The costs of 3G out of band data

A

AndrewAlston

Group Head of IP Strategy – Liquid Telecommunicati
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So, I did a calculation just as a matter of interest to see just how insanely expensive 3G bandwidth is out of bundle

The following is based on R2 a meg, and its based on 10 thousand subscribers similtaneously doing this (if the cell provider had the bandwidth to accomodate that) and based on the fact that the cell providers have 10 or 15 million subscribers, its actually not that far fetched...

With 10 thousand subscribers each doing a megabit a second each, they would be burning through 1250 Megabytes of data per second...

Thats R2500 per second, which is R150,000 per minute...

Which is R9 MILLION per hour...

Which is R216 MILLION per day...

Which is R78.8 BILLION per year

In data charges....

If you talk about doing that on roaming charges (R50 per meg), the figure per year climbs to... wait for it... R1.97 TRILLION per year

And we wonder why Telkom was reluctant to sell Vodacom...

It's also interesting to note that you can buy a roaming sim that will allow you to roam uncapped HSDPA data in South Africa from an international provider for $69 US per month....
 
It's a good thing that the benchmark for out-of-bundle 3G wireless data in South Africa is 8c per MB (from TENET's backbone provider). The pity is that Vodacom and MTN haven't caught up yet.
 
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AndrewAlston said:
It's also interesting to note that you can buy a roaming sim that will allow you to roam uncapped HSDPA data in South Africa from an international provider for $69 US per month....
Click to expand...

Please do tell ;)
 
I'll get the name of the provider and details as soon as some people wake up. That price of $69 was based on friends in the states that are paying that for unlimited 3G/HSPDA INCLUDING roaming. Which means that for that price you could use unlimited data inside .za. Details on how we get our hands on that, thats what I gotta find out :) Soon as I have more details I will post!

Andrew
 
AndrewAlston said:
I'll get the name of the provider and details as soon as some people wake up. That price of $69 was based on friends in the states that are paying that for unlimited 3G/HSPDA INCLUDING roaming. Which means that for that price you could use unlimited data inside .za. Details on how we get our hands on that, thats what I gotta find out :) Soon as I have more details I will post!

Andrew
Click to expand...

It's worth getting a SIM card from the USA for that !
 
Jola said:
It's worth getting a SIM card from the USA for that !
Click to expand...


Consumer Beware: 'Unlimited' 3G Service Has Strict Limits

Article

Q13 Can I enjoy the Internet Unlimited Max5 while roaming?
A13 No. This feature is not applicable if you are roaming on other networks. Any Internet usage out of DiGi's network will be charged Internet roaming charges by the respective operators.
Click to expand...

FAQ`s

fair_usage

Last one , but this is in china

ji-net
 
Hi to the Vodacom Data Rep. You are right, some of the HSDPA services you quoted above ARE limited on roaming charges. However, there ARE also unlimited roaming packages available in the US for under $100 a month. They are known as "all you can eat" roaming packages. I've confirmed this from multiple sources who travel a lot and have these packages. If South Africans can lay their hands on these packages, good for them.
 
Just another update, I've sent emails to 3 people who claim to have these plans and asked them for a.) the name of the provider b.) the type of contract they are on and c.) where I can find a copy of the terms and conditions. If I get these things, I'll post em, its entirely possible there are going to be terms in there which prevent mass usage, I'm only relaying what I've been told by various people :) We'll see as soon as they wake up and I'll post and let you guys know
 
So in essence it could be said that MTN & Vodacom are doing the subscribers a favour by having a contract / topup / ad-hoc / prepaid option where one can actually buy bandwidth cheaper provided the in-bundle allocation is exceeded.

Take into account the cost of obtaining / writing a billing system to bill / the overhead costs of which renumeration of staff / buildings / potential hurdles like regulatory issues / environmental impact of base stations (re iBurst debacle to name but a few) and so on.

The only reason why Vodacom has a higher broadband penetration to me is because the "product" if that is the correct term is more portable over its wireless access product than the fixed line copper stolen Telkom equivalent.

AndrewAlston said:
So, I did a calculation just as a matter of interest to see just how insanely expensive 3G bandwidth is out of bundle

The following is based on R2 a meg, and its based on 10 thousand subscribers similtaneously doing this (if the cell provider had the bandwidth to accomodate that) and based on the fact that the cell providers have 10 or 15 million subscribers, its actually not that far fetched...

With 10 thousand subscribers each doing a megabit a second each, they would be burning through 1250 Megabytes of data per second...

Thats R2500 per second, which is R150,000 per minute...

Which is R9 MILLION per hour...

Which is R216 MILLION per day...

Which is R78.8 BILLION per year

In data charges....

If you talk about doing that on roaming charges (R50 per meg), the figure per year climbs to... wait for it... R1.97 TRILLION per year

And we wonder why Telkom was reluctant to sell Vodacom...

It's also interesting to note that you can buy a roaming sim that will allow you to roam uncapped HSDPA data in South Africa from an international provider for $69 US per month....
Click to expand...
 
fismail said:
So in essence it could be said that MTN & Vodacom are doing the subscribers a favour by having a contract / topup / ad-hoc / prepaid option where one can actually buy bandwidth cheaper provided the in-bundle allocation is exceeded.

Take into account the cost of obtaining / writing a billing system to bill / the overhead costs of which renumeration of staff / buildings / potential hurdles like regulatory issues / environmental impact of base stations (re iBurst debacle to name but a few) and so on.

The only reason why Vodacom has a higher broadband penetration to me is because the "product" if that is the correct term is more portable over its wireless access product than the fixed line copper stolen Telkom equivalent.
Click to expand...

heh? :confused: I cant figure out if you praising or dissing Vodacom hehe. :D
 
AndrewAlston said:
Just another update, I've sent emails to 3 people who claim to have these plans and asked them for a.) the name of the provider b.) the type of contract they are on and c.) where I can find a copy of the terms and conditions. If I get these things, I'll post em, its entirely possible there are going to be terms in there which prevent mass usage, I'm only relaying what I've been told by various people :) We'll see as soon as they wake up and I'll post and let you guys know
Click to expand...

Hi

Its just that roaming is dam expensive and i fell to see how R500 +- is going to cover the roaming cost of the country you visiting.

Keeping in mind you roaming on a forieign network and using their billing system.

Lets see what you come back with
 
Neither of the 2.

Portability costs time and money and people don't work for free as the services that they use they need to pay for.

I don't agree that carriers don't make extremely high profit but show me a businessman / business that is not in to make money.

Add in ineffective government who is also on the moneytrain with John Q Public's taxpayer money spending it like there is no tomorrow.

Asking what is a fair price today is open to a lot of debate sadly.

I am paying R389 per month on a month to month topup with Vodacom for 2gb data bundle to enjoy this on my 3G/HSDPA service. Yes it would be nice if its even R50 per gig but for that portability to just packup and go there is a cost. If the cost is "reasonable" as mentioned before is another issue.

ocleroux said:
heh? :confused: I cant figure out if you praising or dissing Vodacom hehe. :D
Click to expand...
 
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