Doing away with bandwidth wastage

[rpm]

http://mybroadband.co.za/nephp/?m=show&id=559

 

[Scandium]

CUASA spokesman Ray Webber welcomes the launch of another cost–effective product aimed at the average consumer and small business owner. He says it is the beginning of a trend. “Broadband prices are going to continue to drop,” he says.


The prices arent really dropping, the packages are becoming more and more limited.

 

[LethalChicken]

1 step forward ... 423548235428139580760943563947657632487236 steps back

 

[warichard]

Prices aren't dropping at all, in fact they seem to be increasing. These ISP's are bundling in more and more limited services at similar or slightly lower cost to their old packages. Sure, for low usage users (ie. those who use below 3GB) this is more affordable, but for "high" usage users (ie. those who use more than 3GB) it becomes more costly. We should be striving to offer higher caps at similar or lower costs, not lower caps at similar or lower costs. But then again, it seems to be the current trend is to price things using the argument "what we can get away with", no doubt this is why Telkom has priced their ADSL accordingly for November. They're not stupid, they've taken a look at the current market, taken a look at how much everyone else would be able to provide 30GB at, and marked their ADSL accordingly. No-one can offer 30GB at a more affordable rate without some *serious* overselling or cross-subsidisation of products.

I still cringe when I think about the way ADSL is going to turn out in November, for your average ADSL user, even though the price of 512K ADSL has come down by approx. R100, they may end up paying more than R100 extra for their usage, which means that for your *average* 512K ADSL user, ADSL has just become that much more expensive - anywhere from R100 to R1000 more expensive (and beyond).

 

[bwana]

CUASA spokesman Ray Webber welcomes the launch of another cost–effective product aimed at the average consumer and small business owner. He says it is the beginning of a trend. “Broadband prices are going to continue to drop,” he says.

Shame - all these villages that are missing their idiots.

ADSL and now iBurst - whats with the SA trend of getting less for more? Come November back to dial up for me.

 

[reech]

"CUASA spokesman Ray Webber welcomes the launch of another cost–effective product aimed at the average consumer and small business owner. He says it is the beginning of a trend. “Broadband prices are going to continue to drop,” he says." --

small business !? it would have to be a frackin' microscopic business to get by on 500mb

 

[Chunkyfeather]

Guess I better cancel my ADSL order

And stick with ISDN dialup.

*sigh* just when ADSL was looking promising :

 

[erMaC]

This is getting worse

they can top up pay-as-you-go style, at R139 for 500MB

Umm.. thats R278/gig that is just madness! More than a standard 3gig ADSL account

 

[bwana]

Prices aren't dropping at all, in fact they seem to be increasing. These ISP's are bundling in more and more limited services at similar or slightly lower cost to their old packages. Sure, for low usage users (ie. those who use below 3GB) this is more affordable, but for "high" usage users (ie. those who use more than 3GB) it becomes more costly. We should be striving to offer higher caps at similar or lower costs, not lower caps at similar or lower costs. But then again, it seems to be the current trend is to price things using the argument "what we can get away with", no doubt this is why Telkom has priced their ADSL accordingly for November. They're not stupid, they've taken a look at the current market, taken a look at how much everyone else would be able to provide 30GB at, and marked their ADSL accordingly. No-one can offer 30GB at a more affordable rate without some *serious* overselling or cross-subsidisation of products.

I still cringe when I think about the way ADSL is going to turn out in November, for your average ADSL user, even though the price of 512K ADSL has come down by approx. R100, they may end up paying more than R100 extra for their usage, which means that for your *average* 512K ADSL user, ADSL has just become that much more expensive - anywhere from R100 to R1000 more expensive (and beyond).

Come now warichard - WA and the other budget high-cap users have inadvertently served telkom well. (NB I said - inadvertently)

Telkom's taken their strategy right out of the crack-dealer handbook. Give the customers a taste of high bandwidth availability at one price - get em hooked - then command stratospheric prices. The bandwidth junkies are going to pay whatever it takes for their fix. Sure - perhaps they'll cut down for a while but before long they'll be forking out enough money to pay a bond off.

How much longer before the others (iburst et al) also adopt the telkom model?

 

[stoke]

...small business !? it would have to be a frackin' microscopic business to get by on 500mb

Melikes - but - Aaaaw - comon - you're allowed one email to 1 person per day. Watch your business grow.

Watch the teklom business golf tournament on TV, and then puke merrily allover the floor when a "This TMO Decision was brought to you by Teklom" appears at the bottom of the screen during a rugby game.

 

[Sneeky]

Telkom's taken their strategy right out of the crack-dealer handbook. Give the customers a taste of high bandwidth availability at one price - get em hooked - then command stratospheric prices.

There is so much truth in that statement, it should be published and broadcast everywhere.
Well said Bwana

 

[arni1954]

CUASA spokesman is simply clueless.

 

[TheRoDent]

Communications User ASSociation of South Africa

 

[bwana]

Communications User ASSociation of South Africa

How dare they speak on my behalf when I've never heard of these people. As a communications user I do not agree with the misguided drivel spewing from that spokesperson.

Surely they would have a representative here in our forum - being its essentially a forum of communications users.

EDIT - had a look on their site - to have any input into CUASA documents you need to contribute financially - between r2500 and r10000 depending on how loud you want your voice to be. I take even more offense to their name now.

 

[warichard]

bwana, I most certainly agree, we as resellers of the ADSL service have done nothing other than promote Telkom's ADSL service and, dare I say, increased the uptake of ADSL within the country (even if by only a marginal amount). However, one must remember, that *no-one* offers a better ADSL service than Telkom themselves (no matter how unfair the reasons for that being may be).

You're right that Telkom has taken this opportunity to "bait" users, as even if users only switch back down to 5 or 3GB accounts, they still remain ADSL subscribers (many of which who may have gone for the 24 month contract to get the ADSL router), the ADSL ISP's have deliberately gone out of their way to grow the ADSL user base (and I say deliberately) because ADSL is the way forward for this country, even if at the moment it remains largely unaffordable.

 

[ic]

I wish I had never seen that article, now I feel compelled to comment...

“The problem with most of the broadband offerings in the market place is that you don't always use what you pay for,” says Winston Smith, Sentech portfolio manage for wireless products.

I have seen that statement from Smith before, it sounds like a veiled stab at 3G services that don't allow for bandwidth rollover, well if the cellular 3G operators start offering bandwidth rollover, then that will be a plus for consumers IMO...

Mckechnie acknowledges that the pricing in the market is dropping, crediting competition in the market place as one of the reasons. He says that iBurst has acted as a catalyst in bringing in competitive broadband prices to SA.

Hmmm IMO proof that marketting people are addicted to something - possibly the smell of their own BS or something a tad more dangerous...true that there is a market for iGo, but iGo is not broadband by any stretch of the imagination...

...
Telkom's taken their strategy right out of the crack-dealer handbook. Give the customers a taste of high bandwidth availability at one price - get em hooked - then command stratospheric prices. The bandwidth junkies are going to pay whatever it takes for their fix. Sure - perhaps they'll cut down for a while but before long they'll be forking out enough money to pay a bond off.

How much longer before the others (iburst et al) also adopt the telkom model?

Truth be told, WBS have already done it - they got customers hooked on uncapped bandwidth from November 2004 up to and including March 2005, I think Slimothy will agree with that...Slimothy?