iBurst softlaunch prices

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by sihen</i>
<br />playkiller I am on the same package as everyone else.
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Which is not the entry level but the third level.
Fourth level will have 7.5GB cap.

There is still time for them to change tho'.[:p]

Has anyone seen their terms and conditions? Or have you users all signed up blind? I have an application form which refers to the website for "Terms and Conditions" but I can't find a trace of any.
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Perdition</i>
<br />sihen, read my previous post. If you're a 128k ISDN user and connect with InfinitCall during after hours and weekends you can pull over 20 gigs per month INTERNATIONALLY... your ISP won't even moan at you. You also get excellent pings and no prioritisation on traffic. So tell me how other ISP's can do this for less than R200 per month?
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Exactly! It's called "economies of scale", and non-colluding-and-price-fixing ISPs in other countries do it all the time ... basically offer low-bandwidth-usage packages at a DECENT affordable rate (e.g. under R350/month), sign up several hundred thousand "normal" usage profile users, and you're making more than enough money to subsidise the small percentage of high-BW-usage users. Which is also EXACTLY what is already happening as mentioned above with e.g. ISDN+InfinitCall, and I don't see anyone making a loss. They've just got to get off their high horses and stop trying to pitch iBurst as yet another "premium" high-priced product but rather as a "Joe Public" product. The price should be competitive w.r.t. dial-up and ISDN solutions for low-BW users. If they could sign up, say, 150,000 users (the potential SA market is DEFINITELY bigger than 150K users so that's a conservative estimate) at R300/month, they'd have R45mil/month income to buy some BW. The majority of those users would never even hit 1GB/month.
 
Yep, the problem is they want to make a profit from the very start which is the WRONG way of thinking. You need to give a little to make a lot in the long run. I don't know what clown school some of these people go to to get their MBA's but it's certainly not one that prepares them for running a successful ISP. I think Sentech has proved this beyond any doubt.
 
Billy where did you get that information from? information of the other packages have not even been reliesed to WBS staff so please share with us where you got that information from.
 
Ditch, I can answer how other company's provide ISDN at that price with unlimited bandwidth. you saying with a 128 which is 16KB/S which really you will only hit around 13 or 12, you can pull 20 GIGS a month connecting on evenings and weekends?

Maybe the price of bandwidth is dropped because the people are dialing up to telkom and telkom is making money out of the calls,

Sorry but I dont know the answer to that question.
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by sihen</i>
<br />Ditch, I can answer how other company's provide ISDN at that price with unlimited bandwidth. you saying with a 128 which is 16KB/S which really you will only hit around 13 or 12, you can pull 20 GIGS a month connecting on evenings and weekends?

Maybe the price of bandwidth is dropped because the people are dialing up to telkom and telkom is making money out of the calls,

Sorry but I dont know the answer to that question.
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:rollseyes:

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Local bandwidth costs a lot of money, even if the data is free, the leased lines and the equipment are not. What do you think a little 2MB leased line costs?

I think you are all upset with the wrong people. WBS has no control over Telkom's costs.

WBS also needs to connect every tower using somebody’s infrastructure and it costs. They also need to make a profit to stay in business so that you can complain about their expensive service.

I think the pricing looks great, but a 64k connection with a 2 GIG cap at about R300pm – R350pm would be good. Prices will hopefully come down over the next year as Telkom looses it's grip.
 
nice mc721221, nice to hear someone understand, im almost 100% prices will drop and bandwidth will get alot better once more telecoms company's open.
 
ROTFLMAO

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hi sihen,

I do have a question: I thought that WBS would be looking for a good number of sign-ups. I am however surprised that they have chosen not to cover the far East of Pretoria. A recent survey in the Sunday Times claims that the wealthiest people in Gauteng live the East of Pretoria. These people can (a) afford the service, (b) have no access to Telkom ADSL or Sentech’s MyWireless and (c) are the type of people that typically have PC’s or laptops at home. Any idea why WBS has chosen not to cover this area with is planned rollout?

