Be gentle.: Reality Check

Lo guys, came accross here from a post by a friend in an IRC channel (a moaning friend).

I've just read a couple of comments etc, got the feeling that no-one is happy. Just a few things I thought many of you should know...

ADSL is still in commercial testing (hence the no guarentee), you took the risk, not them.

Imagine this... You have ISDN dial-up and you are connected all day and all night... work it out... it would cost you more than R 5500 a month... pretty hectic.

Then think of the same solution for 64k diginet, R6000 a month. For 512k diginet - R 30'000 a month. Think of the fact that with a 64k diginet line you can only download (at 8k/sec for 30 days) 20GB.

Hmmm, now think for ADSL, 20GB would only cost you R650 + 80 (line rental) + 220 x 7 (3GB * 7 = 21GB) = a mere R 2270.

And there is always satellite too.

Now along the lines of probability, as more unique consumers, consume something, then probablity that each unique consumer consumes the good at the same time falls as the number of unique consumers increase. ie... the more of us there are the chance that we all use it at the same time falls.

Next thing is... have any of you looked at the price of a DSLAM... a DSLAM is what our dsl modems connect to to get onto the network, oh yes did I mention that they cost R25000 for a 42 port DSLAM... but oh yes don't forget they Telkom buys DSLAMS with 1720 ports... just a couple of million rand (1.8 if you must know).

Unlike america, or europe and Japan, South africa has a very low population density... that really pisses telkom off... London can lay a nice fat fibre optic cable for 15 km's, and they end up linking a 100'000 people, Telkom lays 1000km of cable and they link 500'000 the ratio is 1:6666 vs 1:500 (they need 1 km of cable to link 6666 people but we need 1km of cable to link only 500 people).

Europe and the USA and Japan have a lot more people to pay for their international links, and less distance for them to reach other countries, meanwhile we are one of the most distant countries in the world - international peering is Teleco's and ISP's biggest pain in the ass, imagine how Telkom feels about it.

Telkom also has the wonderful pain in the ass of having to link every area of South Africa (irrespective of the cost implications).

The current average of Teleco's that are able to last after rolling out DSL is 2 in 5 around the world... only large ones have ever copped with it.

And now you tell me you think Telkom is being unfair... well I say you need a serious reality check.

Now unless you can think of a some good replies and decent debating points, with the facts to back them up, then don't bother flaming me, the ignorance of others only proves the their stupity to a lucky few, maybe if I am lucky I can be one of them.

Hey odge,

All we ask is that they provide the service for which we pay. We know that we will be disconnected every 24h and that there is a 3gb cap. Although there is no guarantee on bandwidth, that's understandable because of the 3gb cap. All I expect, is what I've just mentioned, not all of the additions such as port caps and unable to use applications before we are capped, recorded downtime of up to 77%, et al...

The port caps are an implication of bandwidth prioritization, dial-up users don't experience them because they are ahead of us in priority, unfortunately it's quite a difficult problem to deal with, and probably unforseen, I am sure if you nag Telkom/SAIX enough they may reconstruct the bandwidth prioritization so that our network capacity is prioritized on a port basis first before it prioritized on an IP basis with the rest of South Africa's network, the down-time on the other hand is experienced throughout the world, there are always cases where some users should have never been given DSL in the first case, because their line was too bad. Personally I have only had a 6 hour period in the last 4 months where I had no access.

Well said odge

another factor is to consider the ammount of local content compared to USA.

Its the SA people that want USA's content, not vice versa, thus their incoming international links in countries like UK and USA remain failrly uncongested.

Hey.. If u want a nice connection why dont you just lease your own 100mb circuit to USA... I'm sure it will only set you back arround 3 or 4milion rand a month. Now consider how many ADSL users you would fit on there at 512k/s not to many is it eh..

Why prioritize when we have a cap? Whether someone wishes to download 3gb via HTTP or via Kazaa, that's their prerogative. Whether they choose to download that 3gb in the first 22 hours or over the period of the month, it is still traffic, irrespective of which port it's routed through.

Downtime does occur, with a 77% downtime in 24 hours, that's equivilant to your 6 hours over a whole 4 month period. Even what you've experienced is acceptable, but certainly not 6 hours in a 24 hour period.

Who keeps having a 77% downtime? And the priotization comes because the simply isn't enough bandwidth to guarentee that we will always be able to get decent browsing speeds, as a result HTTP will obviously have priority over anything else.

