Capped versus uncapped ADSL

MickeyD said:
I support very high capped unshaped accounts instead of cheap 'n nasty uncapped shaped accounts.

At this stage (pre-content streaming in SA) I would be happy with a 250Gb account.
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deweyzeph said:
ISP's don't pay per megabyte for their upstream bandwidth, so why should consumers?
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Sure, but it is a good method to manage the contention which makes the lines cheaper for the consumer - at some point you can't get much cheaper without adding more users to the same amount of national and international line rental. Then a couple of idiots burn through TBs of illegal downloads and make everyone else's experience crap.

I don't see a problem with capped if the pricing structures were improved - If I could pay R200 for a 100GB or more - happy. If you want to throw some extra shaped/throttled etc on top of that even better. Why not make it 20GB peak/100GB off peak or something in that line?

I wish we could get a basic rate service that is uncapped and then buy cheap unshaped GBs (which allow full line speed) on top of that without having to change accounts. Then I can pick my basic service set and buy extended services as I need and see fit.

MickeyD said:
I support very high capped unshaped accounts instead of cheap 'n nasty uncapped shaped accounts.

At this stage (pre-content streaming in SA) I would be happy with a 250Gb account.
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Content streaming is already here - DSTV Ondemand. You should see the amount of GB I have burned through because of that and they aren't even doing full HD yet...
 
I would rather prefer high cap, high speeds than uncapped. 100GB per month on 20 MBps line is way more palatable to me than 4 Mbps uncapped.

Frankly if you are currently downloading more than 100 GB you are a premium user and you can pay a bit extra. Uncapped works overseas because of low-end users subsidizing high-end users. Because the way our market is structured we don't have that many low-end users (they are mostly on 3G), and I am not going to subsidize content hoarders. If you are watching more than 100 GB of movies per month and/or downloading more than 100 GB open source software and/or streaming more than 100 GB you should maybe get some sun in any case, it will be healthy.
 
The ISPs will always have some excuse to not drop prices because they can say that they will lose either way since the folks who now use 10GB to 20GB on uncapped will go buy a 50GB capped bundle for half the price of uncapped and use the full 50GB. So the ISPs will lose revenue and have increased costs.
 
:D Well at least I think this discussion represents progress. I remember when there was no 'uncapped' services and we were all being forced to live of 1-10GB of ridiculously expensive data. Remember the problem where you could use up your cap in a day? I'm so glad those days are gone.

For me personally I prefer an uncapped offering. Not that I use all that much (I'm not one of those people who try to duplicate the internet on their PCs ), but rather because I just dont want to think about my internet account. I just want to pay a reasonable amount and then it must just be there.

Prices and performance are still not on par with most of the rest of the world, but even so the value of our internet services have experienced incredible growth since the first uncapped packages came out. So in my mind uncapped internet is a harbinger of progress and value to the user.

Although I feel easier about the cost of internet to myself these days I still perceive Telkom as a threat to fair internet services though. They would take things back the way it was if they could.
 
If by aggressive pricing they mean I can get a 250GB capped 4mb package for cheaper than I currently pay for an uncapped 4mb package than I'd welcome it with open arms.
 
Alestorm said:
Honestly, RPM, why not at least challenge him on a false statement like "all uncapped services are throttled back after certain usage"? It gets printed on the front page here as if it's a ceridble statement from an industry leader. :(

We all know very well that the biggest and most prominent uncapped, MWeb, does not throttle back after any certain limit and many users here do hundreds of GB every month, that is truly uncapped (with shaping, as it's advertised). Obviously Altech can't get the subscriber numbers that MWeb have in order to make uncapped sustainable, so he tries to make it look bad.

He does have a point that it's not fair to all subscribers, but if you don't need uncapped then you can happily buy capped accounts. If you want the freedom of uncapped you can also easily afford it. Nothing wrong with this scenario. Sitting with 10,20,50 etc GB caps will still limit our internet usage, rather severely at the <50GB point.
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My sentiments exactly. Wayne is a goddamn liar and should be called out on it. RPM, why do you give him the platform to flat-out lie like that? Legitimate criticisms are fine, in fact they help consumers a lot. But just spewing bull**** to try and discredit the competition? Who does he think he is, the Apple marketing department? Mweb does have real uncapped. Yes it is shaped (for some people a lot, but I've always been getting full speed). But they do advertise it as such. It doesn't depend on how much you've used, just on network loads. And there are unshaped versions available at higher cost too. So this is just the whole "unsustainable" nonsense all over again. Old people who want to send 5 e-mails a month and read the front page of "quilts-review.com" or "adultdiaperroundup.org" occasionaly are free to buy the silly little tiny cap accounts if they don't need uncapped. The rest of us who have many devices connected constantly and don't want to count every byte of data transferred, will stick with uncapped, kthx.
 
Stevie G said:
the real question is choice? what package will suit you according your needs and not have a model like dstv where you get forced to pay the full amount to only watch certain stuff.
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Exactly. And currently the only choice is that you can pay through your arse for GB's or pay for an uncapped solution. Nothing inbetween.
 
