Datapro

TheRoDent

TheRoDent

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OK. So, like. I have many Datapro accounts, DSL.

Douglas? When are you chaps going to notify your customers of the pending cockup come 1st November? I'm posting this here, because I know they read these forums.
 
DataPro's ADSL Strategy & Range

These are indicative and not finalised but it will give you all a ball park on what we are planning.

Telkom's Offering

When Telkom's hard cap is introduced we will provide two solutions Shaped and Unshaped on a usage basis with self regulated caps.

The Unshaped witll be approximately R400 for 3GB and R150 per GB thereafter.
The Shaped witll be approximately R200 for 3GB and R75 per GB thereafter

The cap will be set by the user and we are looking at a soft cap as apposed to a hard cap, in other words restrict the soluton to 32 Kb/s, this will enable the customers to fix their monthly costs but also to increase the cap for the current month or permanently change the cap. We will invoice out usage but not exceed the self imposed cap.

This solution will come with a Dynamic IP address, Fixed IP addresses will be available later. These solutions will be suitable for all users, consumers, businesses and Corporates. We will be promoting Unshaped as this is what the standard should be when equating with world offerings.

Telkom have refused to peer with us on the ADSL cloud and as a result we will incur huge costs to service the mail, we will make this a seperate fight and are looking at combining with all the smaller ADSL Suppliers to get the economies of scale right. Our Current cost to the ADSL Cloud is R27,000 per 2 Mb/s. Once we get this right we will look at bringing prices down further.

The overwhelming majority of our ADSL customers at DataPro and Atlantic will be better off from a service point of view as well as price. The customers that relied on unlimited local for their solutions will be effected but we will work around them to enusre they are not worse off.

Business ADSL

We will promoting the fixed IP Address Uncapped 512 Kb/s and 1024 Kb/s soluition at R1350 and R2700. We will service the current Business ADSL users on UUNET, DataPro and IS networks but encourage them to move over to the fixed IP address range or the usage based products.

Overall we think these changes will be better for the sector and we are racing against time to get the systmes in place.
Douglas Reed
 
Thanks for the quick response. I disagree that this will be better for the sector. The international trend is to implement usage based capping for broadband services, but there is NO trend to implement a per-gigabyte charge for a home user product. Those practices are restricted to the cellular companies, and wireless data providers.

Downthrottling a heavy user is the accepted trend in the DSL market. Large, gracious nearly unattainable caps are the standard. Charging per gigabyte is not. The industry needs to tackle Telkom, instead of just thinking of ways to accomodate Telkom's next business model.

The ridiculousness of it all, is that a gigabyte of international traffic, is costing the same as a local gig. I can guarantee you that the customers hosted in your datacenter are going to disappear, as they all find out that it's cheaper to host a site internationally, than with you. End users won't care if a site is local or internationally hosted, since a GIG is a GIG, be it local, or international.

The whole point behind the internet, and routing, was to be able to localize IP traffic, over cheap links by exchanging (peering) traffic with other networks and hosts.

These new costs of our links, per packet, is now effectively fixed, regardless of destination, thus nullyfying the entire point behind "least cost" IP routing.

This whole move is setting a precedent in the South African broadband market that will be VERY difficult to get rid of in the future.


I will be cancelling all my DSL accounts at Datapro, and moving my hosted servers. I refuse to sponsor local gigabytes at the price of international gigabytes.

Once again, I can only applaud Internet Solutions's innovative strategy by offering a product with an effective 30g "local" cap, after a user has depleted his 3Gig "international" portion. Internet Solutions has been consistently giving back to the very fabric that makes the internet work. It's users. This philosophy is what makes them one of the top ISP's in this country. They will be receiving my business.
 
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Well said Rodent, we in SA seem to always be going in the opposite (wrong?) direction to world trends.

When everyone is getting faster speeds for the same price, we are getting slower speeds for more - when everyone is getting increased caps we are getting smaller caps.
 
27 grand for 2Mbps - proud ROBBERY by Telscum.

For every step we go forward, Telkom yanks the leash and pulls us two steps back.

_|_ to them.
 
This has nothing to do with the data centre, we are revamping this offering as well as well as offering mail server hosting to other DSL suppliers at a good price. The only reason that the solution outlined above doesn’t meet your requirements is becasue you must be using extensive local, as mentioned we will tailor a product that makes commericial sense for you.
Also if we have to produce a 30 MB cap we will do so but it seems superflous if you can set your own cap.
 
Off Topic

Hi there RoDent

This is Rodger Hoffman, you wanted some files from me.... ZA Hub - StrondDC++

I am most willing to share? How should we hook up to swap DVD or data?

Thanks
RH
 
Let me put it this way:

I develop, on servers, hosted at your datacenter. This means that a lot of uploading/downloading of database dumps, content, etcetera, as is normal for development occurences.

I am NOT going to be using my "precious" 3Gig of international traffic to do that. I'd rather host at IS then, where I get 30Gig free local traffic for development purposes, at cheaper (R169) than even your introductory offering. Considering the issues with peering amongst ISP's it makes sense to go with an ISP that you can directly access from the ADSL network when it comes to considering hosting suppliers.

