Are you hurting your ADSL ISP?

"Openweb CEO Keoma Wright said that the average usage on some of their uncapped accounts is 180GB per month."

Interesting. When I emailed Openweb two weeks ago, to find out how much data I've been using, this was their response:

"We do not log usage stats on our uncapped accounts as we feel it goes against the essence of what uncapped stands for.

Kind regards
Leon
Client Care Executive"

And no, there is no data usage tool on the Openweb client portal..
 
Boris Becker said:
Let uncapped die. Cheaper capped accounts. Full speed FTW
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No way. I love my 4Mbps Afrihost business uncapped account. It's unshaped 24/7 and I only end up paying just over R2 a gig.

HapticSimian said:
Month's notice...
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It's been said a million times on this forum that you can bail from the next month by just downgrading to an email only option and incurring only a tiny expense. You can't be charged for line rental twice, so it doesn't matter who that money goes to. I moved from Mweb to Afrihost and Afrihost didn't mind at all that it would take a month for the line to transfer to them.
 
AfriMan said:
I think a lot of the posts I've read here really get our intentions wrong. I can't speak for other ISPs but our intention is always to give all our available capacity and resources over to clients. Obviously, we are a business and we need to cover our expenses, but we actually put millions back into our products to make the affordable and more awesome.

At the end of the day, we believe that everyone has the right to decent internet. But like driver's on the road, everyone has their own interpretation of the rules. We try to make a fair system that works for everyone, and we would really like to avoid labelling people as abusers, there is surely a place for everyone if the system that governs the network is robust and clever enough to deal with everyone's patterns accurately.

This is exactly what we strive for. We've only been running our own network for just less than a year, but we've made huge strides in improving overall performance and refining our system of throttle-less Uncapped DSL. We think we are getting better and better at this, and as we add more layers of complexity to the system we are making the experience as awesome as it possibly can be for everyone on the network. We'll also get better and better at this so that the available capacity is fairly distributed to everyone on the network according to what they paying for :)
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And that is why Afrihost is the ISP of Awesomeness
(own emphasis in the quote)
 
Keeper said:
I don't get some of you guys.
All over the world they can charge peanuts for high speed internet, here in South Africa we are paying a fortune for our internet access..... for pathetic speeds.

And now we're being told "we are the ones robbing the ISP's"

I can accept there is a breaking point in the graph, of course not every single one of us can max out our lines at the same time, we all know the pipes are shared.
What I'd like to know is how many users are below the line, and how many "elite" users are above the line?
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You can blame Telkom with their ridiculous IPC costs for a large part of why we're being ripped a new one when it comes to prices here.
 
rpm said:
I think there are other options - shaping, throttling, cutting off high end users and the like.

An ISP must just make sure the average usage remains below the cut-event point. This can happen in a few ways - lower input costs, lower usage from users, higher retail prices.

Uncapped will remain, but things will have to change if it needs to remain in its current format. We already know that some ISPs changed, so the argument is substantiated :)
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This article leading to this thread seems to be part of a series leading towards the justification for limiting uncapped, or alternatively scrapping uncapped ADSL. Propaganda in other words. Question is, propaganda for / by which entity?

To summarise: managing expectations perhaps, rather than providing for requirements....?

However not a word has been said about contention ratios, so please bring these on bandwidth into the equation before making wild statements about the apparent profitability of uncapped for ISPs.
 
Kayoss said:
"Openweb CEO Keoma Wright said that the average usage on some of their uncapped accounts is 180GB per month."

Interesting. When I emailed Openweb two weeks ago, to find out how much data I've been using, this was their response:

"We do not log usage stats on our uncapped accounts as we feel it goes against the essence of what uncapped stands for.

Kind regards
Leon
Client Care Executive"

And no, there is no data usage tool on the Openweb client portal..
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You can use the ISADSL usage page to see your usage, as they resell IS accounts. But then you will also see the people that are sharing your OpenWeb account, hence the change of usernames and passwords on a frequent basis to balance usage.
 
Paul Hjul said:
...the answer always boils down to: (1) they have a good relationship with their customers which discourages an entitlement attitude - the user is part of the system not trying to cheat it (2) they are properly dynamically managing the network and have a revenue coming in from selling a service rather than data
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I cannot agree more.

Many will think that I'm a bandwidth hog when reading my comments and many will say that I'm anti-ISP but this is not the case. My average usage is around 150Gb on a 4Meg line while knowing that Telkom will allow me close on 500Gb.

