43Mbps HSPA+ milestone for Vodacom

Joe Average said:
a Few Questions (for VodaCom) :

1. Is the 43 Mbps speed only available on contract (24 months ?)
2. What is the cost (on contract, per month), does it include the price of the modem ?
3. Can we get a clear indication of coverage ?

Many thanks.

PS. Could not find a 43Mbps modem on : http://www.vodacom.co.za/vodacom/Deals/Broadband
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1. It's just a speed upgrade. Available on any contract, pre-paid, top-up bundle. You'll get the modem on 1GB bundles included or can buy it cash.
2. As above
3. I'll try, but it's growing faster than we can create coverage maps.

No problem.

PS. It's out there, maybe call a few shops. For sure I saw it at Vodacom World.
 
Antonf said:
I will be perfectly happy with 3.6 rather than 43Mbps. Sorry, I missed the announcement of "aggressively dropped broadband pricing", 2.3Gb still costs R389. (No, I am NOT interested in 2Gb available when I'm sleeping.)
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A bit disingenuous don't you think?

The 2GB costs R149 and, if you want it or not, you get an extra 2GB. (If you don't know how to use a scheduler, I'll come and help you. ;))

Plus you get roll-over. What's not to like? (And don't start with OOB..... )
 
jannievanzyl said:
upgrading capacity so more people getting decent speeds so the price/performance ratio can be addressed.
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price/performance meaning "we can charge as much as we want because it's fast" right?
 
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Plano said:
Hi Jannie, what are the backhaul to these towers like? Can you sustain 50+ people at that speeds per tower? Was that imaginary speed tested during peak hours at night with the tower mostly populated as in a normal real world scenario?
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One of the reasons we've not just upgraded every tower willy-nilly to 43.. Backhaul needs to be on par, but it is a challenge.

Have a look at the speed test. It was actually to the States! At 4PM GMT, so in peak time.
 
Joe Average said:
Jannie, Speedtest has the ability to create a URL link to a test for future reference. Why do you always "Copy/Paste" an image of the tests you've done intead of providing the link to actual authentic tests ? I smell a rat......a red rat.

I.e. This is an authentic Speedtest link : http://www.speedtest.net/result/1255219445.png
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You're saying I'm 'creating' these speedtests?

Pretty weak :rolleyes:
 
jannievanzyl said:
A bit disingenuous don't you think?

The 2GB costs R149 and, if you want it or not, you get an extra 2GB. (If you don't know how to use a scheduler, I'll come and help you. ;))

Plus you get roll-over. What's not to like? (And don't start with OOB..... )
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*111# still shows R 389 for 2.3Gb... Not everyone want's to sign a contract with a company that kept their pricing the same since 2007, and only changed because of a competitor. ;)

jannievanzyl said:
You're saying I'm 'creating' these speedtests?

Pretty weak :rolleyes:
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That's how the consumer feels about VC i'm afraid. There's not much faith and trust in VC.
 
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Frankly vodacom can change peoples' perception over night when they change their pricing model.

If mweb did it so can vodacom.

Sent from my apple stomping, berry crushing droid! Samsung Galaxy S.
 
A few months back when I was still in NZ/OZ most people where happy with a 8-12mbit connection BUT people prefer a good speed connection at 2-3mbit but with a nice big Data allowance say 10-60GB month.

And any high usage user will be using a ADSL2+ connection above 3g/4g as they have low data allowance as well, even though they may have the fastest connection speeds.

If movements in the USA are anything to go by then expect higher charges for less data on Mobile Internet connections. Uncapped in the USA has been stopped cold and now 5GB there is seen as "Generous" by the Mobile Data providers even with their newer shiny LTE deployments.

The towers Cannot handle the load as LTE speeds supporting 100Mbits per Tower uses a 20mhz spectrum slice and is spectrum costly. Secondly that is 100Mbit per tower. Once you start offering large data packages or even uncapped the throughput drop's as seen on CellC's network after the initial customer influx.

Large data Packages will not come fast as most Network's have to charge for Data to fund the Cost of rolling out the New Equipment and minimize tower usage for as long as possible to extend the life of a Deployment.
This is Simple CAPEX recovery practice.

The best model to proceed with would be to have the user pay for his base connection speed say 2.7/3.6/7.2/14/21 and so forth and then combine it with a Data package of his/her choosing similar to what ADSL offers.

