iBurst Accounts Suspended Without Warning

slim, as u stated earlier in the thread you've done 7gb this month. of which 3gb came from the original cap, u purchaced a further 3gb and have done 1gb over and above that. This means that you have infact only gone 1gb over the initial 3gb, as you payed for the other 3gb seperately, and should therefore NOT have been suspended... :eek:

as for the legality of downloads...
ppl here are saying that d/loading linux distro's is just a waste of bandwidth cuz they are available on cd... why should i have to wait for a cd to be shipped to me when i can just download the distro and have it up and running in a matter of hour's with very little effort... Once that distro is installed lots of additional software/updates have to be downloaded. just this can put you way over the 3gb limit. there are ofcource other very legal downloads mentioned by noone but to add to that, i often download/upload large archives of photograph's taken by myself or from other ppl, plus consider the amount of free open source software out there, open office, the gimp, inkscape, etc being some of the smaller downloads.

[added]
as for ordering cd's from linuxwarehouse, the price for an old version 'warty' of ubuntu linux costs R70 + R50 for shipping... much more than what it would cost to download & burn the latest version 'hoary' to a cd.
The Following is from www.linuxwarehouse.co.za

UBU410CD1 Ubuntu Linux 4.10 (The Warty Warthog) Public Downloadable 1CD Set R 70.00 VAT inc

DEL001 Dawn Wing Express Delivery (Within South Africa only, international orders must be quoted on per order). R 50.00 VAT inc
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[/added]

I am appauled by the decision taken by WBS, i too am also not yet an iBurst subscriber/user but i have been following the "saga" very closely as i dont want to end up in a situation like the one we have here. I was about to sign up for iBurst, at the begining of may, but WBS can officialy consider me a lost subscriber, aswell as everyone i come in contact with....:mad: unless they take drastic action to correct this fsck up! Trying to point the blame onto "power users" is a calssic trick that i remember sentech doing, but not to this extreme. I want to see a Carte Blanche episode on this crap, but WBS must be drilled to **** as to why they are blaming "power users" in a PR stint to move the blame away from themselves:mad:

sorry for the longish post, i know they can be a b!tch to read.:D
 
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in all honesty most of you are p1ssing against the wind.

please do not take this as an attack but hear me out

did you know MSG cause cancer? MSG whats that. pretty much
in most simba chips, willards, two minute noodles stuff like that.
dont confuse this with the red stuff a while back on carte blaunch.
although can used in the same light.

so we know or dont know this is cancer causing but we eat the
chips. why? cuz it tastes so freaking good.

before you eat margarine read up about how its made. might as
well eat thinners.

so mr.Doe goes to HiFI Corp. ohh internet...
aww iBurst... i heard they
like nazis with the cap. dunno if i should get that.

well sir, try it for 7 days if you dont like it then cancel.

okay

wow so fast. its similiar to telkom.

wbs's implementation was absurd today. they used NO tact. but
if you planning to destroy WBS image goodluck.

Sentech's image is destroyed cuz ASA said they cannot use the words 128,
256, 512 AND they really are slow.

the most ASA can do with WBS is change '64K throttled' service is to
64K throttled service and over extension of cap by no more then 3Gb or whatever WBS decide.

They still have the 1Mb magic number and still have the masses.

So next time you eat a Simba chip think about that.
 
Gatecrasher said:
Clearly, the bandwidth management failed. We kind of sussed that pretty early this month. Did we get any communication from WBS that this had happened? No. So everyone gets krap speeds, and WBS explain nothing. But they can only limit single threads, multithreaded you can still max out your connection. So the capping only effects the browser/email brigade, while the big downloaders continue unhinded full speed ahead. Was there any communication from WBS about that? No. Any temporary limits imposed? No. Any attempt whatsoever to inform customers or ask so-called abusers to ease off? No. Any warning of suspensions? No.

Was there just total mismanagement and incompetence on WBS's part? Yes, yes, yes.
Click to expand...

Nobody disputes that. However a lot of people are in denial about how their own actions adversely affect others either by direct bandwidth consumption or indirectly through the impact of their bandwidth consumption on the service provider we all use.

If you withdraw R100 from an ATM and it spits out R1000 - do you honestly expect that you'll get to keep the R900 difference? I thought not.

It's fine to bash WBS - frankly they well deserve that. But let's not kid ourselves that those bitching now behaved like 5 year olds at a party - stuffed themselves with sweets, chocolates and cakes and then cried when they threw it all up on the back seat of daddy's car. We do not exist in isolation, and our actions invariably impact others. If you've been thoughtless, don't expect sympathy from those who your actions have impacted. Today is the first day this month I've had reasonable speeds, and I'm quite happy for it.

And one last point to this ramble - the 3 gig cap is entirely unreasonable from a user perspective, but I suspect we can trace these bandwidth issues all back to Telkom and their monopoly. Remember who the real enemy is.

Ciao

Zak
 
brooko said:
slim, as u stated earlier in the thread you've done 7gb this month. of which 3gb came from the original cap, u purchaced a further 3gb and have done 1gb over and above that. This means that you have infact only gone 1gb over the initial 3gb, as you payed for the other 3gb seperately, and should therefore NOT have been suspended... :eek:
Click to expand...

