The player with the most IP packets on his network wins: MTN SA MD Karel Pienaar

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He with the most IP packets on his network wins

"He with the most IP packets on his network wins." - Karel Pienaar, MD of MTN.

Heard him say this during his keynote at AfricaCom today. He was talking about how data would eventually being the biggest revenue driver on mobile networks, but how they haven't figured out how to make good money from it yet.

Volumes will change the economics of it, he reckons.
 
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And, in order to get more IP packets on your network, you'll have to lower your prices and increase your caps.
 
Buzybuy said:
Wish the focus would shift from speed to price.
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That's kind-of implicit in his statement. In order to have the most IP packets on your network you must have at least one of the most compelling mobile broadband offerings in the country. Which means prices have to come down, no?
 
Pienaar explained that they need to charge for transit as the bandwidth usage fees associated with hosting a website on the MTN network doesn't cover the costs incurred when users access that site
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What a load of bull.
 
The statement that MTN isn't in to doubling-dipping made me laugh. Firstly because all operators look to "double dip" and secondly because of how the phrase has taken off.

What I find quite disturbing is the presented stance on open peering. It seems to somehow assume that the big network operators (VC, MTN and Telkom) have a right to expect smaller participants (m-web who are big as an ISP but still have a lot less network infrastructure) to give them money for a right to survive. This is an uncompetitive attitude that embraces some sort of hierarchy of importance based on what sort of a player you are.
 
If they want more packets on their network, then they must drop their prices, increase their caps, and put the customer first.
 
I wont be hosting anymore on MTN`s network. They are acting like a spoilt child that wont let others play with them. Clearly if you give them business they abuse it, so I would rather give their competition business so they cant behave like fat spoilt children. On friday we had already moved out last domain away from Hetzner and shut down our servers with them.

We have no problems with Hetzner, but we cant support them as long as they have a single abusive supplier.
 
Arrrrgghhhhh... sounds just like Vodacom's Uys... shareholder say protect profit at all costs... screw the customer if you must... and you probably will!
 
From the "Internet Service Providers and Peering" DRAFT 1.9 article written in 2001 by W.B. Norton:

Motivations for peering:
- lower transit costs
- lower latency
- usage-based traffic billing ("It is in their [ISPs] interest therefore to assure that customers use as much bandwidth as possible by minimizing loss and latency through effective traffic engineering" - the more customers use, the more money they make, not based on uncapped solutions)
Why not to peer:
- Traffic asymmetry
- Investment asymmetry
One party bears more of the cost as a result of peering. In some cases ISPs will peer without settlement up to a certain traffic ratio and then on a usage basis beyond that on a per Mbps basis (traffic ratio-based paid peering model).
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So, even when peering seems as a great solution for decreasing costs and lower latencies from a consumer perspective - it is mostly a business decision for ISPs.

It should however be noted there are quite a few different peering options available:
- supplier-customer model (unilateral charging model, basically still the same as transit costs)
- Sender Keep All (no billing) [I assume this is the peering model that MWEB employs with their open-peering policy]
- Bilateral settlement (agree on price for exchanging traffic, measure the difference in the bi-directional flow of traffic, reimburse the operator suffering the net inflow)
- Multilateral settlement (basically the same as above, just involves using a public internet exchange (such as JINX/CINX) instead of creating a private peering location)
- discounted settlement (same as supplier-customer model, but discounted rates are employed with higher traffic volumes)
 
Pienaar explained that they need to charge for transit as the bandwidth usage fees associated with hosting a website on the MTN network doesn't cover the costs incurred when users access that site.
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WHAT TRANSIT? MWeb is asking for peering, not transit. Message to MTN: transporting packets in your own network is your own cost. And if the host on MTN does not pay for usage of the entire MTN network, what are they paying for? For the 50m ethernet cable from the server to the nearest router?
 
Funny thing about MTN's coverage is that no matter how low coverage I have I still get over 1MB/s on the speed-test. But still 3G coverage is a pain in terms of MTN,I had problems before. I see its abit better. The more to have 900MHz needs to be speeded up lol. All in all this company hasnt changed anything in terms of data prices. I see the Sunday Times advert "R49 for 75MB" but with 8.ta add R1 and you getting 100MB...mtn's solution to vodacom added extra mb to their data bundles...an out-of-bundle rate,thou I never saw this. Brought a 10mb and got NOT but R2 out-of-bundle
 
Volumes will change the economics of mobile broadband networks
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Talk is cheap(*). Drop your prices & the increase in volume will follow, or are you also willing be accused of not 'acting in the spirit of the internet'?

* - actually not so cheap if you're dependent on any SA mobile operator.
 
Pienaar explained that they need to charge for transit as the bandwidth usage fees associated with hosting a website on the MTN network doesn't cover the costs incurred when users access that site.
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What F***CKING costs are incured when accessing a site??? Stop counting your bits and bytes you greedy prick!
 
That all comes over as extreme arrogance, MTN. But that attitude will soon solve any capacity constraints you may be experiencing as businesses and consumers start to avoid you like the plague.
 
Pienaar explained that they need to charge for transit as the bandwidth usage fees associated with hosting a website on the MTN network doesn't cover the costs incurred when users access that site.
Click to expand...

Can someone explain this to me please, cos it dont get it.
 
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