra creativity or love in their birthday wishes.

Be sure to stop by and wish us!

All entrants are subject our competition Ts & Cs.

We’ve just upgraded our shared Web Hosting packages to include unlimited traffic (bandwidth) – it’s like uncapped Internet for your Hosting.

Unlike other ISPs who’ve recently launched this service, we’ve kept all the original package features like the number of databases and email accounts to add real value. Why should customers lose out?

Check out our range of uncapped Hosting packages:

We hope that this encourages customers to host with local companies instead of overseas. There’s no reason why South African companies shouldn’t be able to get the same quality and value. In the past we haven’t charged our Web Hosting customers for overage, but now it’s official.

Uncapped Hosting is really ideal for smaller businesses on tight budgets, who can now offer a better user experience to their customers through reduced latency.

The full details of the new packages can viewed here.

Want to take advantage of our uncapped Hosting? Contact us now.

To kick off the year, we’ve got some good news for those looking for cheaper DSL and those who are existing DSL customers.

Super DSL prices cut by up to 50%!

Our Super DSL prices have been reduced, offering quality broadband access for as little as R15p/GB, and 1GB top-ups for R29/GB! It should be noted that this drop in price in no way affects the quality of our Super DSL products, which remain fully supported by our dedicated Helpdesk and still provide advanced features like port locking and usage statistics.

New product: Direct DSL
Businesses with multiple branch VPNs or online backup/disaster recovery requirements often use large amounts of data that need not travel through the usual (more expensive) means of connectivity. RSAWEB’s new Direct DSL product allows businesses to connect securely to each other, or any RSAWEB Data Centre at a fraction of the cost, by using the RSAWEB Direct DSL network. Packages start at R75p/m for 5GB of traffic, with the bulk packages delivering per-GB prices as low as R7.

Take advantage of new DSL prices and products by contacting our Helpdesk on 0861 RSAWEB, or sign up online.

This week we are giving away a pair of these social-media-meets-real-world tees, which come with a guarantee to help you add friends in both the real and online world.

As usual, winners are randomly selected from various peeps that we’ve interacted with via twitter or facebook during the course of the year.

RSAWEB has decided to join the Movember movement, by giving away 12 uniquely South African Movember tees, featuring SA’s 9 official mo’s:

How to win one of these uniquely SA Movember Tees:

To enter the competition, simply tell us what your favorite Home Grown Mo (as featured above) is by leaving a message on our Facebook Fan Wall (you must ‘like’ the fan page in order to leave a comment) or tweeting us using the #movember tag. You can also enter by tweeting us a pic of your very own Home Grown Mo or simply posting the pic to our Facebook Fan wall (if you ‘like’ our FB Fan Page, you should be able to post a pic with a comment on our wall).

On Friday the 26th of Movember, we’ll announce the winners from amongst the entrants to receive one of these fantastically manly Home Grown Movember tees. It’s that easy.

In addition to this, we be giving R500 for each week of Movember to an appropriate Movember charity.

Our winners will announced this Friday, so get moving!

The acquisition comes as a result of a increased demand for Cloud services. It’s clear to us that South African businesses are waking up to the advantages of Cloud hosting as opposed to traditional hosting models like in-sourced Data Centres and dedicated servers. We also believe that the prolific emergence of innovative technology companies and supporting community-driven bodies such as Silicon Cape are also factors spurring the growth of Cloud services in the mother city.

Earlier this year we introduced South Africa’s first true Cloud Server product, offering consumers needing to host locally a Cloud hosting experience only available through overseas Cloud giants such as Rackspace and Amazon. To date, over two thousand Cloud servers have been provisioned on the RSAWEB Cloud!

One of the most significant aspects of the new DC is the ability to enable dual Data Centre redundancy. The geographic location of the new facility in relation to our flagship Data Centre in Cape Town is a huge competitive advantage. Both Data Centres are directly connected by fibre links – enabling us to replicate data and provide unparalleled redundancy for mission-critical hosting solutions. Further redundancy is added as both Data Centres operate on separate Eskom power grids, and are connected via separate Telkom exchanges. The new facility also boasts high-speed fibre links to Telkom, Neotel and RSAWEB’s own fibre network.

As has been the case historically, our strategy going forward is to build and own our own Data Centres. Looking to the future, we have Johannesburg in our sights for future acquisitions, and are currently looking for suitable opportunities.

The new DC is currently being upgraded, and is set to come online in late December 2010.

Following recent aggressive peering moves by local ISPs (namely Mweb), peering has once again come to the fore as an issue the ISP industry needs to grapple with.

Firstly, here are the facts concerning RSAWEB customers:

1. We peer openly

We peer openly (settlement free) with all other ISPs, including Mweb. This means that Mweb customers accessing RSAWEB hosted content will not be affected at all by recent events. All traffic between Mweb and RSAWEB is routed locally, and openly.

2. We have our own network and Data Centres

This means we are not reliant on any one single ISP network to route traffic. We are free to route local traffic in a way that ensures the best customer experience.

The end result is a higher quality of service for customers driving traffic between us and Mweb.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, peering is the mutual exchange of traffic across administratively separate networks. The purest form of peering is ‘settlement free’, meaning that neither party pays for traffic routed across each other’s network. Interconnect fees charged by local ISPs to connect to each other’s networks, are one of the reasons for the high bandwidth costs that plague consumers.

Our vision has always been for local ISPs to peer freely with one another, using the shortest route possible. Not only would this make connectivity cheaper, but it would also improve the overall quality of service. Sadly, not all local ISPs share the same view, and these incumbents do not peer freely with all other ISPs.

As a result, the recent move by Mweb to sever connections with all other local ISPs who do not peer directly with them has caused problems for hosting providers who are reliant on the local networks provided by such ISPs. Mweb customers accessing locally hosted content previously accessible via these severed networks will now see a much slower connection than before, as the traffic is now routed internationally instead of locally.

This has subsequently raised concerns amongst our customer base as to how these recent events will impact Mweb broadband customers accessing content hosted by RSAWEB, and if clients hosting with RSAWEB should be concerned for any reason. However, as mentioned before, because we peer openly and own our connectivity network, RSAWEB customers will not be negatively impacted in any way.

Frustrated with your current web hosting provider? Need to move in a hurry? We can help.

Till the end of October, we’re extending a life-line to those who can’t afford to spend another minute with their current hosting provider, and need an exit strategy fast.

Our Mover-Shaker Special offers those who wish to transfer their web hosting from their current provider to RSAWEB a chance to do so seamlessly, and receive the first 2 months hosting FREE OF CHARGE at the same time! Help us help you.

Lets recap:
Initiate transfer of your Linux web hosting to RSAWEB before the end of October (starting today), and we’ll give you:

- Full technical assistance to transfer your hosting seamlessly.
- 2 months hosting FREE OF CHARGE.

To move your site, simply sign-up for the package you require, on www.rsaweb.co.za and make sure you specify that you wish to transfer an existing domain.

NB: This special is only available on all our Linux Web Hosting packages, and applies to transfers from other Linux Web Hosting packages only.

Get Moving.