GENERAL
- Broadband services provided over fibre is a shared (“best effort”) service of up to the specified speed. This means that the potential speed that can be obtained will depend on the load on the line at the time of surfing the net.
- Broadband services are provided on a month-to-month basis on a subscription model.
- Openserve reserves the right to revise tariffs and to vary these terms and conditions at any time. Such changes will be communicated to the Client.
- Openserve accepts no liability for any loss or damage to the property or equipment of the Client arising out of the provision, installation or maintenance of Openserve's broadband service.
- Installation fees may be charged to the Client unless expressly waived under a valid promotional offer.
- Change of products are allowed with no penalties.
- Openserve reserves the right to charge a downgrade fee, in each instance where the Client requests a speed downgrade between the speed options in relation to an Openserve subscription. Speed upgrades will be free.
- Call Out Fee will apply in all instances where the Client has requested Openserve to attend to a fault beyond the Fibre pick-up Point, including the Optical Network Terminal (ONT). The charge will be waived if the fault was deemed to be an Openserve network or technology issue.
- Openserve’s uncapped internet services are subject to the Acceptable Use Policy, attached hereto as Appendix A.
PROTECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
Openserve shall collect, process, store, and use the Client’s personal information strictly in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations, including the regulations promulgated under Section 69 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, as amended from time to time. Openserve undertakes to process the Client’s personal information solely for the purposes for which such information was collected and in compliance with any applicable notice, consent, authorization, or other legal requirement prescribed by South African law.
Openserve further undertakes to process and manage the Client’s information in accordance with the obligations and requirements applicable to its Electronic Communications Network Services (ECNS) and Electronic Communications Services (ECS) licences.
RICA
The Client acknowledges and agrees that the provisions of the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-Related Information Act, 2002 ("RICA"), as amended, apply to the Fibre Line and Client Premises Equipment (CPE) provided by Openserve.
The Client further agrees to comply with all applicable obligations imposed by RICA and shall, where required, provide Openserve with all personal information, documentation, and other particulars that Openserve is legally obliged to obtain and verify in terms of Section 39 of RICA and any other applicable provisions of the Act.
CANCELLATION OF ORDERS PRIOR TO THE PROVISION OF SERVICE ACTIVATION
The Client shall be entitled to cancel an order prior to the Put into Service (PIS) date. Any such cancellation shall be by way of notice sent in writing by the Client to Openserve and shall be effective on receipt or deemed receipt of such notice by Openserve.
Upon such cancellation, Openserve shall be entitled to charge the Client such reasonable costs and expenses as have been actually incurred by Openserve or will be incurred in respect of reasonable and foreseeable obligations to which Openserve has become necessarily bound arising from the relevant Order, from the date of the Order concerned up to the date of receipt or deemed receipt of such notice of cancellation, as well as actual costs of the recovery of any equipment already installed.
CANCELLATION OF BROADBAND SERVICE AFTER SERVICE ACTIVATION
Clients may cancel the Openserve subscription at any time after activation.
Openserve currently has a conditional free installation promotion, if the service is terminated within 12 months, R500 clawback to apply.
Cancellation of the service during the subscription period will be effective at the end of the subscription period.
Openserve will be entitled to retrieve all or any Openserve equipment (such as the ONT or any other network or related equipment installed by Openserve at an End-user’s premises in relation to an Openserve Broadband service) upon cancellation of an Openserve Broadband service.
REFUNDS
Refunds are accepted where the area is not live (in addition to those grounds for refunds set out in the general terms above).
The Client shall be entitled to request a refund for an Order prior to the Put into Service (PIS). Any such refund request shall be by way of notice sent in writing by the Client to Openserve.
Refunds can take up to 14 (fourteen) business days only once the Client has submitted supporting documentation as required by Openserve, subject to the following conditions:
-
Verification: Openserve reserves the right to verify the validity of the refund request.
