The Cap Comes 'within two weeks'

[LoneGunman]

I was speaking to one of the IBurst Orcs (re brief period of signal dropping away and up to 60% packet loss showing) and it was mentioned that there could be fiddling on the network because 'the cap was going to be put in place within two weeks'..

Oh yes I thought?

Naturally I innocently asked why.. The Orc stated that the traffic needs to be controlled, as some people are 'abusing' the service and its making slower speeds for others..
(Of course the reality is that the happy using of IBurst b/w is cutting into their projected profits - and has little or nothing to do with impacting on others speeds, at least not at this point.)

I played dumb and asked what happens when the cap is reached? The Orc brightly went on to pitch the 'buying extra bandwidth' idea, and when I didn't swallow this rubbish or say how wonderful this 'buy an extra package' idea was - and instead asked 'and if you don't buy extra b/w?
'
'Well, er..then your service will be throttled'. came the reply, with just a little hint of disappointment coming through in the Orc's tone.

It really sounds like IBurst are hoping that consumers will be dumb enough to spend additional money on extra bandwidth 'packages', thus providing a nice source of additional profit for IBurst.

So the next few weeks will be potentially interesting on a number of fronts, among which:

a) if the cap is put in place, what the service will actually be like after its 'throttled'.
and then something I'm curious about -

b) what if the speeds of the throttled service are faster than what sentech, for instance, are offering as a normal 'service'.

If they are faster, then there's little inducement for customers to bother buying extra b/w - as they're still getting a speedier service than Sentech.

On the other hand, if IBurst are dumb enough to throttle things to the point of it being unuseable - then because they're doing a month to month contract, they'll rapidly lose all their customers..

Then there's the REALLY interesting thing of how IBurst will behave, if the majority of their customers don't buy additional bandwidth and just continue downloading 24/7, regardless of the slowness.

Methinks IBurst are about to live in interesting and hair-tearingly frustrated times.

Seeing as they only have 29 days grace at every step, before they potentially lose all their (month to month) customers. Now that's a fun minefield for them to be walking through.

[kaspaas]

I did a quick costing:

For business I need 6GB per month.

Telkom ADSL costs me about R1300 pm for this. Upgrading to 9GB will be another R250.

iBurst could provide me with the same kind of service (with no real track record) at a little bit cheaper (2 x R600) but I expect a lot more for upgrading to 9GB.

They require me to either buy a modem upfront (bit more than 2 months worth of ADSL) or sign a long term contract.

So I'll stay with Telkom for now. At least I know the devil I'm dealing with.

[Raithlin]

Bring it on. As per LG's comment, I'm dying to see what's going to happen. Methinks it won't be what WBS is expecting though...

[ic]

LG, thanks very good to know & very good insight into the throttling dynamics (but you have also been through this with MW so it's not thumb-sucking).

I am still wondering what the official W-BS-M line is WRT contention on the throttled iBurst- will everyone get 64K uncontended, or is it going to be effectively much less with contention?

[LoneGunman]

As for how they're going to do the throttling, no idea.
Soon as I - or I guess - any of the other IBurst users here) experience the cap/throttle in action, I figure we'll all hear about it.
Then the real fun will begin

[hArTh]

/me grabs popcorn ... watches and waits for the drama to unfold

If iBurst keep capped speeds to a REAL 64kbps rather than a Telkom "64 kbps" they will gain many many more customers than they have now.

But not as many as they could have had with uncapped local access and sensible shaping.

At least iBurst don't just summarily charge you for going over the cap ala 3G ... imagine leaving an ISO download going by mistake: 600 x R10/mb =

[stepper]

Bring it on. As per LG's comment, I'm dying to see what's going to happen. Methinks it won't be what WBS is expecting though...

Co-sign

[ic]

Soon as I - or I guess - any of the other IBurst users here) experience the cap/throttle in action, I figure we'll all hear about it.
Then the real fun will begin

Agreed, but as of 2004-12-23, I think we have been in labour & experiencing the cap entering our world through the Burst-i canal

[rpm]

Hi LG

Thanks a bunch for this info. This information is particularly important as it will influence the broadband ratings we are busy calculating. If the decide to enforce a cap it will impact on both their price and service delivery…for now I will accept that it will not be enforced until our next testing session, but if anybody with iBurst is capped please let me know.

Regards,

RPM

[bb_matt]

This is just so Sentech.

Bottom line guys, we are mainly "power users" - our only line of defense is to inform, to tell every non-technical orientated person in our sphere of influence how to obtain and use the internet.

iBurst have wholly different intentions to what you or I think - they want market penetration of the "email and solitaire" generation, the SOHO business, of which there are 10's of thousands and other "light" users of the internet.

Our mission is to detract those potential users by indicating the reality behind what they are buying. On a cost per usage basis, your average email/light surfing pundit will be being fleeced so badly, it's really rather disgusting.

I have friends who use less bandwidth in a month than I use in a few hours - and I don't even use that much.

So, as a geek, you owe it to yourself to turn n00bs away from these wireless upstarts and indeed ADSL - just tell um to stick with thier dial-up accounts and thereby deprive these greedy companies of the revenue they want.

Simple as that - there's a geek for every 20 non-geeks, make it your mission to inform the non-geeks of thier rights and when they are being fleeced.

[ic]

Hardly any of my friends have potentially-always-on - they are the typical 56K dialup types that only email. I have pointed out that unless they start a business that requires potentially-always-on for email they should just wait until mid-end-2005, and I have said go for a WiFi setup with neighbours so they can share a broadband connection.

[alchamy]

I really hope that Iburst will have other packages available before implementing caps.

I would need about 7-9 gigs of bandwidth a month for regular browsing etc. So if they were to implement caps without the ability to upgrade the package that would be a shame.

I dont like the concept of purchasing bandwidth when you need it, Im sure the pricing will be outrageous to. I would prefer fixed monthly costs.

Also are we forgetting that local will be capped aswell, if the 64k is highly contended then WBS will close their doors before they even launch.

[beerygaz]

<rant>

I'm of the opinion, like many, that it will be a good year before the BB market in SA settles a little and offerings that suit our (Power Users/Geeks) need start to appear on the market. What is positive is that there are a number of players (Sen, WBS, Tel, Voda, etc) all offering some sort of alternative to dial-up. What is unfortunate, is that some of us have to go through the pain to uncover the warts and caveats of these offerings.

I applaud the early adopters amongst us because without them we'd only have marketing bumf to rely on.

By offering a month-to-month service too, it shows WBS has some confidence in its technology (or they just didn't think things through that well).

Let's hope the majority of our fears are unfounded and that there is at least some sensible compromise that comes into effect when the capping starts. Let's face it, it's not a technology issue, you can shape/cap/throttle traffic in any number of ways. It's far more of a commercial and administrative issue.

</rant>

[slimothy]

When capping starts it will obviously be the end of something beautiful, BUT if they plan to start capping half way through the month, will I be notified?? I'd hate to think I wake up one morning thinking "yeah SuSe 9 looks like something I want to try" only to find out by 3PM I am crawling at dial up speeds for the rest of the month.

That might have seemed OK when I was on dial up (I would just be happy the connection is 24/7) but after getting used to 100 - 125KB speeds it would be a major kick in the balls.

Who do I have to sleep with to get proper broadband around here? The idea of a 1mbit connection with a 3GB cap just sounds retarded to me.

Quick math: 8.5 (hours) * 100 (KBps) = CAP