iBurst gets tough on caps

P0tenc said:
Amazing how people can be called bandwidth hogs for downloading a paltry 30gb. The rest of the world is laughing at us. And it's people like you that buy into this 3gb per month is enough for anyone kind of crap, that just continues to support the big companies massive profit making of us. 30gb is reasonable in any persons book...except in SA. Here your a bandwidth hog for trying to use your internet connection for whats it's meant for. Here in SA they will have you believe 30gb is excessive because that means they make more money. We are so far behind the world it would have been funny if I wasn't living here atm.
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Don't get me wrong, I'm all for big caps, but I don't expect miracles from one company while the rest are being expensive. If they allowed you 2-3x your bandwidth package in total, but throttled anything after the actual package to 64kb/s before hard-capping you, it seems quite reasonable (In and SA context) to me. You'd get 7-10.5 GB for R600. That's between R85/GB and R57/GB. Totally reasonable in SA's context, especially for a wireless service.

You can then buy your R200 bolt on for a Gig of premium 1MB access, and 2Gig's of additional throttled access. That's again R66-R100/GB. Not THAT bad at all.

I'm all for making LOCAL bandwidth free (again) though. That will allow you to Skype and Joost and P2P (locally) to your hearts content. It's hard to justify P2P though, since you'll be hard pressed to get legal content non-stop.

Being reasonable is key here. I can't foresee a totally uncapped solution for under R500 in the next 5 years. Yet from the sound of things, that's what you expect from iBurst NOW.

If what PlayerOfGames is saying is true, I'm sure someone at iBurst deserves a good 'smack'. Knee-jerk reactions are NOT good, under ANY circumstances. Give a warning, or give alternate options, don't throw walls in front of your customers without at least explaining why. This is not how I'd expect anyone to do business. In the same breath, I'm not sure how POG handles people, he might be one of those Red-In-The-Face-Screamers, which don't take anything less than what they want. Hopefully not. Hope a compromise is made, and soon.
 
Well for some reason I have been reconnected, still waiting to see that fair usage policy though...
 
Do any of you OLD ibursters remember them doing this a few years ago? They promised they would never cut of people again.
 
Well if 8 people can spoil the fun for 40 000 it doesn't say much for their bandwidth does it? 64k= 7KB/s*8 = 56KB/s and a tower supports 24mbps which is 192KB/s. and also i presume not all 8 connect to the same tower either. so iburst i summit to you that you are talking utter nonsense. :p
 
Nah, they just pissed cos they cant block the Hub (which by the way is all local) like they doing with any other P2P apps.
 
stepper said:
Nah, they just pissed cos they cant block the Hub (which by the way is all local) like they doing with any other P2P apps.
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[off-topic] easy to bypass with http-tunnel and/or local proxy
 
Do any of you OLD ibursters remember them doing this a few years ago? They promised they would never cut of people again.
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Yes I remember, around June-July 2005
 
Yes, I also remember well. I especially remember that "He who must not be named" was not at all amused.
 
Abe said:
On a 1.5GB package, it is abuse. Whichever way you look at it. It's like buying a bottomless cup of coffee from a cafe first thing in the morning and staying there all day. Coming back the next day for the same. Eventually the owner will get upset and ban you because the coffee costs them a lot more then they are getting. Although it says bottomless, the owners know that most people can't drink more then 3 or 4. I think that iBurst should have just cancelled the contracts / accounts of the people.
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Without having a dog in this fight I would just like to add:

If you can't/aren't willing to live up to your marketing promises, dont make said promises. End of story.

This goes for telkom,IS, iburst and any other SP around the world that pulls this kind of rubbish.

Say exactly what your service is and limit it accordingly. Don't say one thing and when people use it the maximum then bitch that that is not what you meant.
 
i agree fully with icyrus. make it clear from the get go what parameters you expect people to adhere to and there can be no misunderstandings.
 