Jladan said:
I personally would be happy with about 100gig unshaped at about 400 pm + line at 10 mbps (trying to be reasonable here)

<Rant>
I have a question for anyone who regularly goes over 150 -200 gigs per month. Are you telling me you are able to do such a quanatity of data without pirating anything? If you are pirating things you are pretty much in breach of every single AUP I have ever seen locally and internationally. Yet you are amongst the first to complain about speed / price etc.

In my opinion if you wanna steal everyones work for you own benefit at least be willing to pay the premium price for the unshaped uncapped account instead of whinging how you R450 uncapped account won't allow you to download the enitre interwebs...

I mean seriously guys this is what some users sound like:

"I can't believe how much money it costs to steal other peoples work, and then once I've stolen a lot of other peoples work I get throttled! How unfair is life? People devote their entire working lives to create this program / movie etc I wanna watch in glorius HD, now I am expected to actually pay for it? Whatever..."

</Rant>
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i could not agree more
 
If these people actually believed what they were saying, why aren't they putting thier money where thier mouth is and offering the services they claim would suit both the ISP's and the consumers better?

Give me 150Gb of data for less than the price of an uncapped account and the same or better quality service, and I'll be the first to sign up.
 
ATC have by all accounts been active mostly in the Business space. For Business's a fixed bill per month, with predictable performance regardless of the time of day is very important - hence the reason that Uncapped is the only the way to go. The trick is to make sure the ISP is giving you a true unshaped, un-thottled Uncapped offering. That's why you pay a premium for a Business product over the consumer version - and contrary to Wayne's statement there are offerings like this on the market - for eg. MWEB's Business Uncapped products!
 
Johand said:
Uncapped works overseas because of low-end users subsidizing high-end users. Because the way our market is structured we don't have that many low-end users (they are mostly on 3G), and I am not going to subsidize content hoarders. If you are watching more than 100 GB of movies per month and/or downloading more than 100 GB open source software and/or streaming more than 100 GB you should maybe get some sun in any case, it will be healthy.
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irrelevant of what i am downloading, why should i pay more if i dl 100 200 or even more?
 
Johand said:
Uncapped works overseas because of low-end users subsidizing high-end users. Because the way our market is structured we don't have that many low-end users (they are mostly on 3G), and I am not going to subsidize content hoarders.
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That's a circular argument, our market is "structured" that way because low-end products are incredibly f-ing expensive here. Overseas you pay maybe a couple hundred bucks a month ALL INCLUSIVE - no extra "DSL line rental" vs data, no compulsory extra "voice line rental" (it's included), generally at least 2Mbits/sec (usually higher), and generally allows a very high usage if capped at all. If it was actually sold at a reasonable price we would have many more low-end, low-usage users signed up. Here you will be lucky if R500/month buys you a 265 kilobits/s "shaped" and throttled DSL product.

Sigh --- still rehashing arguments and business models and having to explain things that the rest of the world figured out in the previous century. This whole thread is a time warp. Is that a dinosaur over there?

Regardless, whether capped or uncapped, I don't care - what I do want is it to be cheap (like most other countries), and we don't have any cheap options ANYWHERE at all.

Anyway, I generally use about 50GB/month, on uncapped I would probably use between 50GB and 100GB. In the beginning I did more, but I started running out of things to download, running out of hard disk space for it, and now that we're caught up with old series etc., we can't really watch more than that anyway.
 
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Don't even think about it. Capped products are not good enough.
 
Tns said:
irrelevant of what i am downloading, why should i pay more if i dl 100 200 or even more?
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Because you use the network more? All consumer internet access have contention ratios - even overseas. If you don't have caps and everybody has the mentality that they can keep the lines as busy as they possibly can then the speed will drop. I'd rather have the speed, plus a very good idea of what I can do.

Tick said:
That's a circular argument, our market is "structured" that way because low-end products are incredibly f-ing expensive here.
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I were not commenting on the cost, I was commenting on the structure. Overseas they have high penetration fixed lines and/or cable so deploying additional fixed line internet connections are cheap but above all FAST. They have multile competing national fiber backhaul networks. Here we don't have high fixed line penetration, we have cable theft etc, and on the mobile side the barrier to entry is much much cheaper than a lot of overseas countries. Note barrier of entry on mobile is lower and cheaper - because a SIM cost 50c, you can buy it at Pick n Pay, and can load data bundles at will and you can be up and running in 10 minutes. Overseas this is not that common.

Cost is a different thing.

But maybe I should clarify - I think there is space in the market for both approaches. But there trade offs both ways. You can have your uncapped, low speed access (and I consider 4Mbps slow). I want fast internet ( 20 MBps +) and will gladly take a high cap (100GB) if this is what makes it affordable.

You cannot have both while Telkom is ruling the roost, and to displace them will take years of investment by other players. I have a lot of respect for the different companies because they are trying to make things happen with the constraints they have. And frankly it is unfair to knock companies who are trying to give consumers options. But I guess the proof is in the pudding. Vote with your wallet.
 
people does not understand that with our current infrastructure, uncapped is not fully possible because of insuffient backhaul capacity. once full LLU and FTTH has been implimented, capped products will fade eventually out. but for now to have a win-win situation the best option is high cap packages.
 
I love my ISP seeing im getting what I paid for. And if some guy wants to throw tantrums about it, then thats his problem
 
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