3GB Cap

[The_Right_Honourable_Brit]

I would just like to say that the 3gb cap is fine for HOME use.I give a few reasons to back it up.

1. There are some sad people out there you who don't anything except download music, mods & demos. They hog other peoples bandwidth, who rightfully haven't been hoging the internet the whole day.

2. The biggest downloads are for mods & demos but, I admit who have two months to download Battlefield 1942 mods. I'm sure people can wait that long

3. Then that leaves Business ADSL for Telkom

 

[martin]

Just do a search through this forums and you'll find a lot of reasons for the 3GB not being sufficient. This has been argued to death.

 

[podo]

Dominic,

You'll find I am the only person here who agrees with you, but I'm glad to finally see one voice of reason.

In several weeks of browsing these forums, all I seem to find are endless complaints.

Yes, it's annoying to be capped, yes, we are paying more than our cousins in the over-developed world, yes, it is Telkom, but...

I would like to remind all of the participants in this endless wave of negativity that we should be thankfull for what we do have.

Two years ago, we didn't have ADSL, we couldn't buy it, we didn't have Sentech, and we couldn't buy two way sattillite internet access either.

If you wanted the same 512kbps maximum rate you can get from your ADSL line two years ago, you would have to pay almost R50 000 per month for a Diginet line and the bandwidth from an ISP (which would almost always be aggregated anyway)

As far as the cap goes, yes 3GB isn't all the bandwidth in the world, but I do agree, it is enough.

I share the connection with my neighbour, via an 802.11b link (sssssssshhhh, I'm sure it's not illegal, we don't cross a public road, it's only 1mW signal strengh, but Telkom and ICASA would probably frown on this), We have been using ADSL for a month now, and find that we rarely exceed 50MB per day. At 50MB per day, we still have a large chunk of our quota left at the end of the month.

On the last day of course, I allow my neighbour and my sister to install their P2P clients and go berzerk. They don't seem to mind waiting, besides, how much can you possibly want to download each day?

As to doing downloads like ISOs, Windows updates, virus scanner updates, etc, that doesn't seem to hurt us much.

Everyone here uses the line quite heavily for browsing, and I have fetchmail running constantly on our UNIX box to handle incoming mail, several hundred packets every 60 seconds.

We all browse the net, do our banking, my sister does her instant messaging stuff, my neighbour does his share trading stuff, I do my remote admin stuff, no problem.

Until two months ago, we were still stuck using a 33.6kbps analogue leased line. The line rental and the bandwidth cost was about twice as much as we are paying now for the full ADSL service, and that was cheap.

Furthermore, I would like to remind you all that we are living in Africa. That's not a statement to be taken lightly. If we were living in any other country in Africa, we would scarcely have internet access at all. 9600bps dial-up is a luxury in most African countries, and that is aggregated, because most POPs are connected together by 33600bps permanent circuit lines. ADSL and the other services we have here aren't even on the horizon in other African countries.

In fact, if you wanted fast internet access anywhere else in Africa, you'll be paying to get it over sattillite, at about four times the price you pay for your ADSL access.

So, stop bitching and try to be thankfull for a change.

Thanks Dominic, I thought I was the only person here who doesn't think everything is bad, all the time.

Will

Willie Viljoen
Web Developer

Adaptive Web Development

 

[reech]

I don't think that people here are being 'negative', more frustrated when they realise that there is the potential for proper adsl/broadband solutions in ZA, but we 're denied it due to crap legislation and telkom greed.

 

[martin]

I really try to be thankful towards a monopoly providing me with an inferior "best effort" service, treating me like a criminal and happily making a very handsome profit off my ADSL subscription, but sometimes I tend to forget how "lucky" I am.

 

[Myrrdin]

WARNING WARNING. Telkom spy in our midsts. []

PS. Windows update since I bought my XP cd comes to 300mb when I do a re-install of my machine. When my daily limit is 100mb as determined by the 3gb cap, it hurts baby, it hurts.

Of course I don't look busy.....I did it right the first time.

