Axxess ends free ADSL account

Axxess has informed customers that it is shutting down its free 1GB ADSL from 1 June 2022.

The Internet service provider (ISP) has been offering the accounts since 2014.

“We hope you enjoyed making use of this free service over the years,” Axxess said.

“Since then, we have introduced other advanced Internet services like fibre and LTE.”

Free ADSL accounts were all the rage in the early to mid–2010s, before fibre-to-the-home took off in South Africa.

Cybersmart, Afrihost, FNB Connect, Axxess, Webafrica, and many other players offered the accounts to let prospective customers test their services, or as value-adds.

Unlike most fibre operators nowadays, Telkom’s DSL network lets clients switch between ISPs by simply changing the username and password in their router.

Moving DSL ISPs is also easy because you can pay the infrastructure provider (Telkom) and your ISP separately.

Subscribers pay Telkom (now Openserve) for their DSL access, and their ISP for their Internet usage.

On fibre, your account and line rental are combined into one fee. You also usually can’t connect with a username and password from a different ISP than the one currently managing your line.

Openserve, Telkom’s wholesale and networks division, is the exception.

MyBroadband asked Axxess for comment on its decision to cancel its free ADSL service, but it did not respond by the time of publication.

Cybersmart, a pioneer of the free ADSL account, has not discontinued its offer.

“If someone has subscribed to it, they get to keep it. However, it is no longer available on our website,” Cybersmart CTO Laurie Fialkov told MyBroadband.

Fialkov said Cybersmart had introduced an updated “free forever” service for fibre on its own Lightspeed network.

Cybersmart’s Lightspeed free fibre forever offers 50GB per month between 7 am and midnight, and another 250GB between midnight and 7 am.

“For obvious reasons, it is very popular,” Fialkov told MyBroadband.

Now read: Telkom’s plan to switch off ADSL