Some of the terminology or jargon one often hears when talking about broadband solutions is references to soft and hard caps. Usually this terminology only applies to Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Lines (ADSL).  Usually solutions that have a soft and a hard cap are what is called capped ADSL solutions. (For the difference between capped and uncapped ADSL see this blog post.)

ADSL and soft cap limit

The ADSL accounts offered by Internet Solutions are capped accounts. So if you buy a monthly data bundle of 5 gigs, in theory, your connection should become so slow to the point of being unusable once you reach 5 gig of data usage or use up your bandwidth as it is called.(For a entry on what bandwidth means see this blog entry.) But in practise once your 5gig is used up your soft cap has been reached. By soft cap it means that your limit you purchased has been reached but you are still able to use the service with some reduced functionality. This means that you are still able to access local sites (i.e. sites that are located in South Africa) at full speed, so you can still do banking etc. International sites will become very slow and unusable.

(Just a quick note - just because a site end in co.za does not mean it is a local site. Local site refers to the location of the server where the site is hosted. It is possible for .co.za sites to be hosted overseas which is why some South African sites can become unreachable once your soft capp is reached).

ADSL Hard Cap reached

Once you soft cap is reach you are still able to access local sites, ftp servers etc. If you manage to download another 5 gigs off of local sites i.e 2x your purchased limit, which is becoming more and more likely as many services are now available in South Africa, your hard cap is reached. At this point your local bandwidth is cut-off and you connection become unusable until next month or if you upgrade. Usually it is pointless upgrading because you will need to upgrade quiet a lot as you have used more than 2x your allocated bandwidth so you will need to upgrade by more than 2x your current account limit.