:D That was Slim's brother. A mere 7Gb would have been an embarrassment for Slim.

As for legal content. What about Web TV? Constant video streaming at 300 to 800kbps 24/7. You can eat through your monthly cap quite legally in a matter of hours.

If WBS can act without integrity in the way the have, one starts to worry about privacy issues. Are they going to start naming users and the stuff they have downloaded in order to make their case?

My heart still hope this is a once-off disaster on their part, that they sort out their bandwidth management bugs, and the lburst experience can return to its former glory (well sort of). My brain, however, tells me otherwise.

Time will tell.
 
zaktoo said:
Nobody disputes that. However a lot of people are in denial about how their own actions adversely affect others either by direct bandwidth consumption or indirectly through the impact of their bandwidth consumption on the service provider we all use.

If you withdraw R100 from an ATM and it spits out R1000 - do you honestly expect that you'll get to keep the R900 difference? I thought not.

It's fine to bash WBS - frankly they well deserve that. But let's not kid ourselves that those bitching now behaved like 5 year olds at a party - stuffed themselves with sweets, chocolates and cakes and then cried when they threw it all up on the back seat of daddy's car. We do not exist in isolation, and our actions invariably impact others. If you've been thoughtless, don't expect sympathy from those who your actions have impacted. Today is the first day this month I've had reasonable speeds, and I'm quite happy for it.

And one last point to this ramble - the 3 gig cap is entirely unreasonable from a user perspective, but I suspect we can trace these bandwidth issues all back to Telkom and their monopoly. Remember who the real enemy is.

Ciao

Zak
Click to expand...

nicely put zak :)
 
yes the ASA can make them change the ads, but the problem is a contractual agreement was broken by them, the ASA deals with ads, not contractual agreements, so basically if you calla lawyer you will have a case, however can any of us honestly be arsed to a call a lawyer? I know I can't
 
The very best solution is for WBS to go back to "Plan A" asap. If they would just deliver on their promises there would be no problems, no complaints, and sufficient bandwidth for everyone.
 
only problem is they planned on selling 24/7 1mbit connections to nuns and old people who apparantly go on the internet once a week so they can read a newsletter they get from hotmail and cruise the 'interweb' looking for knitting patterns
 
slimothy said:
only problem is they planned on selling 24/7 1mbit connections to nuns and old people who apparantly go on the internet once a week so they can read a newsletter they get from hotmail and cruise the 'interweb' looking for knitting patterns
Click to expand...

Given that less than 5% of users were suspended for bandwidth "abuse", the above plan may well have succeeded!
 
0.0
This is the cherry on the cake.
My heart goes out to you guys hope you come right
 
I got iBurst to read my favourite web sites on new cars, news, do internet banking, download updates for my laptop from the net and have email on the go. I'm even thinking of switching from my 3GB account to 1GB, but will first use it for three months and get an average.

I'm not happy that iBurst have decided to disconnect users at will, but also appalled that some users think it's their right to download 52GB in a month and get away with it! iBurst offers to send you daily emails on your bandwidth usage, so how was it possible for those users not to know that they've used up tuns of bandwidth?

I had BT ADSL when I lived and worked in the UK, my cap was 1GB a day and I never ever reached it (I tried my utmost best) - and downloaded anything I could think of : movie trailers, game demos, loads of mp3 with kazaalite, etc.

Imagine you were with Telkom ADSL - after you've reached your cap you go on the 'thin' pipe and it's time to whip out your 56k dial-up modem. iBurst was kind enough to let people continue, but I would also get cheesed-off if users go full-out to abuse a system. I think even Sentech, that claims unlimited downloads, would send you a friendly reminder....
 
The crux of the matter is that if WBS sees that some users have gone over their limit 1GB, 3GB, 6GB, or 9GB, then these subscribers should be directed to a throttled 64kbps line. It's easy to understand why paying subscribers are irate about being suspended instead of throttled!!
 
exactly, we didnt control the speeds after we hit our caps, we just left our connections running with whatever we were doing (downloads etc) now all of a sudden because we were getting faster than 64k speeds we were supposed to stop our downloads???? What kind of crazy thought is that! We understand the throttle and are happy with it, they cannot punish us for it because we cannot control our speeds and realistically we dont need to , thats what we pay WBS for!

I would have been happy with the 64 k speeds once I hit my cap , but they couldnt even get that right!
 
Money, money makes the world go round.

Well lets say IBURST how do they track there bandwidth per user, don't they've huge PLASMA at there office and they can see who abusers the most bandwidth, meaning like list of ppl or is indivisual.
 
Guys, I'm unable to speak on the phone, as I get too pissed off with these ID 10 T's.
Thus I'm driving to SABC today to put some pressure on them were I can see them start sweating. All I want is a "YES - we can allow SSH/IRC during 64k cap" or "NO - SSH/IRC won't work after hitting cap".

That's because it's a dealbreaker. I need to work over internet and thats the two services I need, so these are critical. I'm tired of ringing up 1 - 3 hours on my telkom line during the day.
 
RichardG, sorry dude no can do. Leaving now on a bike to get there quicker. Will post any findings later.
 
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