With this method you can prioritize yourself whether you want a blazing fast connection, or a nice fast connection but with larger amounts of data at your disposal.

At the current state of getting every user to connect at the fastest speed possible forces them to reduce the total active amount of users per tower by putting in restrictive data caps reducing the amount of users loading the towers at any given time.

Now refer back to CAPEX recovery and the high speed/low data model suits the operators best :)
 
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jannievanzyl said:
Actually you're arguing the point of all of this.

Upgrading to 43 is not to give one guy insane speeds but exactly the whole point of upgrading capacity so more people getting decent speeds so the price/performance ratio can be addressed.
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So the plan is to charge the same just increase speeds so everyone and not just one person can use their data quicker? Makes business sense while we continue rolling out Cell C devices and subsidise MWEB DSL but then again who cares about average Joe and the little SME market...
 
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AG-TIG said:
The best model to proceed with would be to have the user pay for his base connection speed say 2.7/3.6/7.2/14/21 and so forth and then combine it with a Data package of his/her choosing similar to what ADSL offers.
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This would be the way to go, price the data based on the speed. We're not asking for uncapped/unshaped 42Mbps that will bring a wireless network to its knees. We just want decent per gig pricing on 1.8Mbps speeds
 
This seems too good to be true! just last week Jannie apparently could not answer a guy when he asked if they(vodacom) have a "hsdpa thing". Now all of a sudden they have a hsdpa+ network? and it just happens to be 43Mbps 1 more than Cell C. Is there anyway of proving what these providers are saying? theoretical 43Mbps vs theoretical 42Mbps. Everyone knows they will not get anything near 43Mbps so why are the providers allowed to create this perception? so vodacom has 43Mbps how much is it going to cost?
 
Why cant we use simple examples here. Lets say this 43.2 tower can maintain a guaranteed 50 users. Then, lets assume that that the system can distribute the capacity equally when the number of users exceed 50, then we can have 600 users simulteneously downloading @ 3.6 mbps, the speed i'm sure many users will be happy about. Pls lets indicate total users numbers a typical 43.2 tower can handle at that speed.
 
AG-TIG said:
The best model to proceed with would be to have the user pay for his base connection speed say 2.7/3.6/7.2/14/21 and so forth and then combine it with a Data package of his/her choosing similar to what ADSL offers.
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It's a pity Vodafone's reps read posts here so selectively! This would be perfect, unless they use the current rates for the slowest connection and higher rates as the speeds increase. Vodacom had dual rates years ago, but gave up on it.
 
jannievanzyl said:
Where in KZN are you? There are plenty towers around.

Here's an "imaginary" speedtest I did in Durbs December last year: http://mybroadband.co.za/photos/showphoto.php/photo/22123/title/42-kzn/cat/all

Not so "imaginary" after all ;)

And this is the point. While others networks hope to get a tower or two up in the next few weeks, these VC 43 towers have been mushrooming for months. But we only activated everyone's profiles this week to use it.
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WOW!!!! and if you use a different server ? and you not a techie for vodacom? and if you dont stand next to the antenna? and if you do actually have other people use the same tower? and if you actually using the same hardware that will be available from vodacom for the consumers?
 
jannievanzyl said:
A bit disingenuous don't you think?

The 2GB costs R149 and, if you want it or not, you get an extra 2GB. (If you don't know how to use a scheduler, I'll come and help you. ;))

Plus you get roll-over. What's not to like? (And don't start with OOB..... )
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Jannie, your employer is disingenuous, to put it mildly. If I was a contract (2.3Gb) customer I would have expected that the same announcement of the 2+2 package to announce that my monthly contract amount will be reduced to R149 (or a little more since it's 2.3 and not 2Gb). Note, those are 24 month contracts, so the customer might be stuck for some time... I can assure you if I was one of those I would have seen more of that revolting RED than I would ever be able to stomach.
Edit: Add to Vodafone's disingenuous behaviour the issue of is it a 12/24 month contract, etc.
 
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Antonf said:
Jannie, your employer is disingenuous, to put it mildly. If I was a contract (2.3Gb) customer I would have expected that the same announcement of the 2+2 package to announce that my monthly contract amount will be reduced to R149 (or a little more since it's 2.3 and not 2Gb). Note, those are 24 month contracts, so the customer might be stuck for some time... I can assure you if I was one of those I would have seen more of that revolting RED than I would ever be able to stomach.
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+1
 
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