-
Exclusions: Refunds shall not be issued in cases of Client breach of contract, misuse of services, or where services have been rendered in full.
-
Processing Delays: While Openserve will endeavour to process refunds within the stated timeframe, delays may occur due to factors beyond Openserve’s reasonable control, including but not limited to banking delays, regulatory requirements, or force majeure events.
-
Finality: Once processed, refunds shall be deemed final and conclusive, and no further claims shall be entertained in respect of the same transaction.
PAYMENT AUTHORISATION
By accepting these terms, the Client hereby authorises Openserve to debit their credit or debit card (Visa/Mastercard) with the fee pertaining to the Service they have selected. The amount will be deducted from the card every 30 day.
The Client authorises Openserve's nominated payment gateway (Peach Payments) to debit their credit or debit card (Visa/Mastercard) on Openserve's behalf. The Client agrees that the authority to debit a Client’s account will remain in force until the Client’s Services are cancelled, and the Client agrees that it will honour any debits related to cancellation notice periods before the expiration of the debit authority.
APPENDIX A
Throttling
Throttling is one of the options that Openserve may utilise to remedy breaches in respect of Fair Usage Point (FUP) or Usage Thresholds. Throttling is the process of limiting the throughput of all services and protocols, the line itself is not affected. Throttling may be applied only when an individual user exceeds the Fair Usage Point (FUP) or Usage Thresholds, as further set out in clause 10 below and which may be amended from time to time, on their account, over a calendar month, and even then, only during peak traffic. Although Openserve does reserve the right to throttle when fair usage has been exceeded, it will only do so at peak network traffic times. When the network is in off-peak times the Client will not be throttled, even if the Client has exceeded the FUP point. The Client will continue to experience normal speeds. Peak times are daily between 18:00 and 23:00.
The Client’s usage between midnight and 06:00 am every day does not affect the Client’s rolling FUP threshold.
Shaping
Shaping is the process of implementing priority on certain types of usage or protocols. Openserve may implement shaping to give priority to real-time interactive services, effectively slowing down the Client’s non-prioritized services. This does not relate to the Client’s monthly usage or thresholds, but rather network congestion and will be applied to all services equally. Peak times are daily between 18:00 and 23:00.
Monitoring Usage
Openserve provides the following measures to assist Clients to monitor their data usage:
- The relevant Client would be responsible for providing their End-users’ tools to monitor their data usage. Openserve will provide the Client with the means of interrogating and sourcing the necessary information.
- Openserve will provide usage reports and will endeavour to update these reports at hourly intervals.
- Where feasible, Openserve will provide the Client with a notification in the event that the FUP threshold has been exceeded.
- Openserve does not guarantee the efficiency of the measures available. The Client remains responsible for monitoring and controlling their data usage.
Unacceptable Use
Services may only be used for lawful purposes and activities. Openserve prohibits any use of its Services including the transmission, storage and distribution of any material or content using Openserve’s network that violates any law or regulation of the Republic of South Africa. This includes, but is not limited to:
- Any violation of local and international laws prohibiting child pornography, obscenity, discrimination (including racial, gender or religious slurs) and hate speech, or speech designed to incite violence or hatred, or threats to cause bodily harm;
- Any activity designed to defame, abuse, stalk, harass or physically threaten any individual in the Republic of South Africa or beyond its borders; including any attempt to link to, post, transmit or otherwise distribute any inappropriate or defamatory material;
- Any violation of intellectual property laws, including materials protected by local and international copyright, trademarks and trade secrets;
- Any violation of another's right to privacy, including any effort to collect personal data of third parties without their consent;
- Any fraudulent activity whatsoever, including dubious financial practices, such as pyramid schemes; the impersonation of another Client without their consent; or any attempt to enter into a transaction with Openserve on behalf of another Client without their consent;
- Any violation of the exchange control laws of the Republic of South Africa;
- Any activity that results in the sale, transmission or distribution of pirated or illegal material;
- The Service may not be used to provide or resell Services to other individuals, and is prohibited in the following scenarios (but not limited to same), as further set out in clause 5 below:
- Wireless Internet Service Provision (WISP);
- Providing extended LAN services to adjoining homes;
- Hosting shell accounts;
- Providing email, news, download, VPN or sandbox services;
- Running of home or private servers;
- Provision of network services to others; and
- Running private servers for mail, HTTP, FTP, IRC and multi-user forums.