What gets under my skin is that most businesses, not just ISP's, moan and groan about business yet do very little about it. As Afriman said and as Paul pointed out, they keep their finger on the pulse and stay in tune with what customers need and require and shape their business plan accordingly.

They adapt, and thus survive and grow. They are transparent in what they do and thus get the buy-in from their clients and indirectly their support.

Nobody expects an ISP to do business for free. We do however expect some form of transparency so that we know what we are paying for or at the very least know what we should expect for the hard earned cash we put down.
 
Paul Hjul said:
And that is why Afrihost is the ISP of Awesomeness
(own emphasis in the quote)
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Had to stick with Telkom as I'm moving end of the month so little use changing. Will be renting for three months before moving into new house in January and will be knocking on their door asap.
 
MickeyD said:
I posted an opinion a year or two ago where I predicted a consolidation in the ISP market with the smaller ISPs being either wiped out or bought out by the bigger ISPs.

Without the economies of scale and balance of power users vs casual users no ISP can exist in today's market. And to exist they are being squeezed... users want lower prices and higher usage while the ISPs suffer from higher costs (salaries, rentals, utilities, etc.) and profit expectations.
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If the major cost for ISPs is going to be IPC, what are the benefits of economies of scale for them? How much of a discount does Telkom give for bulk purchases and at what point does it end up being roughly the same amount per Mbps no matter how much you buy? In this weird market where IPC costs dominate, you end up saving less from the other areas that economies of scale would normally benefit you (admin, support, etc).

I would think that the most important thing for the networks would be getting that balance of users who's peak usage is at different times of the day. I think the ISPs that won't be able to survive are the ones that are mostly residential focussed and want to try running their own networks. If you partner with an MTN Business or IS, they must have a lot of capacity to meet office hours demand and so will work with the likes of OpenWeb who can help fill up their network during the middle of the night and give them another (small) source of income.

It's like running an electricity grid with a lot of baseload power plants, and you end up making "below-cost" deals with the likes of BHP Billiton and aluminium smelters just because it's "free money" that fills capacity that you had to create to cover peak demand.
 
whatwhat said:
But then you will also see the people that are sharing your OpenWeb account, hence the change of usernames and passwords on a frequent basis to balance usage.
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Tell me more about this please.
 
xrapidx said:
Maybe the ISPs should start by defining what they consider abuse. Not some super secret random number.
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They will never give a number as then it would no longer be uncapped. I think maybe they use numbers to define abuse internally as people seem to find ways around the shaping going by some of the numbers people claim to be able to do.
 
1265GB in 1 month? WTF are these people downloading? Someone has a serious porn addiction.:D
 
It is quite simple. If people abuse the system so badly, cancel their account.
 
km2 said:
If the major cost for ISPs is going to be IPC, what are the benefits of economies of scale for them? How much of a discount does Telkom give for bulk purchases and at what point does it end up being roughly the same amount per Mbps no matter how much you buy? In this weird market where IPC costs dominate, you end up saving less from the other areas that economies of scale would normally benefit you (admin, support, etc).

I would think that the most important thing for the networks would be getting that balance of users who's peak usage is at different times of the day. I think the ISPs that won't be able to survive are the ones that are mostly residential focussed and want to try running their own networks. If you partner with an MTN Business or IS, they must have a lot of capacity to meet office hours demand and so will work with the likes of OpenWeb who can help fill up their network during the middle of the night and give them another (small) source of income.

It's like running an electricity grid with a lot of baseload power plants, and you end up making "below-cost" deals with the likes of BHP Billiton and aluminium smelters just because it's "free money" that fills capacity that you had to create to cover peak demand.
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Granted...

How can ISPs become less reliant on Telkom's IPC?
 
R13... said:
They will never give a number as then it would no longer be uncapped. I think maybe they use numbers to define abuse internally as people seem to find ways around the shaping going by some of the numbers people claim to be able to do.
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Well then they shouldn't complain about abusive users if they can't define what an abusive user is.

I don't even look at how much I download anymore - and I don't download just to have a copy of the internet at home - but you might find that according to some ISPs I'm abusive.
 
Did the math just now, my average a month is 256gb, but I only use 30gb of that. The rest is friends and neighbours. That being said I really have no issues with shaping or throttling on low end uncapped products like mine.
 
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