24/7 downloading

[milomak]

6 months ago we were paying, on some packages, between R19 adn R29 per GB?

An MWeb 1GB booster cost R99. 89c is two orders of magnitude lower than R99. That's 100 times cheaper. So a R30 burger and fries in your world costs 30c and a new R150,000 car costs R1500. Nice

no is discouting the benefit we are getting form these packages.

we are disputing the manner in which they are advertised. there is a clear and distinct difference.

 

[Fader4]

6 months ago we were paying, on some packages, between R19 adn R29 per GB?

An MWeb 1GB booster cost R99. 89c is two orders of magnitude lower than R99. That's 100 times cheaper. So a R30 burger and fries in your world costs 30c and a new R150,000 car costs R1500. Nice

so 6 months ago we were being ripped off that much more, whats your point?

 

[SabreWolfy]

you are being obtuse. an ipod is the same anywhere in the world. would it still be an ipod if its physical attributes were limited in south africa? sure the poor amongst us wouldn't care. but that still doesn't make the point any less valid with respect to the technical specifications to those that can afford it. all you are really saying is we should accept products that are branded the same as international ones (even though inferior) and be happy we have them. god bless you for you defeatist attitude.



i do believe mweb advertise the packages as unlimited. tanya35 even linked to a Game advert showing the same. I guess you will now redefine unlimited.

An iPod does not rely on external infrastracture from international cables to local landing points to internal IPCs to DSLAMs to copper cables to routers. You simply cannot compare the performance of an iPod and the performance of an uncapped ADSL service.

Even if they do advertize it as "unlimited", in small letters at the bottom of the advert I am sure will appear "Terms and Conditions Apply" or something similar. What is so difficult to understand about T&C. They appear everywhere, from medical aids to car rental to satellite television to cell 'phone contracts. It's just that in THIS case they are being called into play in a way which some users consider unfair.

 

[SabreWolfy]

no is discouting the benefit we are getting form these packages.

we are disputing the manner in which they are advertised. there is a clear and distinct difference.

Yeah of course R99 per GB now is ridiculous. However, it highlights the dramatic reduction in cost of 89c per GB. If you can get 600GB per month within the T&C on a shaped product on any ISP, well and good.

 

[milomak]

An iPod does not reply on external infrastracture from international cables to local landing points to internal IPCs to DSLAMs to copper cables to routers. You simply cannot compare the performance of an iPod and the performance of an uncapped ADSL service.

you can compare similar services that use the same terms to define the product. so instead of using ipod, you will compare mp3 players for instance. or portable music players for a wide band. the fact is, your assertion that international products cannot be used is false; and only serves to put mweb in a positive light.

ii subscribed to mweb the day they brought out these packages. they worked well then. they do not now. the product is now a poor example of how uncapped should work when compared to best practices. if you are saying you are satisfied with the product being poor in terms of best practises, then i can argue with you no more. what you are satisfied with is what you are satisfied with. but you seem to miss the main point of the argument - these products are poor by international standards.

Even if they do advertize it as "unlimited", in small letters at the bottom of the advert I am sure will appear "Terms and Conditions Apply" or something similar. What is so difficult to understand about T&C. They appear everywhere, from medical aids to car rental to satellite television to cell 'phone contracts. It's just that in THIS case they are being called into play in a way which some users consider unfair.

unlimited was not in small letters in that advert by the way.

again T&Cs should not in any way take away from the message you put out in your advert. If you have unlimited in your ad, do you think the T&Cs should then state that in fact the product is not unlimited?

 

[milomak]

Yeah of course R99 per GB now is ridiculous. However, it highlights the dramatic reduction in cost of 89c per GB. If you can get 600GB per month within the T&C on a shaped product on any ISP, well and good.

you are fighting cost when the post was saying it is the manner of advertising that is the issue. NOT COST

 

[nakedpeanut]

I like how this turned in to an mweb based thread

But I too leave my downloads on 24/7.. I barely get 100KB/s most of the time!! Damn right I'll leave it on! If I want to download something why must I wait 3 weeks for it if it can be pulled down in 2 days?
And my usage averages 200GB's a month... Which is not unreasonable I think..

