Broadband Rating System: Please give your views

[rpm]

Hi folks

As you might know we are currently working on an objective broadband rating system. The aim is to produce an algorithm that will produce an accurate rating for any broadband service. We are not certain how accurate it will turn out to be, but we are confident that we will be able to produce a fairly accurate system. We need your help though! Please list what you feel is the most important features of a broadband service (like speed, price, service, uptime etc.). It will even be better if you can list them in order of importance, but this is not necessary (if you did do it please mention it).

It will be great if you can take the time to help us with this investigation. I think it will be of great value if we have an objective system against which Telkom, Sentech etc can not argue!

Regards,

RPM

 

[mbs]

The first three are in order of importance from my point of view, the rest are in no particular order:

1. PRICE/COST (must be at least genuinely comparable to other country offerings)
2. UNSHAPED (at least for local traffic)
3. NO CAP (capping of the service is completely unjustifiable in our economic growth scenario)

24-HR SERVICE, SPEED, LATENCY, CONTENTION (should be drastically reduced or none), CONTINUOUS AVAILABILITY, BACKBONE OWNERSHIP (should be owned by Government to ensure equable access to all).

 

[onionpeel]

In order of priority

1. Price
- Synonomous with value for money and affordability
2. No service restrictions
- Services or features that would otherwise be restricted (volume cap, port shaping, dynamic IP address etc.), should be differentiated by a higher price, not lumped onto everybody. Preferably, there shouldn't be any
3. Low international latency/ping time
- I am an online gamer, so response time is a factor
4. Subscription variety
- Many offerings means that customers can choose the package which best suits their needs
5. Service availability
- Uptime
6. Customer service
- Product knowledge, friendliness etc.

 

[bb_matt]

1. Reliability - running a business that is completely internet orientated requires absolute reliability. Being offline for more than a day could seriously damage what I do for a living.

2. Customer Service - related to the above, if I'm offline due to a fault, I need to know when it's going to be resolved and I need to be told the truth right off the bat. I do not want to hear the lame excuses dolled out to Joe Public

3. Consistent Speeds - I'm well aware that the speed of ANY connection will fluctuate, but some consistency needs to be in place. It's fine to have slow speeds once in a while, but overall, I expect to get what I pay for

4. Privacy - I need to know that my ISP will protect my privacy within reason. Sure, if there's some dodgy stuff going down that's highly illegal, it's understandable if the authorities are notified, but if my email and billing details are accidentally leaked - as was the recent case with Sentech - that's NOT good.

5. Cost - I put this last, because it's just so laughable in South Africa right now there's no point in putting it first. It's completely obvious that we are paying too much.

 

[hArTh]

It would be usefull if some of the info collection could be automated via a small client side app reporting to a central server .... makes the info rather more objective.

With this sort of info a live page could be populated with all the relevant statistics: pings, maximum bw, .... People could then just click on the "status" page and see how things are going with ADSL (various flavours), MW, iBurst and 3G etc. Perhaps even WISPs.

Of course the app would need to take note of, and compensate for, client side activity, perhaps only collect data while the clients connection is idle?

IIRC such an app was semi-developed in the early days of the MW launch.

 

[martin]

The first three are in order of importance from my point of view, the rest are in no particular order:

1. PRICE/COST (must be at least genuinely comparable to other country offerings)
2. UNSHAPED (at least for local traffic)
3. NO CAP (capping of the service is completely unjustifiable in our economic growth scenario)

24-HR SERVICE, SPEED, LATENCY, CONTENTION (should be drastically reduced or none), CONTINUOUS AVAILABILITY, BACKBONE OWNERSHIP (should be owned by Government to ensure equable access to all).

I'll just second this, in the same order.

 

[stoke]

Rating needs to be categorised first, cos each category has different priorities.
C1 = Business Use
C1P1 = Uptime/Stability Record/Garauntee
C1P2 = Service Level & Repair Time Agreements
C1P3 = Price/MB
C1P4 = Range of Package Options suited to business (Rate of Data Transfer)
C2 = Gamer
C2P1 = Low Latency Local
C2P2 = Price/MB
C2P3 = Low Latency Inernational
C2P4 = Range of Package Options suited to business (Rate of Data Transfer)
C3 = Casual User (Browser + Chatter + Emailer + Light Downloader (<1GB))
C3P1 = Price/MB + Low Setup Costs
C3P2 = Uptime/Stability Record/Garauntee
C3P3 = Service Level & Repair Time Agreements
C3P4 = Range of Package Options suited to business (Rate of Data Transfer)
C4 = Heavy Downloader
C4P1 = Range of Package Options suited to business (Rate of Data Transfer)
C4P2 = Price/MB
C4P3 = Uptime/Stability Record/Garauntee
C4P4 = Service Level & Repair Time Agreements

Then, a voting type system to nominate the best overall from the categories.