Confused Newbie

[phly]

Firstly, hello to you all. This is my first post on the forum and from what i have read all you guys seem knowledgable in vast areas of telecommunications and IT industry. I have a long list of questions however the one i have at the moment is the most pressing one.

I am helping a friend start up an internet cafe. Most of the required items are in place. from fax machine to the pc's required. Basically the basics are there and yes he has done research and confident that a cyber cafe will make money. Not crazy money but it will be in support of other business and its just to bring in a flow of people. Anyways, my main problem is internet. I have used 3g net most of my short net life and I'm clueless as to the things pertaining ADSL. We were looking at about 10gb/month package however from the little research i have done, uncapped seems like a viable option. Secondly, Telkom by itself seem very expensive and so what i need are alternatives. Basically the most cost effective route is what i need. My concern is the "hidden" or unmentioned fees. I understand that the basic line rental can only be gotten from telkom so no two ways about that. But then i started seeing there is ADSL Line rental too and then the package cost per month plus i suspect other extra costs not forgetting the installation cost of like R700.

I just need a breakdown of what it will cost to just have the internet in the place keeping in mind we don't even have a landline yet. So basically the costs from the ground up. And what company will be the best to side with. MWEB prices seem decent and i read almost every month afrihost seems to just be giving data away. Oh, the cyber will start off with about 6 systems. I main/server one and 5 for the clients. Thanks for any and all input.

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

Firstly, hello to you all. This is my first post on the forum and from what i have read all you guys seem knowledgable in vast areas of telecommunications and IT industry. I have a long list of questions however the one i have at the moment is the most pressing one.

I am helping a friend start up an internet cafe. Most of the required items are in place. from fax machine to the pc's required. Basically the basics are there and yes he has done research and confident that a cyber cafe will make money. Not crazy money but it will be in support of other business and its just to bring in a flow of people. Anyways, my main problem is internet. I have used 3g net most of my short net life and I'm clueless as to the things pertaining ADSL. We were looking at about 10gb/month package however from the little research i have done, uncapped seems like a viable option. Secondly, Telkom by itself seem very expensive and so what i need are alternatives. Basically the most cost effective route is what i need. My concern is the "hidden" or unmentioned fees. I understand that the basic line rental can only be gotten from telkom so no two ways about that. But then i started seeing there is ADSL Line rental too and then the package cost per month plus i suspect other extra costs not forgetting the installation cost of like R700.

I just need a breakdown of what it will cost to just have the internet in the place keeping in mind we don't even have a landline yet. So basically the costs from the ground up. And what company will be the best to side with. MWEB prices seem decent and i read almost every month afrihost seems to just be giving data away. Oh, the cyber will start off with about 6 systems. I main/server one and 5 for the clients. Thanks for any and all input.

Seeing this is for an internet cafe you should get the fastest line you can afford and a business class data package.

Depending if ADSL is available in your area, you should go for the 4/10MBit option, the ADSL portion of this costs around R500 for a business. You are already paying the analog rental then seeing you have a fax machine.

For an internet cafe you will have to get uncapped, you don't have any other option unless you want to bankrupt yourself.

Afrihost has some line/data bundles which are quite cheap, but then I wouldn't recommend them but if you're on a budget then you may not have another option. Check here: http://www.afrihost.com/site/product/business_adsl_bundles?src=nav

I would however recommend getting a OpenWeb Platinum uncapped 4Mbit data account: http://openweb.co.za/business_adsl/platinum_uncapped_dynamic.html

You should also have some sort of backup connection like 3G or Wireless connection when the ADSL fails (and yes it will go down from time to time).

You should also invest in a good router and firewall with good quality of service options and monitoring so you can control what is going on with the workstations connections.


You should however give an indication here on what the budget is for connectivity, seeing it is the main business I would assume it would be at the top of the priority list.

 

[phly]

The business is alongside another business so its not the main major business. However we have plans to grow it to a point that it will be able to stand by itself and becomes the "go to place" for all IT needs. However we have to start somewhere and given how pricey everything is we are tring to cut down costs. Cyber cafe's hardly make much money however with the addition of other services like the entire range of photography and video needs for weddings and events and ID photos as well as repairs and troubleshooting amongst a wide criteria of things that all fall under the cyber umbrella like graphics design as well as website development i reckon we may just survive.

