South African mobile operator Vodacom has started the implementation of new measures that will prevent users from abusing BlackBerry’s fixed-fee unlimited internet browsing.
It was revealed last year that 5% of the BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) users were circumventing preventative measures and used the service for excessive downloading – slowing down the network for legitimate surfers.
With the new Vodacom system in place and BlackBerry users moved over, priority traffic will be given to users who comply with the regulations during peak hours. It’s essentially a throttling mechanism, limiting the speed of big downloaders, resulting in less traffic being generated.
Although all BlackBerry users on the Vodacom network have been moved over to the newly-implemented system, there won’t be an impact in their surfing speeds.
“There is no impact on normal usage of the BlackBerry service,” said Richard Boorman, Vodacom’s Head of Corporate Affairs. He also added that the new system will function as an internet traffic monitoring service, which will keep track of users’ behaviour through a set of parameters. “These parameters can include applications, protocols, users, URLs and other criteria.”
When Vodacom noticed a sharp increase in the use of internet traffic through BlackBerry devices, the network’s investigation discovered that 50 000 was creating the same amount of internet traffic as the remaining 1.6-million BlackBerry subscribers. Vodacom CEO Pieter Uys also revealed that only one user managed to download a shocking 332GB of data in a single month.
Charlie Fripp – Consumer Tech editor
Surfing on Blackberry already slow so what's News.
wats the point of blackberry then.
Hey read the article. “There is no impact on normal usage of the BlackBerry service,”. Will only curb illegal downloaders that are slowing down your surfing service.
vodacom must go to hell, blackbrry it's abt unlimited internet surfing."if u can beat them join vodacom".
Hey read the article. “There is no impact on normal usage of the BlackBerry service,”. Will only curb illegal downloaders that are slowing down your surfing service.
DOWNLOADING! Will "won’t impact thei surfing speeds". Idiots
Quite frankly Blackberry has already gotten me angry enough to doubt I will ever use that crappy phone again. The phone is slow, the errors are without boundries and their high end models simply can't keep up with almost any other manufacturer. Death to the BB Zombie Hoard!
It may have have its faulkts but still the best value for money. Any other smart will cost you 5 time the monthly cost for the same service
Yep Android chows down on airtime, but rather a functional phone than a crappy black phone that strikes if I ask it to work.
The thing is….I'm only limited to facebook! Cant access any website because the network is so slow it times out! Not a happy customer… : (.
Fully agree,the fone is of no use!I'm not getting another
lolssss…
Yeah had the same problem, they replaced my phone yesterday, testing it now.
Vodacom's BIS is useless, it is soooo slow that I do not even bother browsing! It's shit to say the least. With all the other fixed data packages being introduced by the competition, I think it's time to change…