More competition in ADSL wholesale and retail space

Unshaped

VerizonBusiness’ ADSL offering is totally unshaped with no limits on any protocol, allowing you to take full advantage of your high-performance always-on connection.
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Why wouldnt it be - isnt it the law?
 
Yes it's supposed to be the law, but like with many laws here there is always the loopholes. The law only says that an ADSL access account offering to the public must be unshaped. Unfortunately the light weight regulation does not forbid shaped accounts, and therefore they are getting away with offering unshaped accounts at higher premiums, and shaped accounts at lower premiums. The are therefore following the law by making unshaped accounts available to the public. Again some pricing guidelines / regulation might have had a more benifficial effect for the SA comsumer, but as we all know by now, ICASA is not here to protect the SA consumer. Their only responsibility towards protection seems to be geared and pointed towards Telkom... In my opinion anyways, and in my world, my opinion counts a truck load ;)
 
MFour said:
Yes it's supposed to be the law, but like with many laws here there is always the loopholes. The law only says that an ADSL access account offering to the public must be unshaped. Unfortunately the light weight regulation does not forbid shaped accounts, and therefore they are getting away with offering unshaped accounts at higher premiums, and shaped accounts at lower premiums. The are therefore following the law by making unshaped accounts available to the public. Again some pricing guidelines / regulation might have had a more benifficial effect for the SA comsumer, but as we all know by now, ICASA is not here to protect the SA consumer. Their only responsibility towards protection seems to be geared and pointed towards Telkom... In my opinion anyways, and in my world, my opinion counts a truck load ;)
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That's according to telkom - the actual regulations are to be interpreted and enforced by ICASA. My question is why they havent done so yet. Telkom has to abide by any rulings even if they plan to take the issue to court.

Obviously its a rhetorical qn as we all know they're incompetent. ;)
 
lol too true on the incompetence, but now remember according to Telkom "they" do not cap and shape ADSL accounts, it's the resellers/ISP that do. They have absolutley no guilt in the matter. The ISP's on the other hand wait for Telkom to give them guidelines as to how they can make this works, but nothing. So around and around we go...
 
I have a question, just so that I can have a better understanding of this:

What difference, as far as COST to the seller is concerned, does a shaped or unshaped account make to the seller? (I’m referring to the seller that determines the price, not the guys that are forced to carry that cost)
Because as far as I see it, whether I use 3 gig of online gaming, p2p or simple email even, it’s 3gigs of data going back and forth either way. I might be ignorant here but it seems to me it’s like a fuel station telling me they are going to charge me more for my petrol if I use it for a 4x4 trip rather than town driving. Am I wrong? Please explain!
 
HosstheBoss said:
I have a question, just so that I can have a better understanding of this:

What difference, as far as COST to the seller is concerned, does a shaped or unshaped account make to the seller? (I’m referring to the seller that determines the price, not the guys that are forced to carry that cost)
Because as far as I see it, whether I use 3 gig of online gaming, p2p or simple email even, it’s 3gigs of data going back and forth either way. I might be ignorant here but it seems to me it’s like a fuel station telling me they are going to charge me more for my petrol if I use it for a 4x4 trip rather than town driving. Am I wrong? Please explain!
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Unshaped ADSL is more like Unleaded petrol, whereas Shaped ADSL is more like a LEAD weight added into Unshaped ADSL to slow it down and make it very difficult and expensive to do latency sensitive stuff, for example VoIP...

Shaped ADSL is not a naturally occuring product, first the alchemists at Telkodemonopolies' SAIX division take Unshaped ADSL and add lots of high & unstable latency to form Shaped ADSL...
 
There are a number of reasons for this. Amongst them:

1) Unshaped accounts can be used (more effectively) for things like p2p file sharing. Basically you can get higher throughput (effective bandwidth) by using torrents over an unshaped rather than a shaped account. now remember that all bandwidth is shared (standard practice). Telkom will allocate X number of ADSL accounts to each meg of available bandwidth. The less bandwidth those people use, the bigger X can be. So by shaping the bandwidth, Telkom effectivly reduces the bandwidth being used by each user meaning they can sell more connections per available meg. (Bigger profit per rand invested).

2) Shaping prioritises web ad e-mail at the expense of all other ports / protocols. This means that business applications that use other ports / protocols are hampered. This makes (relatively) cheap ADSL much less attractive to business customers who are being encouraged (forced) to pay for far more expensive unshaped accounts or ridiculously expesive diginet accounts.

