1st November (If it happens) really that bad?

Nocturne

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Hi, guys

Please forgive my ignorance. Perhaps I don't understand exactly what the impacts of this is. I'm assuming that 1 November will become a reality; here's my understanding of the issue:

1. Instead of a flat cost per month (Including Line Rental, ADSL Rental, and ISP Charge) of +/- R800 for a 3gig 512k conncetion (Which I am currently paying), we will be instead getting charged per gigabyte of usage we do in a month.
2. Speculations on this website and others seem to indicate that Telkom's charge will be around R60 per gigabyte, although obviously nobody can confirm an exact figure yet.

Now, please correct me if I'm wrong, but surely R60 per gig x 3 gigs = R180 in ISP costs for the current connection? Even if Telkom still maintains the ADSL line rental (And this is one of my questions: will they?), it still works out to just over half of what I'm currently paying Telkom. If Telkom is replacing the ADSL line rental with this as well, then it's much, much lower!

What am I missing? I can get around 5 to 6 gigs of bandwidth in a month for the same price as 3 gig now... :confused:
 
Yep your missing these few points:

1.) You will still pay your line rental + analog rental + ISP fee per gig. No winning here, right?

2.) The R60 mentioned per gig is ex vat and ex markup for resellers(why should I resell it at cost?)
 
And...............it will be a hard cap - no more local access once you have reached your cap - that sucks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Which would make the reason we host this site in South Africa redundant. If people are capped on local traffic we have no more reason to host this site in South Africa at a higher price than it would overseas. Make no mistake, we are very happy with our local hosting provider, but even they cannot compete against overseas providers when it comes to cost. And if there is no advantage to our members anymore (should local capping come into effect) moving might become an option worth concidering. [note there are currently no such plans :) ]

I am pointing this example out because this is the typical effect Telkom's stupid and inconciderate service policies will have on hosting businesses in South Africa for instance. What is the use of hosting local at a premium if broadband users are to be capped on the local net anyway?

It will do Telkom and Multichoice's new IPtv venture the world of good because I can bet you they will not count IPtv traffic toward any cap! Nice and cozy to keep competing content providers out of this business if they don't have agreements with Telkom...

:(

Sick! What is even more sickening is that fact that these decisionmakers at Telkom really do sit in a room somewhere at HQ or at some plush holiday resort thinking of ways to hurt South African business. They know what the impact would be and yet they still continue doing this! It is insane!

Will our minister at the DoC never wake up????
 
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OK, there are two issues here. The first is the idea of "hard capping" or "local capping". Even the rumour-mongers acknowledge that this is something that is simply being considered, and is nowhere near ready to be put into practice. If you ask me, I think it would defeat the whole point of the pay per gig system, which to my mind is something that was used by Telkom to placate ICASA's arguments against the cap, and allow people to "top up" on bandwidth instead of buying a whole new account. I don't see it happening any time soon, but of course Telkom has proven us wrong in the past, so we'll have to wait and see...

The second issue is speculations of the price per gig that Telkom will charge to the public, and the price that resellers will charge to the public. Even at just less than R100 a gig, it's still cheaper for me to buy 3 gigs of bandwidth than to pay per month what I'm currently paying. How much higher will they go (Other than "As high as they want to go")? ;-)
 
Nocturne, per gig including isp profit you wont see a reduction on 3gig accounts. Do the maths, cost ex vat R60 x 3 = R180 ex vat for the isp to buy 3gig, now they resell with 14% vat and 10% markup R226 inc vat and profit. Same price as you would pay atm for 3gig, all and all, no consumer will win out of this or see a price reduction.

The only consumers who would want to argue that its cheaper/better is the guys wanting 1gig accounts, since they may be able to get that for R80 or R90, but for gig to gig, this pricing model is the same model, just with alot of bonuses removed.

If your paying more than R100 a gig atm? Your being ripped off and thats your fault, currently the normal pricing from respectable isps would be in the range of R220-R240 per 3gig.
 
My mistake. I'm paying R218.42 ex VAT atm for my 3gig usage (Excluding line rental and other crap). That works out to... let's see... R72.81 per gig ex vat. So that's what I'm willing to pay per gig on the new system.

Edit: OK, so I'm actually not prepared to pay that much, obviously. But I'm sure as hell not prepared to pay more under the new system! :o
 
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This is directly copied from my notification letter from SAIX. Note HARD CAPPING is in both.

SERVICE PROVIDERS - SAIX ADSL

Telkom SA is pleased to announce changes effective 1 November 2005 to the ADSL products provided to Service Providers reselling SAIX ADSL usernames and passwords.
Changes to the current products will provide Service Providers the flexibility to compete based on Value Add offerings.

