Have your say, vote for Data Bundle Rollover

[Csnoopy]

Nope, only registered members are allowed to vote - keeps the results honest by eliminating multiple duplicated votes.

To get more votes, can you not send the guest user a message of sorts to encourage them to vote, that is if they are involved with the said subject .?

 

[ic]

To get more votes, can you not send the guest user a message of sorts to encourage them to vote, that is if they are involved with the said subject .?

With a bit of effort I'm sure we could spam guests with a message like that, but we don't want to drive people away from MyBroadband .

 

[slkza]

Lost Data

I have just voted for DBR.
Thanks to csnoopy down the road.
Data lost

125829.12 KB June
93,900.8 KB May

 

[Csnoopy]

With a bit of effort I'm sure we could spam guests with a message like that, but we don't want to drive people away from MyBroadband .

True.

 

[SecretCode]

Many guest users are in fact search engines & not really able to vote!

 

[Csnoopy]

How many votes do we need to make Vodacom change there minds ?

 

[AirWolf]

How many votes do we need to make Vodacom change there minds ?

Probably tens of thousands

 

[Csnoopy]

Probably tens of thousands

v3g if this is true ic can't we spam some 3G users I am sure they wont mind.

 

[ic]

v3g if this is true ic can't we spam some 3G users I am sure they wont mind.

v3g, do you have <censored/>'s number, and perhaps when the SIM cards of the strikers are reactivated...

 

[SecretCode]

How many votes do we need to make Vodacom change there minds ?

The only votes that count will be voting with your money - moving your custom to a company that provides 3G with data rollover.

I provide a comprehensive list of alternatives here:

 

[Prometheus]

It is like buying a 2 litre Coke at the Spar and they tell you if you have not finished it in 2 days it will be change into thin air.

This is ludicrous, it is your bandwidth, you bought it, you paid for it and then they want to steal it back when you have not used it all.

I think a better analogy would be buying a 2 litre coke without being able to see inside and somehow if you didn't use it all in the specified time it will not be included in the bottle. So you buy 2 litre and use it up in an hour, then you buy another 2 litre and only use 1 litre before it expires in 2 hours but then when you wanted to use the rest you find out they didn't give it to you or even manufactured it.

So you can't really ask what happens to the data because if you don't use it there is no data to use.

If you can figure out a way to store unused bandwidth, you'll pocket R6B very quickly.....

Something to consider when thinking about this concept (and I'm not advocating it one way or the other, merely giving some info I though others would have posted by now) is the whole supply chain for data communications.

Available bandwidth is a real-time product, i.e. you can't hoard it and is a function of the clock frequency of the links. As such it has a time component, we measure it in Mb/s or Gb/s, etc.

Vodacom does not buy a certain amount of data from companies like Telkom, rather it buys a certain amount of bandwidth. This runs constantly and if no-one is using it, it does not make any difference. It's lost forever.

To put this into perspective, lets assume everyone buys a 1G bundle in a specific month. Vodacom must ensure that there is enough bandwidth to deliver this. But no-one uses it that month. The cost to deliver is still the same to Vodacom. Although the bandwidth was paid for, it was never used. And you can't keep it in a bucket.

The next month everyone wants double the capability and Vodacom provides this (i.e. roll-over). Now the network must deliver the bandwidth and there will be a general performance hit, effectively everyone will run at ~50% of normal download speed. So the complaints come flooding in.

To accommodate this, Vodacom must double up on capacity with the corresponding cost implications.

So you can see when the bundle pricing is calculated, projected usage figures are included and contributes to a specific price.

A possibility to get data roll over could include paying some premium for it (as ic suggested before).

One could also build a range of products with different access speeds at different price points (like we used to have till you guys bitched so much (especially ic!!) that we dropped it.) I still like this idea, it makes a lot of sense to manage bandwidth. Low speed/ low price.

Perhaps but Vodacom does not base its capacity for the month on the amount of bundles it sold but rather on the amount of data used in general in specific areas. External capacity is also paid for only when used so when 1GB of data is downloaded from SAIX an odd R45 is paid whether that is used over 1 month or 6 months. Then there is also the cost of transmission. That is whenever a byte of data is transmitted a pulse of electricity is used, something Vodacom probably doesn't pay for directly on links from Telkom but it does have to pay for it when using own links. So if non-expiring bundles cost more it will defeat the whole purpose of roll over and won't be worth it. That doesn't explain airtime or sms bundles which cost virtually nothing to transmit.