A fair number of the people in the East are willing to pay an “arm and a leg” for a service with better latency than satellite is currently offering.
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by mc721221</i>
<br />hi sihen,

I do have a question: I thought that WBS would be looking for a good number of sign-ups. I am however surprised that they have chosen not to cover the far East of Pretoria. A recent survey in the Sunday Times claims that the wealthiest people in Gauteng live the East of Pretoria. These people can (a) afford the service, (b) have no access to Telkom ADSL or Sentech’s MyWireless and (c) are the type of people that typically have PC’s or laptops at home. Any idea why WBS has chosen not to cover this area with is planned rollout?

A fair number of the people in the East are willing to pay an “arm and a leg” for a service with better latency than satellite is currently offering.

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This is something I also could not understand when Sentech did their rollouts. I am sure that with two towers they should be able to cover Fearie Glen, Woodhill, The Wilds, Woodlands, Moreletta Park, Irene, Cornwall Hill etc. And like you said, these are people who can actually afford it and I am sure are willing to pay for it.
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by sihen</i>
<br />nice mc721221, nice to hear someone understand, im almost 100% prices will drop and bandwidth will get alot better once more telecoms company's open.
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I dont know whether to lash out at you or tell you diplomatically. But you are one idiot. Dont think for 1 minute that because Ivy Motsepe wants to liberise Telecoms industries that its going to happen overnight. Trust me by next year february things arent going to be very much different than they are now. Stop living in a dream world. Ever since the inception of South Africa Telkom have been the only Telecommunications company here. Unfortunately they are the best on this continent. Do you think a company of this size is going to change because they letting the SNO come in. At the end of the day theres nothing we or any other company out there can do to stop the monoply of Telkom. The only way it can change is if the Government Steps in a Big Way. Other than that its all smoke screens and deception. Companies and the like have complained about this country of Telecommunications putting us behind. Basically alot of the companies were pressurising government to increase the level of our Telecommunications. Governments answer to this is Ivy Motsepe. Even though it sounds good on paper and in theory what she says is 100%. Implementing it is going to be a whole new story. So in short dont hold your breath. We gonna be stuck in the dark ages when it comes to telecoms for a while.

Tower 90, 256K Package
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by sihen</i>
<br />Ditch, I can answer how other company's provide ISDN at that price with unlimited bandwidth. you saying with a 128 which is 16KB/S which really you will only hit around 13 or 12, you can pull 20 GIGS a month connecting on evenings and weekends?

Maybe the price of bandwidth is dropped because the people are dialing up to telkom and telkom is making money out of the calls,

Sorry but I dont know the answer to that question.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

It isn't rocket science, it's economies of scale as Ditch pointed out. The more subscribers you have the higher you can push the contention ratio without affecting performance. You gain more subscribers by offering excellent packages at affordable rates even if it means running at a loss in the near term.

Most people on ISDN will tell you they have little trouble reaching and maintaining speeds of 14-15 KB/s and even at 14 you can pull more than 20 gigs only connecting evenings and weekends. Of course most people don't need to download 20 gigs a month but the point is they can if they want to without paying more to the ISP. I left Telkom and call charges out of my posts on purpose as they do not factor into the costs that ISP's pay for bandwidth. Telkom certainly doesn't let ISP's off the hook on bandwidth cost.

At the end of the day if WBS would just look at the bigger picture rather than just focusing on dollar signs right out the gate they stand to make a LOT more in the long run and everyone wins. At the moment I (and most others posting here) fail to see what iBurst brings to the table that makes it worth consideration over ADSL. I hope WBS takes this criticism constructively and don't just retort with a Sentech-like "Screw You" attitude, you know just how well it worked for Sentech [;)]
 
Ok after more thought perhaps a calculation is in order to illustrate economies of scale in action and the potential revenue to WBS :

Last year Internet Internet Solutions purchased an STM-1 link (155 mb/s) on the SAT-3 cable from Telkom at a cost of R270 million over three years. This equates to R7.5 million per month. As this was a real world purchase there is no reason why WBS could not get the same deal.

Now 155 mb/s supports ~1200 128k channels (CIR). Let's also assume that a 128k package is priced at R300 per month. Of course you can't give CIR bandwidth to 1200 customers at R300 per month as you would quickly run the company into the ground... this is where contention ratios come into play. A 155 mb/s connection can comfortably support a contention ratio of 1:50 and probably a lot higher in real world usage.

