3 GB is just not enough

[Napalm]

I concur, 3gig cap is really useless in today's age, the Internet world's requirements has increased so much it aint even funny. But Telkom's cap and SA is still stuck in 2002.

With all kinds of Sites now using high resolution Java for menu's , graphs and pictures or mini-video clips. The sites really chow's your cap.

Not even talking of websites like Youtube where a 3min video can use 25mb easily.

Then there are apps out like Skype and other Voice-over IP or even Video over IP. That can consume anything from 6mb-8mb per minute (or 360mb per hour)


Then there is the Updating, all your app needs updating. Java Updates, Windows Updates, Anti-Virus Updates.

Then we get to gaming, that is an entire ballgame in its own. Most new games require patches and updates or some even run online and download maps/area's as you play. (Very high usage, we're talking possibly gigs)


My 2Cents !

 

[Tanarri]

What is the point of the 40 MB cap? Maybe they meant 40 GB. Or if it is really 40 MB then it is probably just a puppet amount to start the contract, whereafter more cap can be purchased.

I have never heard of this though, it's probably just a mistake.

Like ic said. The truth. When this thing was announced, the discussion of the article on MyBB was quite hilarious.

 

[LazyLion]

What is the point of the 40 MB cap? Maybe they meant 40 GB. Or if it is really 40 MB then it is probably just a puppet amount to start the contract, whereafter more cap can be purchased.

I have never heard of this though, it's probably just a mistake.

The ultra small caps from the Mobile Providers are designed for people to check e-mail a few times a month on their cellphone. They are not designed for heavy use. I have no idea why iburst would offers such a product.

Playing Second Life or other such reality games (or WoW as others have mentioned) uses a lot of bandwidth. Sometimes 1 to 2 Gb for a couple of hours of play. Just more proof that these caps are extremely restrictive.

 

[djrwb]

getting by (just) on around 7 gigs a month. But fairly strict on myself. Ideally need between 10 (minimum) and 50 Gb (preferably) to not have to watch my usage strictly And R70.00 (or thereabouts) a gig top up is over the top

 

[Sackboy]

The best way to manage cap is to manage SPEED, IMHO.

 

[inferno]

10gigs would be a realistic goal. We use around 10gigs a month while being conservative. Using only 3gigs in a house with four daily internet users is just impossible.

 

[angotull]

10gigs would be a realistic goal. We use around 10gigs a month while being conservative. Using only 3gigs in a house with four daily internet users is just impossible.

Try 2 users with Windows and Linux updates - We CAP every month, without fail.

 

[smokey]

South Africans like to take advantage of rare offerings like this and milk them dry so the majority has to suffer because of some pretty stingy high-end users (I'm talking about the guys who do in EXCESS of 100GB a month consistently). That's why mweb's also planning on killing their uncapped local option -- people are buying 1GB mweb accounts and doing hundreds of gigs of local on them. That's clear abuse :/ I'm not saying that kind of usage shouldn't be the norm, i'm just pointing out where the problem seems to be and why they persist imposing these kind of limits - it just isnt economically viable for the ISP yet. Let's hope the promises of SEACOM etc to change that become reality soon.

Well mate, if you can't figure out how to use 100Gb in this day and age then please. Be happy with the 3Gb limit we have on our accounts at present. With Youtube, Online radio, Skype/VC, Social Networking, Trailers and a whole lot more I could put here - it really is only fair to assume that 100Gb a month is reasonable to not have to worry. Anything less and you would be back to checking your balance... and that is not how the modern version of what we call the internet is envisioned. All ways on info, available anywhere - anytime. Devices/software are being made with this in mind. That type of thinking is so narrow-minded, even Puritans would get irritated with you.

Ditto to what ic said about smaller companies - those are another thing altogether though - this is mainly concerned with individuals if I'm not mistaken.

 

[Tweak]

That be me. My mom is a facebook whore

My mom's friends are all just now discovering Facebook as well.. Its not going to be long until I have to advise her on buying a laptop and what is the most affordable way to connect to the interwebs.

Facebooks is making alot of ground amoungst the older generation who arent usually as eager to embrace new technologies.

 

[sapromo]

Hello to all!

I have just returned to South Africa from the UK for 2 weeks and had to upgrade a 512mb line to 4mb and also purchase extra 3gb usage ontop of 2gb usage. Although it was relatively straight forward to do I would however like to stress what I did not find acceptable.

a) In the UK, same as Europe, America, AUS etc, well most of the world... it is not very likely that you have a cap on your usage unless you take a super discounted package.
b) The 4mb I have as speed, it SUX to say the least, it's a joke... I have THINKBROADBAND http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ tool installed, as I use it in the UK... and BY FAR it does not come close to 4mb.
c) My lines in London
1 x 24 MB BE Internet line
1 x 8MB BT Internet line
DUAL BROADBAND ROUTER/SWITCH that load balances the two.
As I am far from the exchange it reduces my speed but out of 32mb broadband in total I still get 20 mb's usage, and YES it is SUPER FAST. When I return in a few days I am starting my order for 50mb Virgin internet line ... the UK's new standard for Broadband = 50m broadband so getting on that bandwagon.
d) COST... holy MAD COW it is expensive in SA, we have 1 x phone line rental and a ONE BILL, ONE CHARGE for internet... so you only pay one fee... eg... going rate about £20 for 8mb line = about R 260... no extra charges as the adsl "line" is in anyway part of your phone line and the exchange.

There should be a huge motion... something BIG done to change the way broadband is charged in South Africa, and as I have seen in the UK, action from the consumer is BEST!!!

So my question... what is the fastest internet in South Africa? Is it truly only 4mb considering going to 8mb is a software change in the exchanges.