 

[kobie]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"> Furthermore, I would like to remind you all that we are living in Africa. That's not a statement to be taken lightly. If we were living in any other country in Africa, we would scarcely have internet access at all.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

but we are not the rest of africa...we are the one african country that has any real hope of developing so why not raise our benchmarks for communications success to something a little higher than a pair of bongo drums in the Congo.

 

[podo]

martin:

You'll find you probably get better throughput with the Congo bongo drummer than with most communications services in South Africa

What I am really asking people to do is be thankfull for what we have been allowed so far and look at the progress we _HAVE_ made in South Africa.

Myrrdin:

Telkom spy?

Perhaps you missed the part about me and my neighbour sharing the line with an 802.11b wireless connection.

If Telkom had their way, the entire existence of the 802.11b standard, or any wireless computer networking, for that matter, would have been denied by the South African press.

Wholesellers selling 802.11b and other wireless equipment would get wiped off the face of the earth by black helicopters firing MKonto-1 missiles, which are being exported by our weapons industry and were used by the Yanks during the recent Iraq field trip, but of course, do not exist...

Get my point?

Willie Viljoen
Web Developer

Adaptive Web Development

 

[Myrrdin]

Hi Podo.

When you put [] next to a comment is suppose to be taken as something light hearted and not too be taken too seriously.

As for having no sense of humour and the frantic defending, WARNING WARNING Telkom management in our midsts. [][]

Sorry, on a more serious note I think everyone here agrees that what we have is better than what we had, it is the frustration of knowing there is so much better that should be available.

Of course I don't look busy.....I did it right the first time.

 

[martin]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by podo</i>
<br />martin:

You'll find you probably get better throughput with the Congo bongo drummer than with most communications services in South Africa

What I am really asking people to do is be thankfull for what we have been allowed so far and look at the progress we _HAVE_ made in South Africa.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Podo, South Africa is probably the closest thing Africa has to a first world country, especially when it comes to our telecommunication infrastructure. We have pretty decent exchanges in terms of equipment and Telkom is a major partner in the SAT-3 cable. Good local and international connectivity. Now we can either sit back and "be thankful for what we have been allowed so far and look at the progress we _HAVE_ made" which is making really poor use of available infrastructure or we can try and force Telkom (the only company allowed to provide us this service) to start making improvements through our complaints. Some interpret this as negativity/pessimism, others as progress. I just feel South Africans have developed an increasing acceptance to bad service across all sectors. I want to see things change, so I'll make my displeasure known.

P.S. This is not a flame, just my point of view

 

[BTTB]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Now we can either sit back and "be thankful for what we have been allowed so far and look at the progress we _HAVE_ made" which is making really poor use of available infrastructure <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

And what always annoys me the most about this point is the fact that everyone with a telephone in SA spent several decades paying through our necks for this privilege, only to be snatched away from us by Telkom's listing. Now our public asset is open to market forces and has the interest of shareholders first on its agenda and then the public of SA who paid for Telkom second.

<b><hr noshade size="1"></b><font size="2"><font color="red"><b>You can take Telkom out of the Post Office but you can't take the Post Office out of Telkom.</b></font id="red"></font id="size2">

 

[rsachoc]

Well, I actually agree, 3gig is enough for most people. The one thing I disagree with is the cost of ADSL. At R900 per month for ISP and line rental, that is totally priced out of most peoples budget.

How can Africa expect to become world-class when only the rich can afford basic Internet conncetivity?

What I would like to see happening is the "3gig version of ADSL" to come down in price over the next year, and the current pricing structure remain, except with a high bandwidth limit, 7 or 8 gigs for example.

This is what they have done in the UK, you now get 1 and 2 gig ADSL packages (for 14.00 pounds, but thats another story) and full blown ADSL for about double that, less if you shop around.

What I envsion will be good for the SA consumer is when Telkom has to implement "local loop unbundling" which will allow anyone (however only the SNO at first) to "rent" an exchange from Telkom, and then charge us directly for our connection. This is when we can expect the Internet to become mainstream

Choc

 

[reech]

Those capped uk packages are aimed at very naive users - 90% of uk isps offer home dsl services at around £25 and <i>UNCAPPED</i>
I' m sick of the '*** en betaal' attitude - stand up for yourself.

