Are you hurting your ADSL ISP?

rrcatto said:
Not via cANCer. Not via kapitalists.

Hopefully, I am not alone in my struggle against the korruption of kriminal kapitalists. But I often feel like I am.
Click to expand...

You are definitely alone in using cute spelling to try and make (some?) point. ;)
 
rpm said:
So would you say users who consume a lot of data are not putting a financial strain on their ISP? If you agree they do, then can you explain how the business model works, and what impact high end users have on the business model?
Click to expand...

OK, my understanding of how it works is as follows. Note that I am not an industry insider, so I don't have special knowledge, just going by what I've read in public sources in the past.

An ISP buys a certain amount of bandwidth for which he pays the same irrespective of how many GB go through it. If he can educate his customers or use throttling to maintain the traffic close to capacity for most of the time then the effective price per GB is low; if he has sized the bandwidth to cover relatively short peaks in the day and the rest of the time it is idling, then the effective price per GB will be much higher. So the price per GB that some industry sources have quoted assumes some typical usage profile for the bandwidth, but the reality may differ widely. The high utilization, low R/GB profile is typically how they run uncapped accounts; the lower utilization, higher R/GB profile is the typical business account.

Now take a typical uncapped account system into which enters (cue ominous music...) the bandwidth hog. The ISP's bandwidth allocated to the uncapped accounts is fixed, so this does not cost him one extra cent, nada. If there was no shaping, then the available bandwidth would be divided evenly among all users and when demand exceeded capacity everyone would slow down. Eventually the system performance becomes so poor that either the ISP loses users, or he has to buy more bandwidth, which would put financial strain on the ISP.

In the real world however, the ISP uses some form of shaping (which they all do), so the only people affected by the congestion are the hogs themselves, who have the choice of either working within the imposed limits, or leaving. The net result is that the hog is constrained to work within the limits of the system while the rest of the users don't even notice that there are limits. The key point here is that because of the shaping, even the reported very high end users can only have been using bandwidth that no-one else was using at the time, so rather than clogging up the network, they are actually just using leftover bandwidth which is effectively free to the ISP (free as in it is already paid for and there is no extra marginal cost to letting someone use it). This is why ISPs are so unconcerned about the high end users, on the face of it the figures seem frightening, but it is actually irrelevant to the ISP's costs. This is also the reason why ISPs are so keen to offer extra after hours download capacity at a very low rate - even if they only get a few rand extra, it is all profit because that bandwidth would otherwise be doing nothing but still costing them money.

I believe that the real financial strain on ISPs comes from the steadily rising usage of the average user, not the hogs. Once the average customer's usage is exceeding the bandwidth that the ISP has provisioned, he has no option but to increase his bandwidth, which does push costs up. Obviously shaping is no longer effective because you are simply throttling all your customers as opposed to one or two percent of high end users, therefore the cost of an uncapped account has to mirror the average usage rather than the usage of a small percentage of high end users.

Fritz

PS : I have been arbitrarily using the words throttling and shaping; ISP marketing departments put all kinds of clever spin on these words to make them sound better and will tell you that they are not the same thing. From my point of view they all amount to slowing down a user's data so there's no real difference between them.
 
Also remember that ADSL is oversold. So ISP buys 100Mbps but sells it at 25:1 or higher ratios. It's a juggling act no doubt about that, but with the right marketing they can attract the right consumers to make it all balance out for them.

I don't expect an ISP to be a fighter for the people, they are all for profit organisations and their CEOs need to keep their Jaguars/Ferraris.
 
fritzm said:
PS : I have been arbitrarily using the words throttling and shaping; ISP marketing departments put all kinds of clever spin on these words to make them sound better and will tell you that they are not the same thing. From my point of view they all amount to slowing down a user's data so there's no real difference between them.
Click to expand...

I noticed. Was about point out your mistakes then read your post script.

Shaping only affects certain protocols, while throttling affects your whole line.
 
whatwhat said:
Also remember that ADSL is oversold. So ISP buys 100Mbps but sells it at 25:1 or higher ratios. It's a juggling act no doubt about that, but with the right marketing they can attract the right consumers to make it all balance out for them.

I don't expect an ISP to be a fighter for the people, they are all for profit organisations and their CEOs need to keep their Jaguars/Ferraris.
Click to expand...

Lol.

If you only knew how thin the margins actually are.
 
This article is BS, especially for blaming the consumer of the ADVERTISED product.

What does a gb cost an isp? nothing... they buy the pipe not the contents.

So why are isps almost freezing all internet during the day? because they don't have the product they sold you. They have 1/2 of the amount they need and they need to scramble to supply it to business users.

You pay the equivalent of a car's installment per month in something that in the end cost almost nothing to produce, each tier of supplier taking much more profit than is reasonable. I am talking of telkom taking 50%+ of total cost usually for NO expense on their part.

The cable supplier, the actual data pipe making profits that must exceed 1000%

The isp may be making less, but it is THEIR OWN FAULT for not pressing government each and every singe day to level the playing field. However even with this they are still making healthy profits or they would have all shut down by now.
 
bgotapen said:
/snip
Click to expand...

fritzm said:
/snip
Click to expand...

If it weren't for the abusers the ISP's would be able to purchase less bandwidth while still providing the same experience to the average user resulting in either more profit for them or they can charge LESS for everyone.

The abusers are screwing everyone over and most of them bypass the shaping that ISP's use hence why Mweb has turned to throttling abusers as that cannot be bypassed as easily.
 
grim said:
If it weren't for the abusers the ISP's would be able to purchase less bandwidth while still providing the same experience to the average user resulting in either more profit for them or they can charge LESS for everyone.

