Afrihost Business Uncapped Feedback - 2

[AfriMan]

I just wish Afrihost would manup and admit there are network issues. This reminds me of the issues Afrihost had last year, and for weeks things were deined, then eventually there was some official post. We were told we would be compensated for the slow speeds etc, nothing ever happened. We are now once again in a similar boat. Everything on my side is slow, local, international sites, take forever to load, twitter does not send tweets, emails take far longer to download. All this time we are expected to pay full price for a product that is not working as advertised.

We are definitely aware that there are issues on our network and we're being totally open about that. But we do believe that we can resolve these by using a systematic approach and not going into crisis mode. Right now our focus is to tighten our management of P2P demand (on Uncapped accounts) and to also ensure that we manage our traffic as efficiently as possible. Regardless of any other issues, this is a vital and necessary step.

Latency is our primary concern, that would produce the symptoms you've described above and we have seen high latency last night, which the team have reported and factored in. Whether that is due to the additional iOS download demand, or is a symptom of the P2P traffic we're not catching, that is something we can focus on.

I know everyone is thinking IPC, and I can promise you that either way, we have plans in place to continually order more capacity based on demand and trend analysis. So we're not waiting for the dam to burst before we take action, that kind of long term capacity planning is always ongoing.

 

[AfriMan]

Ok seriously, this is getting to much now. Trying to download GTA from Rockstar social club, on my Web Africa trial account it hits 980KB/s on Afrihost most of the time it says connection to download server lost, if I'm lucky it downloads at 20KB/s. Really thinking of cancelling my account. Will also not be recommending Afrihost to anyone anymore.

I did see high latency on the network, especially between 8pm and 10pm. This would probably mean that contention was high at the time due to demand, but it seemed to normalise just after 10pm. Throughput on downloads would probably have been poor during this period

 

[Francois Marais]

Just ran another traceroute:

tracert afrihost.com

Tracing route to afrihost.com [197.242.144.102]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms 192.168.0.1
2 17 ms 14 ms 18 ms 105-236-3-193-esr-lo.mtnbusiness.co.za [105.236.
3.193]
3 13 ms * * ipc-recieve-rb-3a.za.mtnbusiness.net [41.181.178
.77]
4 21 ms 21 ms 15 ms rb-dca-2.za--rb-cr-1.za-a.mtnns.net [196.44.31.1
20]
5 16 ms 19 ms 15 ms jh-cr-1.za--rb-cr-2.za.mtnns.net [196.44.0.42]
6 19 ms 20 ms 19 ms qux-jh-dca-2.za-b.za.mtnbusiness.net [41.181.165
.115]
7 17 ms 17 ms 23 ms 196.44.31.99
8 * * 22 ms 196.31.220.8
9 18 ms 21 ms 22 ms 196.31.220.27
10 18 ms 16 ms 25 ms 196.31.63.202
11 17 ms 20 ms 21 ms vl9-ah-ha-2.za.mtnbusiness.net [196.30.42.133]
12 25 ms 48 ms 23 ms cms-gm.afrihost.com [197.242.144.102]

Trace complete.

Internet is at least working... But for how long and where was the problem...

 

[AfriMan]

the definitely need more ipc like last year after denying it for months

We'll always have ongoing plans to get more IPC, so I don't think any ISP out there would say we wouldn't like a whole lot more capacity. But in the end it comes down to rands and cents and having a balance between offering a great experience and keeping overheads low so that we can keep dropping prices. Having upgraded our IPC so many times in the last year or so has been one factor in our pricing, which we're always trying to find ways to make more affordable and deliver more value.

We'll always look for every viable opportunity to upgrade and still keep prices low, but for the moment we believe that we have enough capacity to deliver a good experience if our rules and policies are more tightly managed.

 

[Sinbad]

Dropping prices is unsustainable. All you're trying to do is grab more of the market, which you can't actually viably support at the lower prices (mainly because of Telkom's IPC cost), resulting in a bad experience for everyone including yourselves.

 

[PurSpyk!!]

We are definitely aware that there are issues on our network and we're being totally open about that. But we do believe that we can resolve these by using a systematic approach and not going into crisis mode. Right now our focus is to tighten our management of P2P demand (on Uncapped accounts) and to also ensure that we manage our traffic as efficiently as possible. Regardless of any other issues, this is a vital and necessary step.

Latency is our primary concern, that would produce the symptoms you've described above and we have seen high latency last night, which the team have reported and factored in. Whether that is due to the additional iOS download demand, or is a symptom of the P2P traffic we're not catching, that is something we can focus on.

I know everyone is thinking IPC, and I can promise you that either way, we have plans in place to continually order more capacity based on demand and trend analysis. So we're not waiting for the dam to burst before we take action, that kind of long term capacity planning is always ongoing.

Ok, so by this can we expect financial compensation due to your service not operating as advertised? Or is it better for all your users to rather cancel and move to a different ISP?

 

[AfriMan]

Dropping prices is unsustainable. All you're trying to do is grab more of the market, which you can't actually viably support at the lower prices (mainly because of Telkom's IPC cost), resulting in a bad experience for everyone including yourselves.

Not at all, dropping prices is a natural progression. Looking at the reaction from clients to price hikes on cellular services from some providers, I think that is what the market expects. Not just for attracting new clients but retaining existing ones. It's also how prices and services become more affordable to the average consumer, which is even now not the case considering the average barrier to entry for most South Africans is still high (for DSL especially). Mobile is starting to chip away at that gap but mobile data is still too expensive for the average South African to be fully engaged online beyond simple messaging and social media.

 

[AfriMan]

Ok, so by this can we expect financial compensation due to your service not operating as advertised? Or is it better for all your users to rather cancel and move to a different ISP?

I can't comment on that, I'm not able to give a blanket offer in that regard. I think we'll always look at these on a case by case basis.

We definitely don't want our clients to move away, and our focus is to improve our service wherever it falls short of what we expect and our clients expect.

 

[PurSpyk!!]

I can't comment on that, I'm not able to give a blanket offer in that regard. I think we'll always look at these on a case by case basis.

We definitely don't want our clients to move away, and our focus is to improve our service wherever it falls short of what we expect and our clients expect.

Ok, So you admit to network issues, I will contact Accounts and quote this forum discussion

 

[AfriMan]

Ok, So you admit to network issues, I will contact Accounts and quote this forum discussion

As I said, we take each application on a case by case basis. They will weigh up all the factors against your application.

 

[Sinbad]

Not at all, dropping prices is a natural progression. Looking at the reaction from clients to price hikes on cellular services from some providers, I think that is what the market expects. Not just for attracting new clients but retaining existing ones. It's also how prices and services become more affordable to the average consumer, which is even now not the case considering the average barrier to entry for most South Africans is still high (for DSL especially). Mobile is starting to chip away at that gap but mobile data is still too expensive for the average South African to be fully engaged online beyond simple messaging and social media.

Walking is also a natural action, but you don't walk off a cliff or into a cactus patch. Sustainability is key. Only way you can drop prices is by increasing contention (unless IPC prices change) - and increased contention results in decreased levels of service. Internet usage in SA is getting more and more intensive as things like streaming services kick into high gear, DSLAMs are upgraded, etc. The same 10Gb (or whatever) of IPC you had before can't support the same number of users today as it did a year ago.

Sure cellphone price hikes get a bad reaction - but these are also price hikes applied to fixed term contracts signed at an agreed price - for diminishing levels of service! Not the same thing here...

 

[AfriMan]

Walking is also a natural action, but you don't walk off a cliff or into a cactus patch. Sustainability is key. Only way you can drop prices is by increasing contention (unless IPC prices change) - and increased contention results in decreased levels of service. Internet usage in SA is getting more and more intensive as things like streaming services kick into high gear, DSLAMs are upgraded, etc. The same 10Gb (or whatever) of IPC you had before can't support the same number of users today as it did a year ago.

Sure cellphone price hikes get a bad reaction - but these are also price hikes applied to fixed term contracts signed at an agreed price - for diminishing levels of service! Not the same thing here...

I think sustainability is definitely key, but there are more options available. If you think of the market as static, like a fixed user base, who simply have a growing demand (year on year) then it makes sense that the only way to continue service is to allow competition (contention) to increase so upstream costs are maintained. However, using scale to offset the increased costs is how most operators will bet on their breakage points to offer improved services (at improve cost to company) while growing their client base. Sometimes it's a risk, but it's one that most companies have to take in competitive markets, except for niche markets like sports cars or luxury items where price is less of a consideration than status, aspiration, etc.

We also believe that costs could be be lower upstream (especially in terms of IPC), and driving prices down forces our competitors and providers (i.e. Telkom) to reconsider their pricing until we reach the absolute minimum so that our clients get the best deal. I don't think we're there yet. There are still significant gains to be made in terms of dropping IP Connect pricing, availability and scaling, moving towards Naked DSL (or fibre) and keeping those costs as low as possible.

 

[Sinbad]

I think sustainability is definitely key, but there are more options available. If you think of the market as static, like a fixed user base, who simply have a growing demand (year on year) then it makes sense that the only way to continue service is to allow competition (contention) to increase so upstream costs are maintained. However, using scale to offset the increased costs is how most operators will bet on their breakage points to offer improved services (at improve cost to company) while growing their client base. Sometimes it's a risk, but it's one that most companies have to take in competitive markets, except for niche markets like sports cars or luxury items where price is less of a consideration than status, aspiration, etc.

We also believe that costs could be be lower upstream (especially in terms of IPC), and driving prices down forces our competitors and providers (i.e. Telkom) to reconsider their pricing until we reach the absolute minimum so that our clients get the best deal. I don't think we're there yet. There are still significant gains to be made in terms of dropping IP Connect pricing, availability and scaling, moving towards Naked DSL (or fibre) and keeping those costs as low as possible.

You're Telkom's customer. Putting your own prices down isn't going to force Telkom to lower theirs. You're not competing with them. Only the independant fibre providers are, and they're too small to make an impact at this point in time.

Your bet on using scale to offset costs isn't a good bet. Internet usage patterns are changing. Every time DSTV ups their subscription, say another hundred people consider ditching them and moving to streaming. That's another 400mb to 1gb/sec peak time load depending on their line speed and streaming quality. What used to be a very technically challenging thing is now a commodity that even non-tech-savvy users can get working pretty easily. And the results of this bad bet are plainly visible in the performance of your network lately.

 

[Sarcasm]

Please don't drop your prices, I would rather have better service than lower prices at this point. You are seriously alienating your customers. Streaming is really bad at the moment, international gaming sucks too. I'm paying for a "premium service" yet this is far from premium.

We need more openness from AH on when things are getting better, just saying for months that you are improving things doesn't help. We need a set date on when services like streaming and online gaming will be good.

I think this post on another forum says it best

I moved away from Afrihost about 2 weeks ago. Best decision ever.

Downloads are fine, but streaming is horrible and deteriorating more and more as time goes by.

Also, the AH reps at MyBroadband are only able to ask you to do traceroutes/speedtests, then reply "That doesn't look good at all " and say they'll look into it, and never come back to you. When you ask for feedback days later, they want you to test again. I've had this numerous times since about late November.

And the worst thing is that this is almost better than their phone-in support, who just do a port reset, and/or ask you to reset your router, and if it's not fixed, they do the same as the above - a few days later you'll get a notification that the ticket was closed, but no resolution and you have no idea what happened.

Would not recommend.

 

[AfriGenie]

You're Telkom's customer. Putting your own prices down isn't going to force Telkom to lower theirs. You're not competing with them. Only the independant fibre providers are, and they're too small to make an impact at this point in time.

Your bet on using scale to offset costs isn't a good bet. Internet usage patterns are changing. Every time DSTV ups their subscription, say another hundred people consider ditching them and moving to streaming. That's another 400mb to 1gb/sec peak time load depending on their line speed and streaming quality. What used to be a very technically challenging thing is now a commodity that even non-tech-savvy users can get working pretty easily. And the results of this bad bet are plainly visible in the performance of your network lately.

I can confirm that there has been a massive uptake in streaming over the past few months, mainly AppleTV but also a significant increase in NetFlix - and at this point we're not yet considering any changes in prices, but as AfriMan pointed out, in the past we've tried to be as aggressive as possible with our pricing and this has resulted in significant drops in ADSL prices across the board.

I do want to ask, what do you think would be a good way to incentivizing users to move their P2P / NNTP downloads to off-peak times - between 22h00 and 07h00 - since this tends to be a period that we see a significant drop in network traffic.

 

[whatwhat]

I do want to ask, what do you think would be a good way to incentivizing users to move their P2P / NNTP downloads to off-peak times - between 22h00 and 07h00 - since this tends to be a period that we see a significant drop in network traffic.

The internet doesn't have operating hours, asking people to move their internet usage because of bad planning on your behalf is absurd.

 

[AfriMan]

You're Telkom's customer. Putting your own prices down isn't going to force Telkom to lower theirs. You're not competing with them. Only the independant fibre providers are, and they're too small to make an impact at this point in time.

Your bet on using scale to offset costs isn't a good bet. Internet usage patterns are changing. Every time DSTV ups their subscription, say another hundred people consider ditching them and moving to streaming. That's another 400mb to 1gb/sec peak time load depending on their line speed and streaming quality. What used to be a very technically challenging thing is now a commodity that even non-tech-savvy users can get working pretty easily. And the results of this bad bet are plainly visible in the performance of your network lately.

Since we haven't dropped our prices recently I don't think you can make that comparison. I think it could be easy to say we're increasing our prices by X percent whenever user demand requires that we add on more capacity to make the network run like a dream under any conditions, but that is definitely unsustainable, so there has to be a balance.

There is certainly a trend to move towards high definition streaming as opposed to fixed digital or analog broadcast, but that is still not the majority by a long shot. There is a far bigger trend of people getting online using mobile, many who have not had data before, and this is not really impacting DSL stats. If you look at the growth compared to DSL, you're looking at a few hundred thousand compared to almost 10 million subscribers (and growing).

Sorry, I'm stealing AfriGenie's thunder here. I think this is a very interesting debate though.

 

[AfriGenie]

The internet doesn't have operating hours, asking people to move their internet usage because of bad planning on your behalf is absurd.

The internet doesn't have operating hours, sure, but I was simply musing out loud, most ISPs see a general down take in network traffic during those hours - obviously most people are sleeping / resting - I was asking if Sinbad had any opinions or ideas on how we could best use this period.

 

[whatwhat]

The internet doesn't have operating hours, sure, but I was simply musing out loud, most ISPs see a general down take in network traffic during those hours - obviously most people are sleeping / resting - I was asking if Sinbad had any opinions or ideas on how we could best use this period.

How do the other ISPs cope?

 

[Sinbad]

I can confirm that there has been a massive uptake in streaming over the past few months, mainly AppleTV but also a significant increase in NetFlix - and at this point we're not yet considering any changes in prices, but as AfriMan pointed out, in the past we've tried to be as aggressive as possible with our pricing and this has resulted in significant drops in ADSL prices across the board.

I do want to ask, what do you think would be a good way to incentivizing users to move their P2P / NNTP downloads to off-peak times - between 22h00 and 07h00 - since this tends to be a period that we see a significant drop in network traffic.

Human nature dictates that people want instant gratification. They want it, they want it now. They're paying for it, so why should they wait? This explains the streaming growth as well. I don't see a good way of incentivising moving download times - at the end of the day the decision for me to schedule my downloads comes from a sense of responsibility, not an incentive (unless you consider a smooth running network an incentive. I do. Others don't - they view it as a right). You're not going to find that in all your users - and your business model needs to cater for the psychology of your users as well. You need to buy, plan and price for peak capacity, and the times your network are underutilised are unfortunate for you but you have to carry the loss. Eskom have excess generation capacity at 3am, but you don't see them calling for you to cook your breakfast then (as much as I'm sure they'd like to).

Since we haven't dropped our prices recently I don't think you can make that comparison. I think it could be easy to say we're increasing our prices by X percent whenever user demand requires that we add on more capacity to make the network run like a dream under any conditions, but that is definitely unsustainable, so there has to be a balance.

There is certainly a trend to move towards high definition streaming as opposed to fixed digital or analog broadcast, but that is still not the majority by a long shot. There is a far bigger trend of people getting online using mobile, many who have not had data before, and this is not really impacting DSL stats. If you look at the growth compared to DSL, you're looking at a few hundred thousand compared to almost 10 million subscribers (and growing).

Sorry, I'm stealing AfriGenie's thunder here. I think this is a very interesting debate though.

Yeah, enjoying the engagement too.

Your comment about not dropping pricing recently isn't really relevant. My comment was in response to a desire expressed by you to drop prices in order to induce Telkom to do the same.

We also believe that costs could be be lower upstream (especially in terms of IPC), and driving prices down forces our competitors and providers (i.e. Telkom) to reconsider their pricing

Unfortunately I think you're fighting against the entrenched entitlement culture that seems to be plaguing our country at the moment. I pay more for my internet connection than Afrihost charges. I know many people who see the price I pay and say "ooo no, that's out of my budget, Afrihost is xxx amount cheaper, I'm going with them" and then they complain about the performance while I'm streaming 1080p at 8pm. People must understand that you get what you pay for. You can't buy an M3 for citi golf money.