What also doesn't make sense is that the larger bundles cost more than the 2GB bundle. I can't fathom why this is so but Pick n Pay also has the same principle.

 

[Syndyre]

External capacity is also paid for only when used so when 1GB of data is downloaded from SAIX an odd R45 is paid whether that is used over 1 month or 6 months.

I don't think that's true, that's V3G's point, they pay x amount for a peering link with SAIX of a certain capacity and they're charged that regardless of utilisation. They're not charged per GB.

 

[ic]

I don't think that's true, that's V3G's point, they pay x amount for a peering link with SAIX of a certain capacity and they're charged that regardless of utilisation. They're not charged per GB.

I think technically Telkodemonopolies would be charging Vodacom per GB, but it would be the maximum number of gigabytes that such a peering link can accommodate at any given point in time, as well as a distance or length related charge for the peering link, so if it's a 1Gbits/s fibre bandwidth peering link, then Telkodemonopolies would charge for the maximum 1Gbits/s amount of data that can theoretically pass through that link at an second of any day, and if the link is 5km long then Vodacom would have to pay Telkodemonopolies Rx/m [or part thereof] as well.

@Prometheus, get a bulk quote from Telkodemonopolies, for say 100 * 1Mbits/s fibre Digicrap links, on behalf of the company you work for, and post the pricing that you get from Telkodemonopolies.

 

[Syndyre]

I think technically Telkodemonopolies would be charging Vodacom per GB, but it would be the maximum number of gigabytes that such a peering link can accommodate at any given point in time, as well as a distance or length related charge for the peering link, so if it's a 1Gbits/s fibre bandwidth peering link, then Telkodemonopolies would charge for the maximum 1Gbits/s amount of data that can theoretically pass through that link at an second of any day, and if the link is 5km long then Vodacom would have to pay Telkodemonopolies Rx/m [or part thereof] as well.

Maybe but it still doesn't mean much in practical terms.

 

[AirWolf]

How do ADSL ISPs offer rollover on their prepaid ADSL packages?

 

[vodacom3g]

Perhaps but Vodacom does not base its capacity for the month on the amount of bundles it sold but rather on the amount of data used in general in specific areas. External capacity is also paid for only when used so when 1GB of data is downloaded from SAIX an odd R45 is paid whether that is used over 1 month or 6 months.

Where do you get this from?

Then there is also the cost of transmission. That is whenever a byte of data is transmitted a pulse of electricity is used, something Vodacom probably doesn't pay for directly on links from Telkom but it does have to pay for it when using own links.

Again, how do you get to this?

 

[vodacom3g]

I think technically Telkodemonopolies would be charging Vodacom per GB, but it would be the maximum number of gigabytes that such a peering link can accommodate at any given point in time, as well as a distance or length related charge for the peering link, so if it's a 1Gbits/s fibre bandwidth peering link, then Telkodemonopolies would charge for the maximum 1Gbits/s amount of data that can theoretically pass through that link at an second of any day, and if the link is 5km long then Vodacom would have to pay Telkodemonopolies Rx/m [or part thereof] as well.

@Prometheus, get a bulk quote from Telkodemonopolies, for say 100 * 1Mbits/s fibre Digicrap links, on behalf of the company you work for, and post the pricing that you get from Telkodemonopolies.

Remember the network is much bigger than just the links into SAIX. There are thousands of E1 and other links interconnecting the network. These are bought in bits/s, typically in 2Mb/s chunks, right up to multiple 155Mb/s links. You pay for this, if you use it or not.

 

[Syndyre]

How do ADSL ISPs offer rollover on their prepaid ADSL packages?

They pay SAIX per GB, they're effectively just resellers so its a different situation.

 

[ic]

How do ADSL ISPs offer rollover on their prepaid ADSL packages?

They pay SAIX per GB, they're effectively just resellers so its a different situation.

Yep, ADSL ISPs that sell SAIX-ADSL-Rollover accounts, do not have peering links over which their customers' data transfer runs, therefore they are simply resellers of wholesale SAIX bandwidth, which technically means that they aren't real ISPs, which would have a network infrastructure of their own.

If SAIX-ADSL reseller-ISPs were required to have peering links of their own, in order for their customers to use ADSL, then we would be paying even more than the currently exorbitant Telkodemonopolies controlled SAIX-ADSL prices - especially if these ISPs were required to rent those peering links from Telkodemonopolies.

 

[AirWolf]

That said, how then is the relationship between SAIX and ADSL ISPs different from the relationship between VODACOM and their customers?