I think that Datapro should innovate around the 1st of November changes, instead of as you've explained so far, accomodating their changes. Either that, or you have to consider a special offer for customers with hosted servers.

Do you see now, how charging per gig, can damage your datacenter business? Do you see how accomodating Telkom's pricing changes is hurting the industry? IS's offering encourages me to continue hosting my servers locally, and it encourages me to host them with IS. Your planned offerings do not (as yet). I realize that I'm probably a small portion of the market, but the enduser numbers are huge. The fact is that a local GIG is now the same as an international GIG, and thus, for end-users it makes no difference anymore, where a site is colocated.

It is thus not useful for a content hoster, to host locally anymore, aside from a few logistical issues.

The same applies for all the other ISP's in this country, I'm not singling out Datapro in this discussion.

The crux is that this pricing model is BAD for the industry. Not GOOD. I hope I can convince you of this.
 
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Douglas, kudos mate, you have effectively sidestepped the real emphasis behind Rodent's argument - that being the fact that hard capping now means that all local traffic a DSL user generates is now as expensive to them as international.

Forget your precious data center - btw California has some great server farms that will soon effectively cost me the same to access as your local servers - and start seeing the wood for the trees.

Usage based billing only makes sense if the usage blocks are appropriately priced and are atomic in nature.

Charging per gig should be differentiated according to the destination of the traffic. Local gigs should be priced far below international gigs - however the current model seeks to avoid that.
Personally I find your support of this model quite disturbing, and completely self-serving - since obviously everytime a user produces local traffic instead of international traffic, *someone* in the ISP side of things will score.

The current international cap with unlimited local has obtusely granted an incentive for people to use the local internet at will and unfettered.
For local content providers this is an important factor in determining whether or not to fork out for massively overpriced local hosting.

For the savvy user, the new model explicitly puts a premium on international usage since effectively users are going to be hard capped anyway.

I guess thats what it comes down to.
The savvy user is against the new model for obvious reason.

Datapro, by being in favour of the new model must be seeking to rather snag the "unsavvy" users.
What goes around will come around though.
Remember the unsavvy usually find guidance from the savvy.
 
Why doesn't Telkom sell a 'local-only' 30GB account for say R100?

Then ISP's can provide GB's to the the international portion at a price which they set. Surely that's a reasonable idea?
 
When has Telkom ever been "reasonable"?

They sell local bandwidth at the same price an international because it serves them in the short term. It troubles me to see how short sighted they are!
 
It beggars all belief that a corporate would kow-tow to Telkrap's dictates - a drastic mind-set change is warranted, imho. At this stage of the game, the simple threat of moving over to the SNO when its services do indeed materialise, should be sufficient to cause Telkrap to back-peddle on its pricing model and levels. And the more so if business (including all ISP's) form a common front in this regard. What has the ISPA done about this - not in terms of mere public statements, but definitive action? Anyway, that's my naive opinion...
 
MaD said:
Why doesn't Telkom sell a 'local-only' 30GB account for say R100?

Then ISP's can provide GB's to the the international portion at a price which they set. Surely that's a reasonable idea?
Click to expand...
Thats an awesome idea!
 
Its pity Datapro dont combine CONSTRUCTiVLY with fighting Telkom against this change. It makes me feel theyre are more interested in the buck than the consumer.
 
refer to all my posts over the months about datapro, from their initial uncapped offering which was uncapped yes but "you can adjust your uncappness by paying more for more usage" system.

WOW!
 
TheRoDent said:
Let me put it this way:

I develop, on servers, hosted at your datacenter. This means that a lot of uploading/downloading of database dumps, content, etcetera, as is normal for development occurences.
Click to expand...

Although it's good for people to see this in a way, I really think it belongs as a private discussion. Little unproffesional.
 
I'm inclined to disagree - transparency of this kind ultimately results in a win-win situation for all, witness the suspicion and mistrust concerning other providers (ayce as a case in point, also the non-disclosure of the basis for capping motivations and pricing formulations by Telkrap).
 
Business complains between businesses should be done in confidentiality, especialy given DataPro's situation - their marketing and package formation is their own business. I don't see any need for them to be brought to the stake in a public forum about it, there is enough competition for people to make their own choices.
 
Perhaps - however, the fact of public exposure will potentially do more to ensure the provision of a satisfactory service at a reasonable price than private negotiations, if the supplier is sensitive to market share and future growth. Seen in this context, the more eye-balls, the better...
 
Douglasr said:
Our Current cost to the ADSL Cloud is R27,000 per 2 Mb/s.
Click to expand...

It's official. Telkom's broadband prices are R27000/R244=110 times :eek: more than the US, and that's for a slower service. Don't start that "don't compare SA to 1st world countries" BS. If it were 2 or 3 times more expensive then I'd accept that stupid statement. HTF can Telkom justify this?

Look at the month-to-month 3Mbit DSL plan
http://www22.verizon.com/ForHomeDSL/channels/dsl/packages/default.asp

R75 per gig compared to the R5 (soon to be 50c) slimothy charges on his international servers :confused: WTF is going on here Telkom :mad:
 
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