Option 1
Standard predefined ADSL products listed below will only be available to “SAIX Authenticated” Service Providers. These products will consist of the following predefined criteria;

Capping Hard Capped only
Session time out 12 Hourly (00:00 and 12:00 respectively)
Shaped: Price*
· 2 Gigabyte Shaped: R 127-00*
· 3 Gigabyte Shaped: R 157-00*
· 5 Gigabyte Shaped: R 282-00*
· 10 Gigabyte Shaped: R 560-00*
· 20 Gigabyte Shaped: R1 100-00*
· 30 Gigabyte Shaped: R1 620-00*

Unshaped: Price*
· 4 Gigabyte Unshaped: R 420-00*
· 10 Gigabyte Unshaped: R1 000-00*
· 20 Gigabyte Unshaped: R1 970-00*
· 30 Gigabyte Unshaped: R2 860-00*
* All prices are quoted excluding VAT.

Option 2
Service Providers able to perform Final Authentication of their customers will be billed for each Gigabyte consumed by the respective customer base. Service Providers will manage criteria previously enforced by Telkom SA (SAIX), these include session
duration (timeout management) and Hard capping of services. Please take note of the following volume discounted prices.

Per Gigabyte price for usage based billing;

Price per Gigabyte Price per Gigabyte
Usage Discount Shaped Unshaped
0-100 Gigabyte 0% R59.40* R104.50*
101-200 Gigabyte 2% R58.32* R102.60*
201-300 Gigabyte 4% R57.24* R100.70*
301-500 Gigabyte 6% R56.16* R 98.80*
501 Gigabyte and above 10% R54.00* R 95.00*
* All prices are quoted excluding VAT.
 
This is madness. The majority of ppl who have ADSL now won't be able to afford over 3gb! While the rest of SA can't even afford 192kbps with 1gb! :eek:

Telkom has gone to far!
 
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Just shows you how arrogant Telkom actually is - both the issues of local capping and 24-hour resetting of IP address were addressed in the ICASA report (paragraphs 4.6.10 and 6.3) and the recommendations were that local traffic may not count towards the cap (therefore in my understanding not capped at all) and that IP's need not be reset every 24 hours.

May ICASA force Telkom to keep to these recommendations - it will be a very sad day in this country if Telkom is allowed to get away with this.
 
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I wonder how they came up with those prices.

If they bought the Gigs wholesale from BT in the UK, it would cost about R1.80 per gig (yearly cost for 100Mbit internet interconnect is about R717000
http://www.btwholesale.com ). To transport that gig to SA would add about R0.52 ( yearly operational costs for SAT3 +-$6million for the 24Gbit Telkom owns )

So I am guessing that Telkom pay about R2.32 per Gig that lands in SA.

Love to know what the magic step is that boosts the price by 25 times as it hits the SA coastline, perhaps my math is just wrong.
 
paarlberg said:
Telkom SA is pleased to announce changes effective 1 November 2005 to the ADSL products provided to Service Providers reselling SAIX ADSL usernames and passwords.

Im sure they are pleased. But us????? :mad:
 
Seriously pissed off

Nocturne said:
Hi, guys

Please forgive my ignorance. Perhaps I don't understand exactly what the impacts of this is. I'm assuming that 1 November will become a reality; here's my understanding of the issue:

1. Instead of a flat cost per month (Including Line Rental, ADSL Rental, and ISP Charge) of +/- R800 for a 3gig 512k conncetion (Which I am currently paying), we will be instead getting charged per gigabyte of usage we do in a month.
2. Speculations on this website and others seem to indicate that Telkom's charge will be around R60 per gigabyte, although obviously nobody can confirm an exact figure yet.

Now, please correct me if I'm wrong, but surely R60 per gig x 3 gigs = R180 in ISP costs for the current connection? Even if Telkom still maintains the ADSL line rental (And this is one of my questions: will they?), it still works out to just over half of what I'm currently paying Telkom. If Telkom is replacing the ADSL line rental with this as well, then it's much, much lower!

What am I missing? I can get around 5 to 6 gigs of bandwidth in a month for the same price as 3 gig now... :confused:


This is directly copied from my notification letter from SAIX. Note HARD CAPPING is in both.

SERVICE PROVIDERS - SAIX ADSL

Telkom SA is pleased to announce changes effective 1 November 2005 to the ADSL products provided to Service Providers reselling SAIX ADSL usernames and passwords.
Changes to the current products will provide Service Providers the flexibility to compete based on Value Add offerings.

Option 1
Standard predefined ADSL products listed below will only be available to “SAIX Authenticated” Service Providers. These products will consist of the following predefined criteria;

Capping Hard Capped only
Session time out 12 Hourly (00:00 and 12:00 respectively)
Shaped: Price*
· 2 Gigabyte Shaped: R 127-00*
· 3 Gigabyte Shaped: R 157-00*
· 5 Gigabyte Shaped: R 282-00*
· 10 Gigabyte Shaped: R 560-00*
· 20 Gigabyte Shaped: R1 100-00*
· 30 Gigabyte Shaped: R1 620-00*

Unshaped: Price*
· 4 Gigabyte Unshaped: R 420-00*
· 10 Gigabyte Unshaped: R1 000-00*
· 20 Gigabyte Unshaped: R1 970-00*
· 30 Gigabyte Unshaped: R2 860-00*
* All prices are quoted excluding VAT.

