How much bandwidth do you use per month?

[Ekhaatvensters]

I guarantee if Telkom UPGRADED the 3 gigs to 10 gigs most of the mental torrenters would be moaning still.....and wont stop.

I agree with your post too, the leecher type of guys are the only people who im trying to get at.

They will not be satisfied until it is around 50-100GB cap for very cheap or uncapped. Now an uncapped system I have no problem with, but you can see some problems for even Telkom then, they really dont have enough banwidth atm to leave everyone uncapped do they?

Yet what you say is true, most people simply dont need tat much usage, 10-30GB would be more than enough. Infact 10 is very reasonable as a base cap replacing this 3 gigs crap. Then more bandwidth should just be cheaper for those ho really need it.

And business should be billed seperately, very strange that they pay the exact same price as home users and the yuse the exact same service.

 

[rwenzori]

Oh, yes well ofcourse you can buy MP3's but I was assuming that 70gigs would have obviously been downloaded. It would cost thousands to download that many CD's legally and just in one month, do you really buy al of that music?

See this post by Peter_J:
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showpost.php?p=667416&postcount=19

It is legal to download MP3s for personal and private use.

70 GIGS of Music?????????? Im sorry thats talking **** ! Look at a standard torrented album these days.Its 100 mbytes.Are you trying to tell me you are basically dl 700 albums a month.What,do you work for EMI records or something....

Not **** at all. Quite easy to do. Besides many albums are way over 100mb. Elvis 50 CD set is well over 3gb.

 

[spiderz]

+- 3gb on my WebAfrica Prepaid (Gaming/international browsing)
+- 60Gb on IS news server when it's actually working

 

[howardb]

Before the changes in Nov 05, I was paying for 3 x 30GB p/m with different ISP's. After 11/2005, I decided to go the uncapped/unshaped route, which suited my needs at the time - even though cost was an issue, I needed the data amount.

My 170GB p/m does include some business usage - about 30-50GB average p/m. The rest is used for a personal webserver/website (I have fixed IP's on my account), mail, browsing, streaming audio/video, game demos, getting the latest captured TV episodes (illegal? don't think so) & newsgroups.

The connection is also used by my spouse quite a bit - she makes much use of utube, picture intensive music forums, rapidshare & streaming audio/video...

As was mentioned earlier in the thread, I am paying for the privilege of this uncapped/unshaped service and should be able to use it as I wish - my only rants would be about the p/m cost and the downtime/connectivity due to a very bad infrastructure and/or overburdening of the system... high time the powers-that-be took some of that gigantic profit and ploughed it back into the infrastructure...

 

[PostmanPot]

DU Meter Monthly Report

Period (Month)
September 2006
Download
104,593,068 KB
Upload
50,208,949 KB
Both Directions
154,802,017 KB

---

it was a good month

 

[antowan]

This thread so far is proving one point:

The people that shout "lack of bandwidth is a restraint to economic growth" and so on, are the same people that want to use that bandwidth to download 70Gig of...well lets just say you're not going to use it to complete your doctorate...

Oh and another point...this survey is actually meaningless (60% of mybroadband forumites that actually care about the cap limit use >18gigs a month doesnt say much).

If we really want to demonstrate that capping is a big issue, we should first find a compelling reason why an average home user need that much bandwidth (and no, downloading the latest ripped version of your favourate DVD or CD doesnt count). If we as forumites cannot articulate why this is necessary...then goodluck to convincing ICASA or whomever is in charge

Yes, many people download movies and music via p2p. That is however not the reason small caps are bad. There are a miriad of new businesses and content providers that could spawn from a larger cap system and/or lowered bandwidth pricing. Because people have to be careful what they do with their bandwidth due to restrictions and cost such local content providers are doomed from the get go. No legal online video store, no ultra successful local music shop like Napster etc. To be a content provider in a broadband market you need loads of clients with cheap broadband.

Small caps and expensive bandwidth is hurting the South African economy because for our entrepreneurs to get the same bang for their brain will cost them 10 times more than it would somebody else somewhere else in the world.

Consumers should in any event not have to convince any Telco to lower prices or provide better service. Competition should. Give Telkom proper competition and that competition will be actively looking for ways to win customers. How will they do that? Most likely through ads like this:

"Çome to XYZ and get 10gigs per month free bandwidth!"

"Come to ZYF and pay less than R10 per Gig!"


