iBurst uncapped debate

rpm

rpm

Admin
Staff member
Joined
Jul 22, 2003
Messages
66,805
Reaction score
5,057
Location
Johannesburg
iBurst uncapped battle

Some iBurst subscribers feel that the wireless broadband provider should give them uncapped data; iBurst says their subscribers get the best of both worlds
 
Text below copied from this thread posted last month:

__________________________________________________

Lets look at the value of this 'new' Throttled VAS.

Firstly, you already get one of the best (if not the best) rate on your in-bundle price. For example R149 for the 1st Gig all inclusive (Wireless-1), vs. R169 to R199 with the best 384kb/s ADSL deal. See this link.

Mow, with the VAS you’ll pay R199 additional for 64Kb/s uncapped and R249 for 128Kb/s uncapped.

With 64K, you can download around 20GB in one month. If we take the normal 25% up to 100% down ratio, you can do about 25GB for R199. This gives you an effect rate of R7.96/GB. This must count as one of the best possible data rates in the country.

It gets even better with 128Kb/s uncapped. Here you can do about 50GB for R249, giving you a rate of R4.98/GB.

That is less than half a cent per Megabyte!

In summary, with the new pricing you not only get one of the best in-bundle rates in the country of 3.9c/MB but the all-in price of R149 for a 1GB bundle is most likely the lowest in the industry. And now, with the added VAS, you get the extra data at less than 0.5c/MB.

Surely one of the best deals available to consumers today?
__________________________________________________

As stated before, a full-speed, after hours, uncapped service is due soon and this will be the perfect application for the P2P guys.
 
Last edited:
lol Funny that this was posted before 12 at night xD.

Ok but really, to get 20GB a month on the throttle you really have to downlaod 24/7. At the end of the day your going to pay more on electricity than your subscription fee. Its just not economical.

The other thing is you cant really call it a uncapped package. Even at 128kbs it would be terribly slow.
If you want to give us a real affordable uncapped VAS, at least make it 384kb/s.

I think that would be very popular and make allot of users happy.

Oh and before I forget "top-up rates were drastically cut, from R950/GB to as low as R39/GB."

R950 . . are you kidding me?? lol
 
jannie - how does that compare to pre-change pricing?
 
Nonsense Jannie.

Users could get 20GB a month with the 64kb uncapped offering for OOOOONLY R199 (which has now DOUBLED in cost) (and indeed many, including me, often did reach that mark). Where is their 400% cap increase? Indeed you hinted at this months before when you "threatened" to take away the throttle, we considered it a bit of a spiteful joke but.............you proved us wrong on that one there.

If ANYTHING you should have extended the permanent free 64kb offering to ALL current subscribers and not simply those locked into you.

Kind of shocked at how mybb isn't showing the opposite side of this debate but rather a one sided publicity piece for iBurst. Start quoting the NUMEROUS threads in the iBurst forum and you'll quickly see public opinion is not pro-burst on this one.
 
people clearly don't know how much more capital has to be laid out to support uncapped over wireless. THIS IS NOT A WIRED NETWORK. So thus, it is not feasible for iBurst to pay thousands of R's on a single highsite just to allow more connections per CPE and at uncapped at a peanut price.

Sigh!
 
From article on 15 March, 2010

The iBurst CEO added that current contract holders have benefitted further as iBurst has migrated them to the higher data packages and given them the 64Kbps VAS for free until their contract period is over.
Click to expand...

From article on 24 November, 2009

but the company said that existing subscribers will have the option to remain on their contracts
Click to expand...

Well then why am I being hardcapped? I am a current contract holder and had to buy top-ups this month because I was capped. Your people have ignored every attempt I've made to find out what's going on. They just couldn't be bothered to help their customers.

<removed> I'm sick and tired of iBurst's sh*t.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Valis said:
<removed>
Click to expand...
This is really uncalled for. Not so long ago JvZ was a valued and highly respected member of this community. Now he has different constraints and has apparently plunged from hero to zero.
Just because there is now a clash between one's fantasy world full of expectations and the real one full of hard limitations does not mean that we can resort to name calling.

A public apology and a R100 donation to a woman's or children center might be a way to atone for it.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
just one of the many reasons why i will never go the iBurst route
 
I must say, I'm feeling a whole lot better now that I've left iBurst.

@markings - that is what happens when you break some people's trust - but i'd agree, no need for namecalling.
 
However, a few subscribers saw this as a method to do very well on P2P services and we clocked some of them doing more than 100Gb/month downloading torrents. This gave them an effective data rate of R1.40/GB, surely the bargain of the year. So, to ensure a more fair usage for all subscribers, we decided to rather introduce a pay-for uncapped VAS service, and pass the cost benefit on to our subscribers in the form of higher usage limits,” said Van Zyl.
Click to expand...

This is factually incorrect and I would question the accuracy of the remainder of the article on this basis.