The abusers are screwing everyone over and most of them bypass the shaping that ISP's use hence why Mweb has turned to throttling abusers as that cannot be bypassed as easily.
Click to expand...

This.
 
If I'm hurting my ISP it's only their own bloody fault ..

Firstly I have a 4meg account but Telkom's only giving me a 2meg line, plus I only download after hours 99.9% of the time. In effect I'm only ever able to use 1/4 of the maximum capacity of my line, and they've got the audacity to say I'm hurting them. Stop overselling, or frack off!

Secondly, I fully understand but I basically don't care about the ISP business model. I'm not getting paid to worry about ISP profitablility, just like I'm not expected to manage my insurance company, my bank's business model, or even help Telkom with prevention of cable theft. My sole agreement between myself and my ISP is our contract that states an uncapped product with shaping as a tool to manage peak usage.

So when I pay you x amount per month for your service, as long as I'm operating withing the rules stipulated by our contract you'd better supply me with the service as stated, else you are on the wrong side of the law.

Thing is companies and especially ISP's have been relying on vague AUP policies to get away with calling products what they're not. Time to stop the whining & blaming your customers for the expectations you created while the going was good. We all saw what MWEB did, the disgusting underhanded way they changed their product once they started feeling the pinch. Why should we as consumers be content with getting less & less for more & more of our money?
 
Chevron said:
Lol.

If you only knew how thin the margins actually are.
Click to expand...

I don't really care, I'm not an ISP. They have the tools (shaping, AUP whatever they want to call it) to control behaviour to adjust their profit.
 
grim said:
IT"S APARTHEID'S FAULT
Click to expand...

I am so sick and tired of hearing the excuse of "abusers". I am not in the top 20% of downloaders, or even in the top 70%...

now that I cleared that up I will now defend them with this little quote from the original mybroadband founders

"Data is not like a river, that if one big abuser( a mine for example) can use up most of it and leave to little for the rest to survive, it is endless in capacity it can be increased to suit the needs of everyone and it can be done cost effectively and profitably"

Now let me explain this so even the weak of mind can understand:

You are saying abusers use too much, they have paid for their slice in full they have no control over how it is provided to them but they did pay. The isp and telkom made a profit.

The network (telkom) however is making billions, line rental for example was as I understand intended to fuel a rapidly developing network. It however was used to line the pockets and not invested in bettering the network. Line rental is an almost completely and utterly 100% profit, and it is still running on infrastructure some as old as the 1960's

They are only now doing upgrades that they should have done 5 years ago, the money and skill is there but was never utilized. We are and were facing massive bandwidth issues not from lack of cables but from lack of upgrades on telkom's network.

In the end THEY ARE STILL CHARGING TOO MUCH. If line rental falls away and isp's got say half of that money for bandwith would we have this problem? NO.

My point is there are a lot of people to blame, but it is not the "abusers" they will soon become normal bandwidth usage with the new norm of watching NETFLIX AND HULU in fact I think that their "abusive" bandwidth number will falls way under most developed and underdeveloped countries average usage in the next 2 years simply because of people now needing to watch all their shows on those services, get youtube AND download their games that are mostly changing to a digital download distribution service.
 
Last edited:
evilstebunny said:
If I'm hurting my ISP it's only their own bloody fault ..

Firstly I have a 4meg account but Telkom's only giving me a 2meg line, plus I only download after hours 99.9% of the time. In effect I'm only ever able to use 1/4 of the maximum capacity of my line, and they've got the audacity to say I'm hurting them. Stop overselling, or frack off!

Secondly, I fully understand but I basically don't care about the ISP business model. I'm not getting paid to worry about ISP profitablility, just like I'm not expected to manage my insurance company, my bank's business model, or even help Telkom with prevention of cable theft. My sole agreement between myself and my ISP is our contract that states an uncapped product with shaping as a tool to manage peak usage.

So when I pay you x amount per month for your service, as long as I'm operating withing the rules stipulated by our contract you'd better supply me with the service as stated, else you are on the wrong side of the law.

Thing is companies and especially ISP's have been relying on vague AUP policies to get away with calling products what they're not. Time to stop the whining & blaming your customers for the expectations you created while the going was good. We all saw what MWEB did, the disgusting underhanded way they changed their product once they started feeling the pinch. Why should we as consumers be content with getting less & less for more & more of our money?
Click to expand...

They aren't pointing fingers at users like you who consumes a reasonable amount of bandwidth on your account.

Users like you are paying more than you should so that the abusers can run their lines 24/7 at full speed bypassing the shaping.

I still reckon they just need to cancel abusers accounts after warning them, will ensure a far better service for the majority of users.
 
grim said:
If it weren't for the abusers the ISP's would be able to purchase less bandwidth while still providing the same experience to the average user resulting in either more profit for them or they can charge LESS for everyone.

The abusers are screwing everyone over and most of them bypass the shaping that ISP's use hence why Mweb has turned to throttling abusers as that cannot be bypassed as easily.
Click to expand...

and we would all still be given 3 gigs, I mean it is enough for everyone :D
 
MickeyD said:
For how long? :p If VC acquire neotel will you aggressively push the LLU agenda to tackle TSA head-on?
Click to expand...
LLU never meant others get it for free. If I were TSA, I would unbundle and then charge a cost+ model. no more 'deficit', right?

Watch how everyone screams blue murder if the access fee suddenly goes UP because of LLU. ;)
 
jannievanzyl said:
LLU never meant others get it for free. If I were TSA, I would unbundle and then charge a cost+ model. no more 'deficit', right?

Watch how everyone screams blue murder if the access fee suddenly goes UP because of LLU. ;)
Click to expand...
I agree!
PS. I never mentioned free..

Did you see the draft LLU proposals? Places most of the setting of standards, etc. at the door of the network operator that owns the network.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X