You can only win customers by giving them more for less... The folks who demand people tell them what they do with their bandwidth really should stop. It is irrelevant to the more bandwidth for cheaper cause. I am a consumer. I want it and I should get it. Simple really. I know if we had proper competition I would be getting what I want or something closer to it.

If you want more detailed examples of how cheap bandwidth helps economies, use Google. You do know how to do that, don't ya?

Frankly I am disgusted that anybody can come out and say we must qualify ourselves. What people do with their bandwidth is their business. I somehow doubt you are an ordinary consumer. If you are you are most assuredly uninformed.

With regard to your last comment. I am downloading MS Vista RC1 for testing purposes. It will murder my 1 Telkom account. Very legal and for a good reason. 1 Download and I am capped. so much for "broadband"...

DSL in this country is nothing more than flatrated dialup. Telkom made a little sum to see how small the cap must be in order to force folks to buy more... If they didn't build this model it would kill their profits that used to and still largely comes from analogue voice...

Ask yourself this, why hasn't Telkom introduced flatrated dialup in this country like they do overseas? It has been available for years overseas... Telkom simply isn't compelled to... by (NOW SAY IT WITH ME!).... C O M P E T I T I O N...

 

[howardb]

@ Antowan - agreed...

 

[Kompete]

Antowan, matt loves telkom, howardb, Ekhaatvensters...all excellent and very compelling arguments...we need more of this to enlighten us 'intellectually challenged'

If you want more detailed examples of how cheap bandwidth helps economies, use Google. You do know how to do that, don't ya?

yeah, but whats the fun in that...besides, your argument was way more passionate and convincing then anything a 4-eyed professor in China has to say about bandwidth and the impact on their economy

Frankly I am disgusted that anybody can come out and say we must qualify ourselves. What people do with their bandwidth is their business. I somehow doubt you are an ordinary consumer. If you are you are most assuredly uninformed.

...if you're so disgusted, why do you feel compelled to then qualify yourself ...dont hate the player, hate the game

and oh yes COMPETITION

 

[antowan]

...if you're so disgusted, why do you feel compelled to then qualify yourself ...dont hate the player, hate the game

and oh yes COMPETITION

Well. I am glad I qualified myself. No hard feelings?

 

[Freaksta]

I dont get what you guys are going on about...... What we do with our BW is our own choise and has nothing to do with telkom or any1.... We pay out our arses for this 3gig account and we cant do anything with it if people want to download movies and that stuff let them.. But i honestly think that we do not get enought for what we are paying for.... :/

 

[bullfrog]

I have said it many times before. I don't give a crap what people use their bandwidth for or what Telkom says is enough. It doesn't matter what I use my bw or anyone else uses their bw for.

Using yet another car analogy: They have no right to limit how far I'm allowed to drive with my car per month to prevent other people from drinking and driving or other unlawful activities.

Many of you are missing the bigger picture. If caps were to become larger at the same price, the lower end users will still be able to get lower capped accounts but for much cheaper. Right now Telkom are making big bucks because of this pricing structure and it's not acceptable and completely wrong.

So stop with the lame justification of their extreme pricing and low caps please. It is getting really old! What your actually saying is that your happy with your expensive small cap! Cause the smaller caps will probably still be available if they were to increase the caps and at much lower price too.

 

[antowan]

Agreed with Freeksta and Bullfrog.

 

[Ekhaatvensters]

I also agree with them, as they arent advocating 100gig+ accounts.

Of course the price is too high and higher capped acounts would be great, actually the best thing would simply be to lower the wholesale price of international bandwidth, it would allow people to use more BW if they want, or simply save money. but with Telkoms current sytem of using 3 gigs obviously the price cant drop too much, because at say R10 per gig youd only be charging the majority of your user R30. Thats why if bandiwidth gets cheaper most countries simply opt to go uncapped. Becasue even in America, things work the same way as telkom ISP does atm: They work with the expectation that the mojority of thier users will use ver ylittle BW compared to the downloaders, but they let it slide and their BW is so cheap that they are making huge amounts of money from the "3-gig" types. there was even an article recently on a huge America ISP where they said if video content becomes more popular and their 3-gig types start streaming video constantly, then their servce will become unviable.

So we have to either drop 3 gig accoutns and somehow make everyone go to much higher caps, which isnt really going to happen nad doing somethign like upping everyone to 10gigs, will just be a big financial loss on telkom part, not that they cant afford it, but they simply wont. So once enough mass is reached (maby we have already? no idea...) we should simply go totally uncapped, is what I think anyway.