 

[milomak]

I like how this turned in to an mweb based thread

notice how i intentionally didn't mention an ISP in my OP

 

[milomak]

another thing - i realise that even internationally there are rules about shaping. but i am yet to see an international ISP that says NO 24/7 DOWNLOADING. that is my point when it comes to UNCAPPED ACCOUNTS

 

[SabreWolfy]

I specifically said in my first post in this thread that it would be interesting to see the T&C from other ISPs in relation to 24/7 downloading. Anyone is welcome to post the details. I'm certainly not going to go and find them myself It's not an "Mweb only" thread.

 

[milomak]

I specifically said in my first post in this thread that it would be interesting to see the T&C from other ISPs in relation to 24/7 downloading. Anyone is welcome to post the details. I'm certainly not going to go and find them myself It's not an "Mweb only" thread.

from anecdotal evidence (of US and UK ISPS), people who do terrabytes are not cut off. so it would seem they have far lax T&Cs

edit: i should concede that the post doesn't actually say that 24/7 downloading is allowed. But again my anecdotal evidence would point to the fact that the ISPs do not chase you out if you do. They just shape you within clearly specified rules and times.

 

[racer]

from anecdotal evidence (of US and UK ISPS), people who do terrabytes are not cut off. so it would seem they have far lax T&Cs

i'm sure this has been said already, but you can't really compare our ISP's with those in the UK and USA. Firstly there's a ton of undersea cables linking North America and Europe, most of which have already been paid for and written off. Bandwidth is cheap.

The current undersea cables landing in South African over the next 2 years are costing BILLIONS of Rands, and that cost has to be made up. Its not charities that are putting them into the water for us after all....

Everytime a cable lands, bandwidth is going to get cheaper though, and I'd rate that in 2-3 years time we'll have enough capacity and competition on international bandwidth, that maybe we can start comparing to US/UK services. But we're not quite there yet. At the moment, our ISP's are paying a lot of money for international bandwidth and IP connections, and they have to cost their products (and usage patterns) accordingly.

In the meantime, costs have come down considerably, and for what we were paying for 5GB a few months ago, we're now getting accounts that are uncapped. The only thing the ISP's are asking of us on these uncapped accounts, is that we respect other users, and not use them as dedicated leased lines downloading all day and night.

But no, this is not good enough for the jerks who now suddenly have a "need" to download 600GB every month? Excuse me? Hardly anyone NEEDS to download that amount of data, and if you seriously do, then you need to open your wallet and pay for it. These cheap consumer accounts were never intended for bandwidth gluttons doing that amount of transfer, and this was made clear from the start. Endless debates about the dictionary definition of "uncapped" or whether uncapped means unlimited, or whether the ISP's are gulty of false advertising are all futile and a sad attempt by a few greedy people to take advantage of what is already a much better deal than we've ever had before.

Give it up - Mweb (and others) have spoken, they've told you what you can expect, and no amount of frothing at the mouth about how you're being cheated" is gonna change that. These threads are all going around in total circles now.....

 

[racer]

all i ask is my 600gigs, i dont think thats unreasonable for the price i pay

you don't think that's unreasonable? you're having a laugh right?

 

[Valerion]

You cannot compare South Africa to the international players. Not due to the cables, but due to local infrastructure. And it's not fair to bash the ISP's for this. As long as Telkom charges several thousand rands per month for a 4Mbps IPC connection to the ISP (which MWEB sells at R540), you won't see any reductions. They and the regulators are responsible.

 

[Shayd]

no one is disputing the value of the accounts compared to what we have been used to. but i think it stands to reason that when based against international standards, these uncapped offerings we are getting fall short of the mark.

so while technically you never get cut off; people from countries with uncapped would laugh at the T&Cs.

Sure but compare the price and quality of a good South African T-Bone to one anywhere else in the world and you will be happy you are still here.

 

[PeterCH]

Looking at how the new uncapped packages are being marketed; shouldn't a package that is labeled as uncapped be able to handle 24/7?

Are there any cases of international ISPs specifically excluding 24/7 downloading for an uncapped product?