Option 2
Service Providers able to perform Final Authentication of their customers will be billed for each Gigabyte consumed by the respective customer base. Service Providers will manage criteria previously enforced by Telkom SA (SAIX), these include session
duration (timeout management) and Hard capping of services. Please take note of the following volume discounted prices.

Per Gigabyte price for usage based billing;

Price per Gigabyte Price per Gigabyte
Usage Discount Shaped Unshaped
0-100 Gigabyte 0% R59.40* R104.50*
101-200 Gigabyte 2% R58.32* R102.60*
201-300 Gigabyte 4% R57.24* R100.70*
301-500 Gigabyte 6% R56.16* R 98.80*
501 Gigabyte and above 10% R54.00* R 95.00*
* All prices are quoted excluding VAT.



Im sorry but this is so much **** that i have heard in my life!!!!!.

Im first going to take on the first statement
1) With regards to per gig capping. WTF!!! if ppl want accounts that are cheaper then they must create a 1,2,3 GIG account for the ignorant!

2) IM paying at the moment 199.00 for 30GB !!!!!!!! ex the line
how can you put this into the picture of your PER GIG theory.

PLEASE PPL USE SOME SORT OF KNOWLEDGE!!!!!
would rather stay as is at the moment then move onto per gig billing.
Why in anyones sane mind would people want per gig usage and dont give me the excuse of
"wha wha wha they are all abusing the network and i can't get my fare share at decent speeds, so lets make them slow their downloads by charging per gig" Telkom has more than enough bandwidth in the country to provide 500,000 ppl with 1024KB lines at full speed.!!!
they are using a ratio of 128:1 for business because they are trying to milk society into paying them more nothing else!!


With regards to the letter from SAIX,
I would like to see you take a picture of the lette and then post the pic online for us all to see. We need proof.

Spoke to telkom and they have no idea about the per gig saga.
so if their own staff and managers don't know about it then how are they going to implement it without proper training and educating their own staff. Not to mention the policy of advance notification that they have to give according to their OWN policy!!

Now can we all get a grip on the situation and stop speading rumours around.
Lets all be adults here and not cause a panic that will disrupt what needs to happen for changes to come into place.
With regards to the SOAL person that originally posted the thread on Per Gig.
You are a peace of work. No brains i assume!!
Don't you work with proof instead of working off of someones assumptions and accusations.


:mad: Im so pissed off right now!!
ppl make sure that you post accurate to the point with proof of what would happen!!!!!
 
Yes, it really is that bad. How on EARTH can it not be?

My sympathies for those who run small businesses (IT & non-IT related), who have been using ADSL for internet connectivity. It's going to really hurt now!
 
snoopy_inc said:
I would like to see you take a picture of the lette
No need Telkom sent it as a PDF
snoopy_inc said:
and then post the pic online for us all to see. We need proof.
No chance ... there a little problem with something called a NDA
snoopy_inc said:
Don't you work with proof instead of working off of someones assumptions and accusations.
Some of us have seen the original ... you on the other hand can believe what you want.
 
U were all so worried abt August then it came and everyone went quite, now u gettin hyped again abt three months time.....
 
Yeah, let's all calm down for a second here. The way I see it, there are a couple of ways we can look at it:

1. These rumours are false. We have not yet seen (Although some claim to have seen) anything offical from Telkom, published on their website or whatever. Granted, we didn't see anything official on Telkom's website when they abolished InfiniCall either, but I'm just saying let's not get our knickers in a knot prematurely.

2. This is a smokescreen. Telkom propogated this rumour, for whatever reason, but it is in fact untrue. Maybe they will come in and "save the day" in November by reducing prices even further. Maybe there's some other reason...

3. It's true. Everything is true, including the hard capping. On the face of it, this has terrible implications for high volume users, including businesses. (Although I still think it'll be cheaper for people like me who use at the most maybe 4gig a month anyway). Maybe they will have some system in place specifically for the latter. We just don't know.

Has anybody been in contact with ICASA on this issue? Do we have some sort of feeling from them? Clearly, if true, this violates most of what was decided at the last Telkom/ICASA hearing.

No point in wasting our energy on an enemy we don't even know exists, IMO. Let's just take it easy and see what happens.
 
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Telkom should set a trend and not charge per gigabyte, but per terabyte.. :D all the pirates would have the time of their life lol
 
Nocturne said:
Let's just take it easy and see what happens.
Look no one can guarentee what the letter says will come to fruition on Nov 1. The point I was making is that the letter itself, as posted in these forums, is true.

It my belief tho, nothing short of a court order or interdict will stop Telkom from implementing it.
 
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