3) Gamers need unshaped. Means gamers need to pay more. Means Telkom makes more profit.

4) VOIP - Needs unshaped to be effective. Makes it less cost attractive to potential users thus protecting Telkoms way overpriced voice products.

Basically Telkom is offering ADSL, but in such a way as to cripple it extensively in order to protect their investment in older technologies, and to prevent new competing technologies being effective. So you get ADSL that doesn't do what ADSL is designed for. Maybe they should rebrand it AfriDSL.
 
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Please can somebody compare the diff pings on all the networks (eg. Telkom Shaped & Unshaped, IS and Verizon Unshaped)

I'd really link to know what is the ping diff. I mean, is it REALLY worth the extra money to buy a Verizon Unshaped account? (For gaming that is)
 
ic said:
Unshaped ADSL is more like Unleaded petrol, whereas Shaped ADSL is more like a LEAD weight added into Unshaped ADSL to slow it down and make it very difficult and expensive to do latency sensitive stuff, for example VoIP...
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lol - I'm sorry but that is my nomination for the worst car analogy of the year award. :p

If we have to use car/petrol analogies unshaped would be more akin to buying a higher octane, better performance petrol.

Lets not forget - telkom was told to get rid of shaped accounts - thats the spirit of the regulation. We need to drag this issue before ICASA's complaints dept.
 
OOHH, so they're greedy pigs then! (RPM please design a greedy pig smiley) Thanks GougedEye

Yeah, bwana, I'm afraid of using analogies cause I know how these bum examples can get away from a person :) but I thought IC wasn't too bad there!
 
And this article was written by MyADSL?
I'm refering to:

>>>Axxess’s unshaped SAIX accounts are priced at R 99.00 for a 1 GB service and R 299.00 for a 3 GB offering. WebAfrica is priced slightly higher at R125.00 for 1 GB and R499.00 for 3 GB.<<<

Slightly higher = 26% and 67% more expensive.

Telkom has educated you well !!!
 
Please excuse my ignorance if I'm wrong but if Verizon have their own SAT3 and SAFE access then why are they so darn expensive?!

Why don't they make the bandwidth cheap enough that the ISPs can sell 10GB unshapped accounts to us for R300 per month and watch the mass exodus of customers from SAIX and IS to their offerings?
Sounds like they're pulling another Telkom on us. :mad:
 
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Paul_S said:
Please excuse my ignorance if I'm wrong but if Verizon have their own SAT3 and SAFE access then why are they so darn expensive?!

Why don't they make the bandwidth cheap enough that the ISPs can sell 10GB unshapped accounts to us for R300 per month and watch the mass exodus of customers from SAIX and IS to their offerings?
Sounds like they're pulling another Telkom on us. :mad:
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Because Verizon can charge what they want, thanks to ICASA, and they are in business just like Telkom.

You think that SNOT won't do thesame.......lol! :sick:
 
I'm glad to see Verizon is starting to do away with the disease called "shaped accounts". You are alreay limited to a cap, so there is no reason for them to determine what you can do with your measly 3GB per month. Once more competition arrives the price for wholesale bandwidth would also start to decrease.

There is a faint light in the end of the tunnel...
 
bwana v.19 said:
lol - I'm sorry but that is my nomination for the worst car analogy of the year award. :p

If we have to use car/petrol analogies unshaped would be more akin to buying a higher octane, better performance petrol.

Lets not forget - telkom was told to get rid of shaped accounts - thats the spirit of the regulation. We need to drag this issue before ICASA's complaints dept.
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That was a pre-coffee analogy :D.

What I was trying to say, is that Unshaped ADSL is like the better performance petrol you mentioned, and that Shaped ADSL is [very simplisticly] Unshaped ADSL that Telkodemonopolies has mixed with toxic & radioactive waste to make it perform really badly and screwup ADSL throughput & make ADSL cough & splutter before spitting out a thick & toxic sludge, but Shaped ADSL does not occur naturally in the way that crude oil does - Unshaped ADSL is more like a naturally occuring high performance petrol that needs no processing to actually use it...
martin said:
As far as I know Telkom is the only company with SAT3 landing rights in SA??
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Yes, Telkodemonopolies is still the only entity in SA that has SAT-3 landing rights [to the landing station at Melkbosstrand] - thanks to guavamint that only knows how to put our money where its mouth is...
 
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