The only other short term saving are small drops in BW wholesale prices, but like I said those will become redundant after a while, and even at R10 per gig or it is still too much for peopel using 50gigs+

Convincing Telkom is the hard part...

PS, what do you guys think, I'm not shure if I make sense or if there is a much simpler explanation/answer?

 

[pimal3]

Okay so I know im wrong and bla bla bla..

But what are you using all of that bandwidth on?

Would you believe internet banking? heh ... heh

 

[Ekhaatvensters]

Would you believe internet banking? heh ... heh

lol, no I probably woudlnt. I cant remember how uch you used, but it must have been a fair bit more than what internet banking can use up??

 

[Highflyer_GP]

Convincing Telkom is the hard part...

Well that's slightly warped - in most normal countries where they have an open market, one doesn't need to convince any company of anything. They let competition take its course and instead it's the company trying to convince consumers. That's what we need here - an open market. We DONT need Telkom controlling every bit of telecoms infrastructure.

 

[antowan]

Well that's slightly warped - in most normal countries where they have an open market, one doesn't need to convince any company of anything. They let competition take its course and instead it's the company trying to convince consumers. That's what we need here - an open market. We DONT need Telkom controlling every bit of telecoms infrastructure.

100%!

 

[kilo39]

So we have to either drop 3 gig accoutns and somehow make everyone go to much higher caps, which isnt really going to happen nad doing somethign like upping everyone to 10gigs, will just be a big financial loss on telkom part, not that they cant afford it, but they simply wont. So once enough mass is reached (maby we have already? no idea...) we should simply go totally uncapped, is what I think anyway.

Correct me if I'm wrong: SAT3 is already paid for - costs on the cable are effectively zero - telkom pays interconnect fees further up the pipe - but network traffic is charged according to return of investment - and as its paid it's all profit.

The cable has a fixed life span - much/most? of it is unlit - telkom are simply profiteering in the worst possible way - with the end result the cable will go to waste... Of course any forward thinking company would be building another cable - instead of trying to save up bandwidth for future services. Of course some companies would be investing in their future - but not telkom... lets rather rip our customers a big one every month and make fat profits while the resources go to waste and the infrastructure struggles - oh all those unexploited peeps out there makes my heart cry... but lets not do anything about it - lets keep it an exclusive service instead. Ya, dialup - the stone age.

Get an education = 1 hour of google video = 350megs.

Why do I have to be a kiddie in the sweet shop - and can't download anything - though I'm paying 400% more than anyone else on the planet?

 

[bullfrog]

I understand what your saying Ekhaatvensters and agree. In the end we should end up with everyone getting capless as thats how it is everywhere. There is still one very important step missing in your idea. Yes Telkom definately have enough people to lower their prices a lot. Obviously it's not a viable option to go uncapped for them just yet.

The idea is that they start the network at fairly high prices to pay for infrastructure and other expenses and once they have a whole bunch of clients they start lowering prices to penetrate the market further. This way they'll get more and more users and at a later stage they will be able to offer uncapped. That's just a very basic idea of what they should be doing.

Now if I remember correctly, not very sure about all these facts because I didn't have adsl at that time. I believe that after a while of running they changed the way they cap users with this whole pay per gig structure and this increased prices quite a bit. They also stopped the uncapped local. They did lower the prices of adsl rental but increased the phone line rental to prevent any loss.

So how do they expect to penetrate more of the market by charging the same prices if not more for a service that started out expensive to cover the network costs? The simple answer: They're not! They themselves are responsible for preventing their growth and we are loosing out because of this. So as you can see as it grows the prices are supposed to come down.

Why has it not? Telkom have gotten so used to their high profit margins and the big guys have gotten used to their big pay checks. With what they are making at the moment they could probably upgrade the network to support much faster speeds and while they're at it they could probably lay a few more cables to overseas. But instead of doing so and lowering prices to get more market they are doing nothing.

The fact is that they have very little vision into the future and have made a lot of bad choices for the long run. They have made choices based on now and what they can make now. So you see they are fully hampering growth because of their lack of the ability to plan further into the future. It's actually very sad, but true

And that is why I believe that Telkom sucks!

 

[Ekhaatvensters]

Well that's slightly warped - in most normal countries where they have an open market, one doesn't need to convince any company of anything. They let competition take its course and instead it's the company trying to convince consumers. That's what we need here - an open market. We DONT need Telkom controlling every bit of telecoms infrastructure.

Its totally warped! The problem is that here Telkom is till going to control things for a good year or two, tey still need to unbundle the local loop, let go of SAT-3 landing control and allow total competition.