Uncapped internet is not a real reality in South Africa.

Not even with the new so called uncapped internet offerings from the likes of Mweb, Afrihost, Axxess etc are things truly uncapped, since they begin to throttle line speeds at around 60gigs.

So many people are on internet packages which have a cap. The worst of these is 3G which have packages starting form 40mb. That might last me a day, if I’m lucky!

We opted to go with Neotel – as they are the official opposition to the ‘giant conglomerate’ of Telkom, and offer a wireless solution that is covered in the area that we live in. While Neotel do offer an unlimited solution as a package deal with a home phone etc etc, we opted to go with the Data only option – capped at 10gigs for the time being. We do have the option to update to 15gigs if necessary.

But how on earth do we monitor our usage to ensure that our service provider is billing us correctly? We are not disconnected if we exceed our cap, simply billed ‘out of bundle’ for the extra. Now while the out of bundle costs are more expensive, they’re nowhere near the highway robbery of Mweb’s out of bundle 3G data charges – so we’re lucky in that respect. But since we don’t like financial situations that we cannot monitor it became imperative for us to find a solution that allows us to accurately monitor our internet bandwith usuage to compare with our statement at the end of the month.

I found just that tool in Surplus Meter. So now I’m able to accurately guage my internet usage, and it even goes so far as to show me my average daily usage, and how that is affected by how much I’ve already used for the month. I’m able to pick a start date, select a cap, easily reset if there is an issue – and it works out everything according to what I enter, and my usage.

So now, when I get closer to my internet cap, instead of carrying on blindly, perhaps I’ll consider top fat burners, or at least get off my work butt and go and get some exercise instead!

Best of all? Surplus Meter is absolutely free.