1200 x 50 = 60000 customers
60000 x R300 = R18 million (per month)
R18 million - R7.5 million = R10.5 million (per month)

R10.5 million should be more than enough to cover overheads with plenty to spare for a healthy net profit. This is how other ISP's are able to offer 128k ISDN at under R200 per month. I'm not saying WBS should rush out and purchase an STM-1 link, however this calculation proves that affordable broadband is certainly possible in SA even with Telkom's exorbitant prices.

With this in mind here are some possible package offers. :

Name (international/local)
--------------------------
iBurst As-You-Go (unlimited/unlimited)
R200 per month with 3 gigs included, purchase top-ups at R50 per 3 gigs

iBurst Basic (128k/unlimited)
R300 pm, 15 GB soft cap

iBurst Plus (256k/unlimited)
R500 pm, 30 GB soft cap

iBurst Advanced (512k/unlimited)
R800 pm, 60 GB soft cap

iBurst Unlimited (unlimited/unlimited)
R1200 pm, no limit

These packages are for the home user, business packages would cost more as obviously usage would generally be higher and businesses can afford it.

All packages assume you have already purchased the modem. None of the packages have bandwidth limits on protocols however some shaping should be employed to ensure that standard protocols are not affected by P2P when the network is busy. If the network is not busy then there is no reason why P2P should be throttled as the bandwidth would just be wasted anyway. If you consistently exceed the soft cap (i.e. over a few months) then you are asked to move to a higher package or be disconnected. Local should be unlimited for all packages as if WBS peers at JINX the bandwidth is dirt cheap (well relative to international). In fact local shouldn't even count towards the cap.

To me the above packages would be very reasonable to both customers and WBS as well as being extremely competitive in the current broadband market. I know this was probably a waste of typing and WBS will just go ahead with their current packages however I hope I've educated a few as to the possibilities.
 
mc721221, plans are to eventually cover the whole of SA,
Currently we have in PTA:

Centurion/Zwartskop In Progress
PTA CBD Live
Wonderboom Live
 
Perdition, I can see you've put a lot of thought into the pricing. (Obviously more thought than WBS has put into their own product). If they offered the packages you've mentioned above, I would sign up without a second thought. If they want to insult us by giving us a 3GB cap, then they should be charging no more than R300. (I really do find the 3GB cap an insult). As things stand now, I won't be going near them.

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United we stand!
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<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by sihen</i>
<br />mc721221, plans are to eventually cover the whole of SA,
Currently we have in PTA:

Centurion/Zwartskop In Progress
PTA CBD Live
Wonderboom Live
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Do you know that ST have recently started to decommision certain towers due to lack of interest?

PS: Dont forget that you offer less than ST does.

-Information anarchist-
www.sentechhatesfreespeech.org.za
I support:
www.hellkom.co.za
www.poopband.co.za
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Perdition - Nice pricing - I like it - the only thing that you left out is UNSHAPED.
Perdition for President !!![;)]

Another pricing sample....
Source:http://www.itweb.co.za/office/citec.net/0402251147.htm
45Mbps = R 100 000 000.00 (3 Years)
45Mbps = R 100 000 000.00 / 3 = R 33 333 333.33 (Per Year)
45Mbps = R 33 333 333.33 / 12 = R 2 777 777.77 (Per Month)
So - Unlimited Fibre at 45 Mbps = R 2,777 777.77 per month.
Thats 61,728.37 per Mbps per month.
Yours = 155 Mbps at 7,500,000 per month:
Thats 48,387.09 per Mbps per month.

The more they can buy the less they have to pay, but signing for 3 years is daft in my opinion.

Anyway - these samples proooooooove beyond doubt that the [V]CAPS[V] and [:(!]SHAPING[:(!] are not required. What's wrong with First in First out ? I just don't get the logic behind shaping and capping, I simply don't see the advantages, the suppliers of the bandwidth don't care if the purchased bandwidth is utilised 100%, in fact, thats what was paid for.
 
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