IAFRICA
This is one of South Africa's largest ISPs and their service ranks as one of the best. But, as with most SA Companies, they give lower priority to smaller companies and individuals. However, they are still among the best. You get a nice little package to help you connect to the internet, an IAFRICA customised Netscape Navigator, with a setup so easy it took only a few minutes to get connected.
When you take the standard registration, you get 1 e-mail, 2 MBytes hosting space and 40 hours per month internet access. More than one person can use the same login name and password, however, once the 40 hour limit is reached, you will be charged a nominal minute rate for extra download time, and considering 40 hours works out to 10 hours per week, it might be worth it for some people to do it this way. Definately a plus point here. Other registering packages are also available.
The connection is almost always successfull, but I did find myself getting connected at odd speeds on certain ocassions (lower than 28800), and also on one occasion the connection went completely dead, there was no connection at all for a couple of hours (bad luck it was on a Sunday, otherwise I'm sure they would have fixed it on the same day). During the week however, there is no guarentee there will be a free line, and you might have to wait for half an hour before getting a free line, but be warned, the net is SLOW when this happens. (See note at the bottom, speed during the week at 7:30pm)
The total average throughput is spot on, but the throughput for individual sites is dissapointing. It takes what seems to be an eternity to get individual sites to finish downloading, and the ONLY way to get the full throughput is to have at least 3 sites loading simultaneously.
The major disadvantage is that if you are looking for one specific site, it will take a very long time to find what you want and to download it. Not a nice thing at all!
The pricing on the higher end of the ISP scale, but since they allow simultaneous users (limiting the hours to ensure they don't get ripped off- good thinking), it might be worth your while. On the negetive side, the throughput for individual sites is a bit slow and I did not find that the connection speed was assured each time.
My final verdict- try it for a month and see how things go. If it is acceptable to you, then so be it.
My rating is 
Graph of off-peek time throughput (Saturday Morning)
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Statistics
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Bits per sec
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% of max
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Maximum BPS
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27878
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96.8%
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Minimum BPS
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13152
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45.7%
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Average
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24633
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85.5%
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Graph of semi-peek time throughput (Saturday Afternoon after 4pm)
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Statistics
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BPS
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% of max
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Maximum BPS
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22578
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78.4%
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Minimum BPS
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13219
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45.9%
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Average
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18316
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63.6%
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Possible reasons for the noticable slow-down in the afternoon, is more people are on the internet by that time, and America, being the biggest internet users, are on line.
The connection was tested during the week at 7:30pm, the throughput is extremely bad during this period, with an average of 12816 bps (44.5% of bandwidth) downloading information, upload was almost impossible (sending e-mail and working with FTP is impossibly slow).
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