You're already severely limited by the line speed. The most you could do on a 4Mbit line is 1000GB per month. Now add to the fact that many international servers can be slow, can time out, the limit is less.

Caps should be set by line speed only especially as we pay for line speed. Uncapped accounts go by line speed and Telkom charges line rental by line speed.

Sadly SA is still not ready for full blown European/American/South American/Asian 24/7 downloading. We have expensive IPC costs and almost as expensive int'l bandwidth.

 

[PeterCH]

Find the thread where users report how much they've downloaded per month. How many grannies are pulling hundreds of GB per month?

Foreign language TV stations offer 30 min TV show episodes in WMV format (with DRM) at 350MB per episode. So yes, many grannies could be downloading Brazilian soap operas (tele novellas) and just 3 episodes (these series go into 300+ eps) would be 1GB. This is legal (not piracy).

 

[whatwhat]

This is Africa. Be glad we have electricity.

 

[PeterCH]

i'm sure this has been said already, but you can't really compare our ISP's with those in the UK and USA. Firstly there's a ton of undersea cables linking North America and Europe, most of which have already been paid for and written off. Bandwidth is cheap.

Yes you can because unlike 20Mbit speeds and now 100Mbit speeds in Europe and much larger populations i.e. more users using 20Mbit to 100Mbit connections, SA has a max DSL speed of 4Mbit/sec. So we are already 25% of those foreigners - isn't that a good enough handicap for you?

The current undersea cables landing in South African over the next 2 years are costing BILLIONS of Rands, and that cost has to be made up. Its not charities that are putting them into the water for us after all....

You're doing it wrong. This is not our problem. The consumer will accept a certain price only.

Everytime a cable lands, bandwidth is going to get cheaper though, and I'd rate that in 2-3 years time we'll have enough capacity and competition on international bandwidth, that maybe we can start comparing to US/UK services. But we're not quite there yet. At the moment, our ISP's are paying a lot of money for international bandwidth and IP connections, and they have to cost their products (and usage patterns) accordingly.

I don't think we'll ever be there. What we can do is let LINE SPEED be the limiting factor the way it is in Asia/Europe/most of America and not LINE SPEED and additional FUPs.

In the meantime, costs have come down considerably, and for what we were paying for 5GB a few months ago, we're now getting accounts that are uncapped. The only thing the ISP's are asking of us on these uncapped accounts, is that we respect other users, and not use them as dedicated leased lines downloading all day and night.

It would be great if this was the only thing they were asking.

But no, this is not good enough for the jerks who now suddenly have a "need" to download 600GB every month? Excuse me? Hardly anyone NEEDS to download that amount of data, and if you seriously do, then you need to open your wallet and pay for it. These cheap consumer accounts were never intended for bandwidth gluttons doing that amount of transfer, and this was made clear from the start. Endless debates about the dictionary definition of "uncapped" or whether uncapped means unlimited, or whether the ISP's are gulty of false advertising are all futile and a sad attempt by a few greedy people to take advantage of what is already a much better deal than we've ever had before.

Why do you have to refer to people as 'jerks'? Do you enjoy throwing anonymous insults at people? Also why do you work in extremes? Why is it either 20GB/m or 600GB/m for you? Those 'jerks' who push the limit and agitate are the ones who are driving the price down and pushing usage up. This forum and sites like HellKom were created because people were unhappy with lowly 1-2GB/m limits. Surely if a dial up user uses 500MB/mo then a DSL line with 1-2GB is good enough? Why even get more? Charge R1000 pm for 1-2GB and let that continue. If you want 5GB pay R2000 and if you want a 100GB pay R100,000 pm.

Give it up - Mweb (and others) have spoken, they've told you what you can expect, and no amount of frothing at the mouth about how you're being cheated" is gonna change that. These threads are all going around in total circles now.....

Why should anyone give it up? Perhaps this forum is NOT FOR YOU and you should hang out on the ISPs forums and kiss a-- there? Honestly I just don't understand your attitude.

 

[SSung]

When used within the T&C it is uncapped. This is not the same as unlimited or unrestricted.

It has already been pointed out to you that the service is still advertised as unlimited: