Afrihost Uncapped ADSL Feedback

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I assume that Fibre to PE from CT is primarily for business customers not dependent on DSL and is probably intended for business customers on a fibre offering.

What I am asking is (a) are there plans\hopes on the card to get an IPC-PoP in PE and if so (b) is the holdup with Telkom, MTN, General Finance; or if not (c) why can't PE get some love - it really needs it.

Looking at the current capacity on your map CT has 3Gbs whilst Durban has 2Gbs so clearly there is room to either increase the IPConnect for the "Southern region" subject to their being enough funding. The Eastern Cape loading on CT really adds up and I strongly suspect that a quarter of the CT traffic would be better handed over at PE. If Telkom is the hold up - not allowing any ESR in the area to be used then we can pester them :D as I honestly believe that as soon as somebody breaks the path others will follow.

- as a matter of full disclaimer: I am continuously punting the general idea of making the DSL network more integrated, having deeper penetration by ISPs and a host of other things which necessitate more points of presence by ISPs, free peering points, local loop unbundling and such other animals. Even when this isn't in the short term business interests of the companies.
 
AfriMan said:
The last update I had was that the sturctural work was complete and MTN were busy with testing on the cable. This was a while back, so the link may be active already.

Remember this links after the IPC, so you'll always be on Telkom's network until you hit the IPC. So some aspect would improve, but if there are Telkom issues, or heavy demand on the IPC at any time, you would still be subject to those issues. It would not work like having an IPC in PE, for example.
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And this is going to improve the situation with the Cape Town IPC how? Until you sort out the undercapacity and consequent shaping in CPT, I don't see how you can justify charging the same rates that you do in other areas. How does it make sense to pay the same rate when you admittedly provide a different standard of service. If I can download 1Gb per day in JHB before being shaped to nonexistence, how is it fair that for the same price I can only d/l, say, 500MB in Cape Town??
 
Im with garp on this one. I dont really mind the shaping as I dont download all that much that often but if I move to DBN or JHB and get better service for the same package than my current service in PE then I shouldn't be paying the same. It is effectively 2 different products.

The other thing is that its not once in a while shaping. Its daily. Can the DBN or JHB guys let us know how often and when they are shaped so we can compare.

Im currently on 18.8%/6.25%
 
Durban, 100% realtime speed, no shaping at present.

I think I can only recall seeing restrictions applied once in the last few months, although admittedly I don't check clientzone daily. Have not noticed slow speeds that would prompt me to go check.
 
garp said:
And this is going to improve the situation with the Cape Town IPC how? Until you sort out the undercapacity and consequent shaping in CPT, I don't see how you can justify charging the same rates that you do in other areas. How does it make sense to pay the same rate when you admittedly provide a different standard of service. If I can download 1Gb per day in JHB before being shaped to nonexistence, how is it fair that for the same price I can only d/l, say, 500MB in Cape Town??
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As I've said before, it's not about us delivering a degraded or oversubscribed service. We ultimately we're delivering more capacity that Cape Town and Southern region clients ever had on our previous network, it's probably more than doubled (if not quadrupled). However, what were seeing is a usage pattern that is heavily using torrents and P2P protocols in the evenings, which is causing us to have to shape to protect the network. And while Capped and Business pay a premium for their unshaped bandwidth, that traffic seems to be mostly on Uncapped profiles.

It's not that JHB users have access to a greater capacity, because geographically speaking the JHB IPC services a much larger area and a lot more clients. But the usage times and patterns and the types of traffic allow for a different experience.
 
I am enjoying this thread now as I am glad there more EC chaps - who feel the same as me. There is no love for us here and grouping us together with Cape Town also effects them negatively. The only way for us to enjoy to get business accounts (easy enough but not all can afford it for top of the line performance). Im currently on 18.8%/6.25% as well (26Gb used so far) :(
 
if it were a case of Cape Town being perpetually inferior product offering then a price disparity would be unfair but if - which is what we can hope - it is simply a case of Cape Town being currently under strain because of usage patterns and a need for an IPC upgrade (which may be Telkom related) then the basic principle of best effort consumer grade product kicks in. In other words in a couple of months time Durban has strain while waiting for an upgrade and Afrihost\MTN are actively working on getting the problem fixed

I have a sneaky suspicion that part of the problem is that the Cape Town DSL user base has a disproportionately high business hours usage class as opposed to users who go home from work and use the internet on DSL after hours. Part of the reason why this could be the case is because of users in Gauteng who are connected via fibre etc ... at the work place.

I'd gladly switch off all downloading during the day if Afrihost gave me faster after-hours uncapped - I have a 4 meg line and a 1 meg uncapped account. Selling a uncapped Cape connectivity at heavily discounted pricing really should be looked at by Afrihost/Axcess/MTN - how of course is a technical issue that the network guru's should work out. I doubt you would need to spend a cent marketing as a single announcement and word of mouth will get subscribers - including subscribers from other networks on capped accounts.
 
Paul Hjul said:
I assume that Fibre to PE from CT is primarily for business customers not dependent on DSL and is probably intended for business customers on a fibre offering.

What I am asking is (a) are there plans\hopes on the card to get an IPC-PoP in PE and if so (b) is the holdup with Telkom, MTN, General Finance; or if not (c) why can't PE get some love - it really needs it.

Looking at the current capacity on your map CT has 3Gbs whilst Durban has 2Gbs so clearly there is room to either increase the IPConnect for the "Southern region" subject to their being enough funding. The Eastern Cape loading on CT really adds up and I strongly suspect that a quarter of the CT traffic would be better handed over at PE. If Telkom is the hold up - not allowing any ESR in the area to be used then we can pester them :D as I honestly believe that as soon as somebody breaks the path others will follow.

- as a matter of full disclaimer: I am continuously punting the general idea of making the DSL network more integrated, having deeper penetration by ISPs and a host of other things which necessitate more points of presence by ISPs, free peering points, local loop unbundling and such other animals. Even when this isn't in the short term business interests of the companies.
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It really depends on the demand from clients in the area. PE definitely has a growing IT community, we're seeing a lot of businesses coming up, not to mention our sister company Axxess are based there and have a pretty big client base. I'm sure they would love to have local IPC, especially for their management systems.

I can't say whether this is something we're looking into right now, but I think if there was sufficient demand, and there was the required network infrastructure on our side to facilitate this, it would be a pretty awesome addition to our national capacity.
 
AfriMan said:
It really depends on the demand from clients in the area. PE definitely has a growing IT community, we're seeing a lot of businesses coming up, not to mention our sister company Axxess are based there and have a pretty big client base. I'm sure they would love to have local IPC, especially for their management systems.

I can't say whether this is something we're looking into right now, but I think if there was sufficient demand, and there was the required network infrastructure on our side to facilitate this, it would be a pretty awesome addition to our national capacity.
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This +100000000. It would be awesome. :)
 
I am reliably informed that Telkom does have the capacity to enable a point of presence in Port Elizabeth.

So what sort of market uptake is needed to make it happen?
A POP at Axcess HQ?

Hell getting some ICT to revamp Cape Road would be amazing - haven't seen it in a while but jeepers I cringed at the desolation a couple of months back.

:D
 
AfriMan said:
We know that EC also routes via Cape Town's IPC, and we are currently deploying a fibre link directly from PE to Cape Town for the best possible latencies in the EC area.

With regard to upgrading Cape Town's IPC, as I mentioned a day or so back, this is being discussed by management, and whether we can justify the additional cost with projected bandwidth usage. Remember that if we currently not moving enough bandwidth in off peak times, adding more IPC may not increase bandwidth usage significantly, so we need to be sure that the upgrade will yield the right results. Again, it's about how much we sell, it purely around us getting the increased usage to justify the additional capacity.

I'll hopefully have some more info on this very soon, and will update MyBB as soon as I do :)
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One would imagine that having to shape downloads to 12% and 6% would be reason enough to see that your IPC clearly needs an upgrade.

You say CPT has much more than it used to before but that's not really an argument - as years go by things require more bandwidth so CPT _should_ have much more than it used to.

Anyway, just my 2c, clearly it's up to the number crunchers
 
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