Gatecrasher said:
Yes, I also remember well. I especially remember that "He who must not be named" was not at all amused.
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I remember quite clearly, I even had Mr Mtshali calling me himself and telling me that I should sign up for a 9GB package since I was a 'heavy user'. I hade done about 8 GB on the 3GB package. I pointed it that to him that in theory a 64kb/s can yield upto 20GB or so in a month.
 
icyrus said:
If you can't/aren't willing to live up to your marketing promises, dont make said promises. End of story.
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Can anyone tell me what the spirit of the 64K after cap is? One may be able to do 20GB on that 64 but that is not what it was intended for. It was IMO intended to be a stop-gap measure to cover people that had gone over their cap until the end of the month. The alternative is to remove it for everyone because a few people are taking it to the extreme.

IMO, although it may be legal (This is still in question because of 4.10) to milk it for every last ounce of bandwdith, it is not in the spirit of the deal. The only people that lose out are the other iBurst users. Also, people are using 60GB which translates to 192K. If each tower can only accomodate 10 people at full speed (and I would imagine that the towers are expensive), then 5 people on each tower hammering the system for what it's worth ensure that one of those 10 people are already out of the equation. These types of facilities are always oversold as that is the only way to cover costs so you are probably ending up wiping out 15 possible users in the area. Now if iBurst just happened to sell those 15 users then all of the remaining users on the tower would be slower then they should be.

As I said, at the end of the day, it's the other iBurst users that suffer. I don't use iBurst, nor am I affiliated with them in anyway so it makes no difference to me. I am speaking on the principle of the matter.
 
Abe said:
Can anyone tell me what the spirit of the 64K after cap is? One may be able to do 20GB on that 64 but that is not what it was intended for. It was IMO intended to be a stop-gap measure to cover people that had gone over their cap until the end of the month. The alternative is to remove it for everyone because a few people are taking it to the extreme.

IMO, although it may be legal (This is still in question because of 4.10) to milk it for every last ounce of bandwdith, it is not in the spirit of the deal.
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The way I see it is there is no "spirit of the deal". Customers want a service, they see one advertised that looks to fit their needs and then they pay for it and use it. If the companies didn't want them to use it in a certain way then they should have stipulated exactly how they could use it upfront and the cut off those who went against the agreement from the beginning.

As for ISPs all over selling their services: that is there problem. I don't care what they have to do or how I just want the service they advertised. If they know they can't provide it at those prices they shouldn't have advertised it as such.

These companies deserve no compassion. They are like blood sucking parasites. They offer crappy services with even more crappy support and yet expect their clients to treat them as if they are doing us a favor.
 
Who is to say what the spirit of the deal is. My understanding is that once I am capped I have access to an always on 64kbps service. If iBurst have not catered for the possibilty of my using the line to its max and have not stipulated I can't that is not my problem.

Furthermore, if one wants to talk about spirit of the agreement, the fact that for the two years I had been on iBurst I never saw any communication as to their unhappiness with the use of the 64kpbs nor the hub would, in my eyes, means that they didn't view how these services were used as being against the spirit of the agreement.
 
What about the terms & conditions? Should they be excused because we're too lazy to read the fine print?
 
Fudzy said:
What about the terms & conditions? Should they be excused because we're too lazy to read the fine print?
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Can you provide the parts of their T&C that you are referring to?
 
I too want to see these terms and conditions. iirc when i signed up there was no term that said that i would be bound by the terms and conditions on their website as and when they change. obviously the new subcribers will sign agreements with 4.10 included so they have little to cry about in that respect.
 
milomak said:
I too want to see these terms and conditions. iirc when i signed up there was no term that said that i would be bound by the terms and conditions on their website as and when they change. obviously the new subcribers will sign agreements with 4.10 included so they have little to cry about in that respect.
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Even if that clause was in there when the person signed it, did they provide their capping limits and fair usage policy and have it signed as well?

From the look of this post, no: http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showpost.php?p=1096599&postcount=38
 
icyrus - i'd be inclined to agree with you that if they do not communicate these capping limits then they are acting in bad faith. we as consumers cannot be expected to suck this knowledge from our thumbs.
 
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