We just acquired a fax machine but do not have it connected. We don't have a single telephone line thats why i was asking for the prices from the ground up. Differences between 4mbps line and 2mbps line because i was reading even if you have a 4mbps package and have a 2mbps line you wont be able to utilize the full 4mbps bandwidth. We are young people trying to offer a service to the community and we are already far ahead to turn back.
I hadn't factored in needing a backup fail plan like 3g. Thank you very much for the links i will look em up and see what they offer respectively. We have a router on standby too. Firewall shouldnt be a problem and to even get monitoring software and time allocation cyber cafe software is also not an issue. Just want to know what it will cost us to get a line from telkom and have internet running in the place. Once again thank you for the input @ DrJohnZoidberg

 

[Tim the Techxpert]

Hi There,
DrJohnZoidberg does make a lot of sense with his suggestions especially the backup. In starting something like this it is the quality of the service that is going to be remembered and keep the people coming back.
Afrihost also offers business packages which can give you unshaped connectivity. he problem with the uncapped is that when you reach a threshold then your international traffic is throttled in terms of the fair usage policy and hence if anyone is surfing to internatinal sites then they will not have as good a user experience.
They are not the only ISP to offer them but I use them at home and they also manage my physical line so there is one point of call if there is a problem
MTN business will also offer packages to you but I suspect that you will find that they are more expensive than you would want to spend. I can get the business guys to contact you if you want.

Regards

Tim

 

[HavocXphere]

phly you're greatly underestimating the amount of data cap you'll need...10gb you can smoke through in about 3 hours on a 10mb line. So if you think its going to last a month then you're in for a surprise...

zoid has the right idea with the Openweb plat uncapped. Expensive as hell, but I don't think you've got much of a choice here. Going for something cheaper will just bite you in the ass.

Fail over to 3G sounds like a bad plan to me just from a cost side...rather close the doors temporarily & take the hit reputation wise.

 

[phly]

Hmm... interesting, I know 10gb is not alot, even i can use that in about a week but at the back of my mind I didnt figure the clients would use up that much. Clearly this is something i would need to sit down and explore all the options on the table. Much harder than i thought as I presumed i would go for the cheap but decent net and have it sustain the business just slightly while I gather enough cash to further invest in it. Clearly things are turning out differently. Will need to check this whole entire thing from a completely different line of perspective. But thank you all for all the input. Much appreciated.

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

Hmm... interesting, I know 10gb is not alot, even i can use that in about a week but at the back of my mind I didnt figure the clients would use up that much. Clearly this is something i would need to sit down and explore all the options on the table. Much harder than i thought as I presumed i would go for the cheap but decent net and have it sustain the business just slightly while I gather enough cash to further invest in it. Clearly things are turning out differently. Will need to check this whole entire thing from a completely different line of perspective. But thank you all for all the input. Much appreciated.

No problems. Please ask here if you need to get any info, lot of people here willing to give their advice.

As mentioned above also, 10GB is a very small amount of data and everybody will have different usage habits. Some people will want to watch HD YouTube videos which will burn through data very quickly.

To put it into perspective I consume about 10GB in one or two days and I am only a moderately heavy user (I do about 200GB monthly).

 

[phly]

That is why I had stated in the beginning that we will discourage youtube users or charge a slightly higher fee for youtube viewing. Downloading as well will be discouraged. Taking out the huge data consumers such as you tube or video streaming and downloading be it direct or in torrent forms only leaves normal web surfing which definitely cannot eat up that much data, either way uncapped seems to be the best option to go.

Also even if the uncapped gets shaped or throttled in any way it will be on higher usage say around 50gb threshold so even if the estimated 10gb usage gets quadrupled, we will still be below the 50gb threshold. And in the same manner that ISP's offer uncapped data, the least users will help subsidize for the higher margin users. Atleast that's how I'm looking at it from a business point of view.

 

[DanH]

I don't think you should even consider a non-uncapped option.

To give you an idea I do 160-220gig/s month at home on a 2mbit line and I don't do torrents/newsservers/mass downloading.

Depending on the number of users you would need at least a 2mbit/s ADSL connection, preferably a 4/10mbit one.
That consists of 3 things:

• Post paid VOICE line from Telkom
• ADSL access on that line from Telkom
• uncapped ADSL DATA account from an ISP

You are going to be paying business prices, not residential prices to telkom.

ADSL data would need to be business grade as well, not the shaped home grade accounts.

Then strictly speaking you cannot resell internet access using a regular data account. You would be expected to use a re-sellers data account. $$$

You would then need a decent firewall setup. Maybe setup a stand alone PC for firewall purposes.
You need to be:
monitoring traffic volumes
monitoring session times
restricting access to certain sites, porn, etc
blocking torrenting, P2P content
etc

I don't think its reasonable to block streaming video at an internet cafe.

And expect data usage to be +100GB/month and as the business grows this should grow rapidly too.

Good luck

 

[phly]

@DanH I noted those 3 things you mentioned. But say you were in my shoes. Which packages and from what company would you go with? And approximately how much would those cost as its the price that I really want to know of so that when I commit i know what i'm committing to and what amount will be expected from me every month.