If I choose to download a 1.5gb Visual Studio.NET trial from Microsoft via HTTP or via Kazaa, how will priotization help the bandwidth. Surely, 55kB/s via HTTP or Kazaa is the same?

77% uptime is not my daily average, it's just my last recorded 24 hours. I have been disconnected a number of times and unable to reconnect. Perhpaps it's only my local exchange then. Has anyone else experienced poor uptimes?

I do say odge, if a 56k user can get 4k international speeds whenever he wants, why can't i get 1k? They can at least cap us to ISDN speed, i mean what about those ISDN users on 128k accounts that gets 15k international? why can't we get some of that b/w?

=TT=

, good point.... but I guess this is the answer:

Think of all those business users who have ISDN, they use it during the day, our friends use it at night, they are lucky that those business users exist, without them, their service would be pretty damn **** too.

There is absolutely NO reason that ADSL couldn't replace ISDN in the workplace and at home. What's stopping a new breed of user? Why stop at ISDN? Businesses could use ADSL during the day, and those who work, go to school, study can use it in the evening.

Without us protesting for the service levels we were sold, we cannot get our businesses up and running to provide those home users what they too want as you say.

Port capping is like taking away your freedom of speech. You pay for DSL you use it for what you want - not what Telkom want you to use it for.

I personally think ADSl is one of the best things to ever happen to the SA internet scene. Yes, the cap is a bit of a problem. As odge also stated, the interational bandwith does cost TELKOM a lot of money. One way around that is to let only overseas traffic count to you 3GB cap. 3GB for overseas traffic is by far enough for general internet use.

That's strange though. Some say that it does count and other say it doesn't. Some have experienced it first hand, both ways. I for one am still able to browse after 3gb of local transfers. Others are capped after 3gb of local. Dependant on ISP?

check... Telkom cap you internationally for local downloads but after the cap your local downloads are not affected. Why not just cap international downloads? It all means the same in the end just the inconvenience of now instead of later.

Hi Gandalf

I have some bad news regarding capping. In my discussions with a trustworthy Telkom source he informed me that they are going to start to enforce the 3 Gig cap more strictly. Currently one can get away with certain things, but in order to preserve bandwidth they want to hit home with this 3 Gig cap. Not good news at all. They are apparently planning the development of different packages, but when this will become a reality, if ever, we don’t know. I hope our correspondence with Telkom clear up some of these matters.

It is amazing that we need to force them to let us know what service we are getting! We pay for something, but have no idea what they are going to give us. Just not right.

Regards,

RPM


RPM
[email protected]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Whether someone wishes to download 3gb via HTTP or via Kazaa, that's their prerogative. Whether they choose to download that 3gb in the first 22 hours or over the period of the month, it is still traffic, irrespective of which port it's routed through. <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

BECAUSE !!!!!

HTTP traffic is prioritised to allow the rest of us a decent web browsing experience so we dont have to wait while you download your stupid mp3's.

Odge, thanks for your analysis - you are in many ways quite right. But, these are my thoughts:
I allege that in claiming, as Telkom still do on their website, that once the 3GB cap is reached, the customer's traffic is transported over a slower international link, they are at best misleading their customers, if not outright lying to them. There is no slower link - there is no link at all. They should make it clear that once the 3GB cap is reached, the customer cannot access any international sites at all. This has certainly been my experience. Had I known this, I would not have gone to the trouble of getting ADSL. This is false advertisement if you ask me.

Let me share some other thoughts about ADSL with you that I have also made known to Telkom.
1. A 3GB cap on ADSL is an oxymoron - it makes no sense. 100MB a day is peanuts if one takes into consideration how media rich web sites are out there. If 3GB is all I needed, would I need ADSL?
2. If Telkom's international bandwidth is so limited, should they be offering ADSL at all? And if they are offering, why offer it at 512kbps? They should consider going down to 256 or even 128kbps and adjust their pricing accordingly. They are never able to provide us with the 512kbps throughput anyway.
3. Telkom should consider pricing per MB traffic once a customer exceeds his 3gb volume cap. Let customers decide if they are willing to pay for extra traffic. But in doing this, they must ensure the customer has a reliable and transparent way of knowing his volume usage.

Cheers

Just a few comments:


<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by odge</i>
<br />Lo guys, came accross here from a post by a friend in an IRC channel (a moaning friend).