Threats to Network Security
Any activity which threatens the functioning, security and/or integrity of Openserve network is unacceptable. This includes, but is not limited to:
- Any efforts to attempt to gain unlawful and unauthorised access to the network or circumvent any of the security measures established by Openserve for this goal;
- Any effort to use Openserve equipment to circumvent the user authentication or security of any host, network or account ("cracking" or "hacking");
- Forging of any TCP (Transmission Control Protocol)/IP (Internet Protocol) packet headers (spoofing) or any part of the headers of an email or a newsgroup posting;
- Any effort to breach or attempt to breach the security of another user or attempt to gain access to any other person's computer, software, or data without the knowledge and consent of such person;
- Any activity which threatens to disrupt the Service offered by Openserve through "denial of service attacks"; flooding of a network or overloading a service or any unauthorised probes ("scanning" or "nuking") of others' networks;
- Any activity which in any way threatens the security of the network by knowingly posting, transmitting, linking to or otherwise distributing any information or software which contains a virus, trojan horse, worm, malware, botnet or other harmful, destructive or disruptive component;
- Any unauthorised monitoring of data or traffic on the network without Openserve’s explicit, written consent;
- Running services and applications with known vulnerabilities and weaknesses, e.g. insufficient anti-automation attacks, any traffic amplification attacks, including recursive DNS attacks, SMTP relay attacks; and
- Failing to respond adequately to a denial of service attack (DOS / DDOS).
Action following breach of the AUP
Upon the breach of this AUP by the Client and/or its End-users, Openserve may, in its sole and reasonably exercised discretion take any of the following steps:
- Warn the Client, provide information and proof of the incident(s), suspend the Client’s account and/or revoke or terminate the Client’s Service completely;
- In all cases, charge the offending parties for administrative costs as well as for machine and human time lost due to the incident;
- Assist other networks or website administrators in investigating credible suspicions of any activity listed in this AUP;
- Institute civil or criminal proceedings; and
- Share information concerning the incident with other internet access providers, or publish the information, and/or make available the relevant Client and/or End-users' details to law enforcement agencies.
This policy applies to and will be enforced for intended and unintended (e.g., viruses, worms, malicious code, or otherwise unknown causes) prohibited usage.
Reservation and Non-Waiver of Rights
- Openserve reserves the right to amend or alter this AUP at any time.
- Openserve reserves the right to take action against any individuals, companies or organisations that violate the AUP, or engage in any illegal or unlawful activity while accessing Openserve’s services, to the fullest extent of the law.
- Openserve reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to act against other types of abuse not listed in this appendix and to investigate or prevent illegal activities being committed over Openserve’s network.
- Openserve does not waive its right to enforcement of this AUP at any time, or prejudice its right to take subsequent action, should Openserve fail, neglect or elect not to enforce a breach of the AUP at any time.
Usage Threshold(s) or Fair Usage Point(s) (FUP(s))
- Openserve reserves the right to implement corrective measures should any service be utilised in a manner that has a detrimental impact on the Openserve network and/or a detrimental impact on operation of any other service on the Openserve network.
- Openserve may, at its own discretion apply corrective measures which may include, but is not limited to, implementation of usage thresholds and/or fair usage points or termination of the relevant services to protect the Openserve network and maintain the operation of other services on the Openserve network.
- Openserve undertakes to provide reasonable notice should it decide to implement any of the corrective measures as contemplated in above.