 

[The_Right_Honourable_Brit]

Well thanks podo, I thought i was the only one supporting the cap! I thought are the feedback would be negative however I'm glad to see that most people in this forum are glad to have what they have. Remember most other African countries don't even have ADSL for heavens sake!

 

[onionpeel]

If we could choose from several flavours of ADLS offerings (albeit from Telkonopoly.com) then we probably would be having this conversation? []

 

[The_Right_Honourable_Brit]

I get what you're trying to say, but you seem to be asking a question wihtout posing a question(if that makes any sense

 

[Karnaugh]

So, if 3Gig is more than enough, then you shouldnt really need more than a 9.709037Kbps line by my calculations.

So you're paying R900/m for 1/3rd of the throughout of an analog leased line.

*cough*



- Colin Alston
colin at alston dot za dot org

"Warning: Use with extreme caution."

 

[microfast]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by podo</i>
........I would like to remind all .. that we should be thankfull for what we do have......

....As far as the cap goes, yes 3GB isn't all the bandwidth in the world, but I do agree, it is enough.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Rubbish, ...... if it's fine for YOU that's great - your choice - your vote - respected.

This whole "ag shame we live in Africa" excuse is rubbish.

Imagine if Telkom adopted your "grateful and thankful" attitude :

<font color="red">"Thank you Mr. ADSL subscriber, we so much appreciate your R100 post dated cheque for your monthly bill, how can we help you " ?</font id="red">

 

[Karnaugh]

Funny. Ferrari's, Porsches and Lamborghinis all go the same speed in SA, infact they come with aircon as standard in most cases unlike their international counter parts. Washing machines are the same, hell, so are Microwaves appart from the power. ADSL is not something you just make up and decide to provide by means of whatever is lying arround. ADSL has international standards laid down by organisations, otherwise its *not* ADSL, and its *not* broadband as advertised by Telkom.

How then does this being South Africa mean our DSL should be slower and limited? Because we have less access to bandwidth? Um, no actualy SAT-3 lands *twice* in SA and Telkom were part of the organisation that built the thing. SAT-2 is still in service (not for that much longer granted). They complain they cant aquire peering to international ISP's - Well hell yes, with their attitude and the extortion they perform here I'm not surprised international ISP's refuse to peer with them.

They can offer 512K, why cant they let us use it for longer than 13.65333 hours? (the calculated time to consume your 3 Gb cap at a full service rate) When you have paid for an entire month?

Why do they muck arround with peoples ports on top of that? This is *not* common (or even acceptable) practice on core networks and 1st tier ISP's as certain people here may lead you to belive (via Packateers or whatever)

What do you know of SAIX's network and SA's infrastructure to say they cant provide for it?

Telkom ADSL. R600 for the line and R250 per 14 hours.

Here's a little calculation for you

R250 for 13.65333h = R18.315 per hour. 24 hours a day, and on average 30 days a month - R13186.80. Conviniently works out to a 50:1 contention doesnt it Except, you only get your 1 and then you're told to get jacked.

- Colin Alston
colin at alston dot za dot org

"Warning: Use with extreme caution."

 

[mbs]

Can only but concur - I will not be treated as a child, except by me dear ol' mom. If there is one thing to be thankful for, it's for peeps like RPM sacrificing his personal time and effort at no cost to try and rectify this gawdawful mess that ADSL in SA actually is. The situation we have is reminiscent of pre-1994 days - 'you be a good little <i>swartetjie</i> now and be thankful that the <i>baas</i> has given you his discarded clothes/leftover food/<i>borrel wyn</i>/<i>bunsela imali</i>' and so on.

NO WAYS - it's just patently unacceptable, and I'm certainly not willing to accept Telkrap's motivations/excuses/justifications for the standard of service they provide, primarily because of the negative effect it's having on sustainable societal development. How can you possibly be 'thankful' in the face of such consequences?!