OH.. and forgot to metion, my usage is about 270gb per month in the UK.. my lines UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH.. the only restrictions they have is if you use it as a web server or mail server. BIG NO NO... but otherwise go crazy ... I love it as you get more from the internet than you ever imagined

 

[LazyLion]

be careful sapromo, some people here will accuse you of abusing your connection and making it worse for the rest of us. How can you hope for any kind of "consumer action" in South African when you have idiots accusing people of using too much on an unlimited package???

 

[killadoob]

Well i do not know that telkom can actually offer 8 meg lines to many people as the copper has problems for alot of people due to distance.

I do not believe the network would suffer with excessive downloading, i have no problems though i have a 4meg line and have just gone past 110gb on the giganews uncapped network for 1k in total so i am not to worried but we have to find methods and find flaws to extract such cheap int bandwidth, although i do not think paying 460 bucks for 120 odd gb of into is to bad considering this is SA.

We have no competition in regards to telkom as neotel is a joke. The cellphone operators all fix their pricing which is also a bad thing. Basically we also do not have nearly as many bandwidth users in this country due the price, most cannot afford computers let alone internet which is holding us back due to the high pricing .

Wow your usage on such a fast line is very good, users in this country where doing that on 4 meg lines .

 

[Netguy]

Could manage with 3-10Gb, but tossing careful browsing to the wind would require significantly more, probable 30-100Gb, when considering all the videos and other bandwidth chewers.

 

[Johand]

Time for Telkom to just append a zero to all their current accounts.

1GB International becomes 10GB international
2GB International becomes 20GB international
3GB Interntaional becomes 30GB international
10GB Local becomes 100GB Local
20GB Local becomes 200GB Local
30GB Local becomes 300GB Local

Otherwise restructure so its something like Do1 = 5GB, Do2 = 20GB, Do3 = 50GB

That sounds fair to me...
Obviously that applies to IS, iBurst, and DSL resellers as well. The price of 3G/HSDPA bandwidth HAS to come down as well. R2 per MEGABYTE? WHAT are these guys smoking!?!?!?!?!

Well - R2/MB out-of-bundle is not that bad. Everybody always mention the flat-rate options in Europe - but out-of-bundle charges can actually be pretty hefty. It is not uncommon to pay €0.24 /MB out-of-bundle in Europe - which works out to a bit more than R2/MB. In fact in terms of mobile data you have to applaud the mobile networks for putting together some pretty competitive packages considering the fact that they have to buy most of their back-haul and international bandwidth from Telkom.

Telkom should really only do one thing - make their IPConnect product a lot cheaper. This will pretty much mean the same thing as local loop unbundling, and then ISP's should be able to buy cheap international bandwidth on SEACOM.

 

[PeterCH]

OH.. and forgot to metion, my usage is about 270gb per month in the UK.. my lines UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH.. the only restrictions they have is if you use it as a web server or mail server. BIG NO NO... but otherwise go crazy ... I love it as you get more from the internet than you ever imagined

270GB of movies, porn, warez, music? or perhaps you develop software or upload video or high resolution videos for a living.

Now, I'm not accusing you of anything, but the trend in Europe is to clamp down on that sort of downloading so enjoy it while it lasts because that ride won't last forever.

 

[PeterCH]

Well - R2/MB out-of-bundle is not that bad. Everybody always mention the flat-rate options in Europe - but out-of-bundle charges can actually be pretty hefty. It is not uncommon to pay €0.24 /MB out-of-bundle in Europe - which works out to a bit more than R2/MB. In fact in terms of mobile data you have to applaud the mobile networks for putting together some pretty competitive packages considering the fact that they have to buy most of their back-haul and international bandwidth from Telkom.

Telkom should really only do one thing - make their IPConnect product a lot cheaper. This will pretty much mean the same thing as local loop unbundling, and then ISP's should be able to buy cheap international bandwidth on SEACOM.

For R300 odd you can get 10GB mobile 3.5G in Europe with throttling after cap is reached. That's on a 2y contract, modem is included.

 

[Roman4604]

There should be a huge motion... something BIG done to change the way broadband is charged in South Africa, and as I have seen in the UK

Unfortunately BIG is probably SA's greatest barrier. Ignoring the submarine cable overheads, we will never reach the economies of scale seen in the UK. 12mil ADSL lines vs. our 0.5mil+, heck we barely have over 5mil individual tax payers in the country.

I'm not saying it shouldn't be a lot better than it is, but expecting us to have parity with the UK would mean ignoring some very basic economic principals. There just isn't enough (broadband) revenue being generated in the industry to fund the widespread infrastructure deployment required to enable (virtually) unlimited capacity for all, at a budget price (and the government certainly ain't going to fund it, they have things like basic food grants on their agenda).

 

[PeterCH]

Unfortunately BIG is probably SA's greatest barrier. Ignoring the submarine cable overheads, we will never reach the economies of scale seen in the UK. 12mil ADSL lines vs. our 0.5mil+, heck we barely have over 5mil individual tax payers in the country.

I'm not saying it shouldn't be a lot better than it is, but expecting us to have parity with the UK would mean ignoring some very basic economic principals. There just isn't enough (broadband) revenue being generated in the industry to fund the widespread infrastructure deployment required to enable (virtually) unlimited capacity for all, at a budget price (and the government certainly ain't going to fund it, they have things like basic food grants on their agenda).

That's true. We'll never reach UK's level of speed and penetration and UK will never reach the level of South Korea/Japan where they're now introducing 1Gbps speeds.

 

[wpswart006]

Wonder how Telscum would feel if their profit is "Capped" @ R3 000 a year.

 

[Weasley]

Wonder how Telscum would feel if their profit is "Capped" @ R3 000 a year.

LOL