I've just read a couple of comments etc, got the feeling that no-one is happy. Just a few things I thought many of you should know...

ADSL is still in commercial testing (hence the no guarentee), you took the risk, not them.

<i>ADSL is no longer in testing or trial as Telkom called it, it's a full fledged product. If I remember it correctly, It was launched officially at the start of this year.</i>

Imagine this... You have ISDN dial-up and you are connected all day and all night... work it out... it would cost you more than R 5500 a month... pretty hectic.

Then think of the same solution for 64k diginet, R6000 a month. For 512k diginet - R 30'000 a month. Think of the fact that with a 64k diginet line you can only download (at 8k/sec for 30 days) 20GB.

Hmmm, now think for ADSL, 20GB would only cost you R650 + 80 (line rental) + 220 x 7 (3GB * 7 = 21GB) = a mere R 2270.

<i>I personally think the whole 3gb cap discussion dilutes some of the real issues, it's not about how much i can download per month, it's about the transfer rate at any given time, i.e.. Bytes/second.

My transfer rate from 07:00pm is between 2.5-5KBytes/second if i'm lucky. I can equal that, if not exceed that with my 56k Dial-up Modem.
</i>

And there is always satellite too.

Now along the lines of probability, as more unique consumers, consume something, then probablity that each unique consumer consumes the good at the same time falls as the number of unique consumers increase. ie... the more of us there are the chance that we all use it at the same time falls.

<i>Not sure I understand what you are trying to say? Do you mean that the more ADSL subscribers we get the better it will get? If that's the case, why is it not working on ADSL, because your rule of probability does not apply here. When i first got ADSL, I was content with the service, now it's a nightmare. Why? Because we got more ADSL subscribers, but not more bandwidth.</i>

Next thing is... have any of you looked at the price of a DSLAM... a DSLAM is what our dsl modems connect to to get onto the network, oh yes did I mention that they cost R25000 for a 42 port DSLAM... but oh yes don't forget they Telkom buys DSLAMS with 1720 ports... just a couple of million rand (1.8 if you must know).

<i>Quiet honestly, I don't care how much it costs. What is your point?</i>

Unlike america, or europe and Japan, South africa has a very low population density... that really pisses telkom off... London can lay a nice fat fibre optic cable for 15 km's, and they end up linking a 100'000 people, Telkom lays 1000km of cable and they link 500'000 the ratio is 1:6666 vs 1:500 (they need 1 km of cable to link 6666 people but we need 1km of cable to link only 500 people).

<i>Your argument does not apply here, they are using existing copper, your telephone line, which more than likely was paid for by taxpayers money</i>

Europe and the USA and Japan have a lot more people to pay for their international links, and less distance for them to reach other countries, meanwhile we are one of the most distant countries in the world - international peering is Teleco's and ISP's biggest pain in the ass, imagine how Telkom feels about it.

<i>You have a point there. Do you think we are paying the same as them for ADSL? Do you not think that these issues have been considered already and has been priced into your rental? </i>

Telkom also has the wonderful pain in the ass of having to link every area of South Africa (irrespective of the cost implications).

<i>What additional infrastructure besides the BRAS and DSLAM needs to be put in place with respect to ADSL? Do you honestly believe that the ADSL is a brand new network built from scratch?</i>

The current average of Teleco's that are able to last after rolling out DSL is 2 in 5 around the world... only large ones have ever copped with it.

And now you tell me you think Telkom is being unfair... well I say you need a serious reality check.

Now unless you can think of a some good replies and decent debating points, with the facts to back them up, then don't bother flaming me, the ignorance of others only proves the their stupity to a lucky few, maybe if I am lucky I can be one of them.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Well Karnaugh,

You may be suprised to know that I'm not at ALL interested in 'stupid mp3s', I'm interested in Microsoft's new developments in Microsoft's live Webcasts, in evaluating different websites, so don't jump to conclusions about thing of which you are not entirely certain.

What I want, is the service for which we've all paid to be provided, and I have NEVER experienced bad browsing while uncapped, irrespective of how many of 'those' people were using p2p applications.

Another point regarding Odge's population ratios.

I live in Johannesburg, not the Karoo, and I assume most ADSL users live in a metro area. We are not talking about a basic service like water or electricity here, were the onus would be that everyone is connected to the grid, no matter how remote. So all those ratios are really quite besides the point.