Clearly, iBurst have now put their mark in the sand by saying that the abuse of the uncapped service was for reasons stated above. They seem to have ignored the fact that it is impossible to use anything near to 100GB at 100% utilisation 24/7 on both the up and downlink on a 64kb/s throttle in fact this is not possible on a 128kb/s throttle either.

The only way someone could use 100GB is if iBurst failled to throttle, there is a failure to disclose that by iburst.

I accept that iBurst is wireless and there must be limits to what clients use, but misrepresentation is not the way to go about it, and it's just plain stupid to make claims like this in an article posted on a website like myBB with a highly tech literate audience.

D
 
First of all this is definitely not an uncapped debate. This is a debate about a pathetic 64k throttled service which was removed by iBurst for whatever reason. One can still get the service but now at a much higher price.

I for one left the service and has a R2 800 modem which I cannot use for anything.
 
For the first time ever - I agree with iBurst (Jannie) on this one.

However, a few subscribers saw this as a method to do very well on P2P services and we clocked some of them doing more than 100Gb/month downloading torrents.

These are the kind of users we do not need on the net. In fact Torrents should be banned all together - or compete on their own network so that the rest of us can focus on our work or use the net for productive means, being it business or legal entertainment. This is one of the reasons I, and many others, stay with certain service providers who do not provide uncapped accounts (at any speed). The more internet provision is abused (legally or otherwise) the more the industry would have to be regulated, which would just be to the determent of all.

Now lets see who re-acts negatively to the above - then we know what kind of user (or abuser) you are.
 
Last edited:
Joe Average said:
For the first time ever - I agree with iBurst (Jannie) on this one.

However, a few subscribers saw this as a method to do very well on P2P services and we clocked some of them doing more than 100Gb/month downloading torrents.

These are the kind of users we do not need on the net. In fact Torrents should be banned all together - or compete on their own network so that the rest of us can focus on our work or use the net for productive means, being it business or legal entertainment. This is one of the reasons I, and many others, stay with certain service providers who do not provide uncapped accounts (at any speed). The more internet provision is abused (legally or otherwise) the more the industry would have to be regulated, which would just be to the determent of all.

Now lets see who re-acts negatively to the above - then we know what kind of user you are.
Click to expand...

I use torrents all the time lol... on a server in Canada with a 100MB unmetered link.. then only get what i need from there ...
 
Valis said:
Well then why am I being hardcapped? I am a current contract holder and had to buy top-ups this month because I was capped. Your people have ignored every attempt I've made to find out what's going on. They just couldn't be bothered to help their customers.

<removed> I'm sick and tired of iBurst's sh*t.
Click to expand...
If you're currently in a contract and you had the throttled service before, you must still have it. PM me / Ronald / Gcebile your account details and we'll check.
 
Last edited:
MyBroadBand gets paid by I-Burst for sponsorships. Hence the biased articled.... Whatever Jannie....
 
damian24 said:
This is factually incorrect and I would question the accuracy of the remainder of the article on this basis.

Clearly, iBurst have now put their mark in the sand by saying that the abuse of the uncapped service was for reasons stated above. They seem to have ignored the fact that it is impossible to use anything near to 100GB at 100% utilisation 24/7 on both the up and downlink on a 64kb/s throttle in fact this is not possible on a 128kb/s throttle either.

The only way someone could use 100GB is if iBurst failled to throttle, there is a failure to disclose that by iburst.

I accept that iBurst is wireless and there must be limits to what clients use, but misrepresentation is not the way to go about it, and it's just plain stupid to make claims like this in an article posted on a website like myBB with a highly tech literate audience.

D
Click to expand...

Grab a calculator and work out how much data a P2P user can upload/download over a 64/384 link in an average month and you'll see it's over 100GB.

Again, this service was intended as a value add for people NOT to get hard capped. The slowdown in downlink was to highlight to users that they're throttled and should top up. Thus the uplink was never throttled.

The torrent guys picked up on this and used this to get stunning 'seeder' ratings by seeding up to 6 times more data than leeching. As you know it's any leecher's dream to get a good rating.
 
Is anyone else sick and tired of all the moaning about iBurst? If you don't like them then cancel your contract and go with somebody else. I don't see how any wireless provider is going to be able to offer uncapped Internet and still provide a decent service.
 
milomak said:
jannie - how does that compare to pre-change pricing?
Click to expand...
If you look at all the bundle prices, you'll see every bundle increased in size, some substantially so, at either the same or slightly lower rand value. So everyone scored.

The guys who actively used the throttled service to download large amounts of data count the value of the service into the total price and thus come up with a higher price. And their maths is not wrong, btw.

But clearly no network provider can continuously supply data at way below cost. As I showed above, they were getting data as low as R2/GB. With the new paid-for VAS, they still get the data at between R4 - R8/GB which is still way below cost but at least it's a better balance.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X