ICASA ADSL Hearings: Your Feedback Needed

There is hope

After continually struggling against Telkom I finally threw in the towel and left South Africa and am now enjoying unlimited bandwidth and speed.

However, I would like to see the SA broadband industry resolve its problems and I believe that I do have a solution for you.

THE problem in SA is the international pipe that connect SA to the rest of the world. It is running at maximum capacity and even if you increased it 10 fold or 100 fold you will not resolve the problem because of the demand.

I suggest 3 changes:
1. Discriminatory pricing for domestic and international bandwidth in EXACTLY the same manner that normal phone calls are charged. (i.e. An international phone call costs way more than a local call.)
Effect: Mirror sites will pop up in SA and local businesses will attract traffic that used to go overseas. These local sites can use that traffic to generate revenue.
2. Pricing per Mb of bandwidth used with no caps. You pay for the amount that you use - just like the telephone.
Effect: This will encourage efficient use of bandwidth (like accelerators) that will improve the speed for everyone. You have a scarce resource (bandwidth) and everyone should be encouraged to use it efficiently and wisely.
3. Peak hour pricing. If you need to download a massive file then set it up to download between X and Y (probably 1 and 5am) when the domestic and international bandwidth demand is at its lowest.
Effect: Again we're distributing the bandwidth demand to better share this scarce resource.

As I mentioned above I will gain nothing from this now but I still feel for my friends in SA who struggle with this problem daily. SA is flushing millions of rands down the toilet as its citizens are prevented from entering the global internet market on an equal footing compared to the rest of the world.

Good luck guys!
 
Deregulate, deregulate, deregulate. Allow the utilities (i.e. water, electricity and roads) to install lines (telephone / copper / fiber / whatever).

I hear today that UK employers will in the near future not be allowed to advertize for "energetic" personel or personel with X "year of experience" because it discriminates based on age. What happened to good business sense ? Why not just ban employers from asking candidates their age ?

I can understand equal opportunity legislation that tries to break down man's instinctive behaviour to fear a forgein culture / clan. But during our lives we have ample opportunity to socialize / identify with older and younger people. So when an employer wants someone energetic or experienced, it more often than not means he has a very good reason.

The only people making money from all these rules are attorneys.
 
Same old crap

It just needs to be like other countries. They don't pay for line rental that is R477 if they even have one, and the cost is like an equivelant of R200 for 8mbps uncapped account with no shaping. I wish this country would catch a wake up, but when we do have what people have in other countries, we'll be so far behind and i'll probably be dead or dying of old age sitting with my 10 gig capped account trying to pay it off with my pension money.

Telkom my suck my zub!
 
I can understand and relate to the feelings that everyone in this thread is "venting" as I suffered it all when in SA.

However, I suggest that you come up with practical solutions instead of telling Telkom what they are because we already know that they are a corrupt monopoly and by repeating that in this forum will not help.

Telkom are not going to change unless they believe that they will be generating the same or more revenue from broadband. The pricing structure changes that I suggested above should make broadband both faster and cheaper for you and still give Telkom the same revenue making both parties happy at the end of the day.
 
Icasa Hearings!

It is a great pity that the only organisation (ICASA) that is potentially able to do something about this has not managed to do anything significant as yet. That said, at least we have a forum to express our needs as a community.

1) Provide an account with no cap, and make it affordable, i.e no more than 30 pounds (R300.00), all other accounts must get cheaper from that point down.

2) Lose the shaping on the top end accounts, shape the small stuff if you have to do any shaping at all

3) Lose the pots rental portion of the cost of renting an ADSL line - it is a total rip off

4) Drop the rental pricing or give bandwidth away for free as part of the deal no matter who the ISP is

5) Stop hard capping - throttle down accounts that are capped (obviously not the premium ones!)

6) Provide fixed I.P addresses - Small business desperately needs this!

7) Kill the monopoly approach to doing business and stop ripping the consumer off

8) Make ADSL with SLA's available to bussineses at an affordable rate
 
9) Elisha Cuthbert and that hot Dutch assassin from Munich
 
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ADSL and Government

All points are relevant and the previous hearing points must be covered but I want the real questions answered as follows:-

Why is government deliberately stifling competition? Notes to this include but are not limited to:

Why did the SNO fiasco take so long with no positive intervention from Government?
Why, when the SNO license is issued, does Sentech (a fully owned government entity) suddenly lay claim to the 800-900Mhz bandwidth that the SNO has identified as key to its rapid rollout via CDMA (including high speed broadband) and in what context do they have sole rights?

How can a user in South Africa purchase a 1MB diginet line in the UK via the UK Head Office, connecting their Sandton Office to London, for almost 30% less than if they purchased the line in South Africa via a local ISP? Where is the premium? At the ISP or excessive charges to the ISP by Telkom? More importantly, if this is the case then does the same apply for ADSL?

Why does the law not allow ISPs to set up their own networks (and not the tired old excuse of they are protecting us from marginal/unscrupulous operators).

Forget fighting Telkom, after all they laugh off Supreme Court Judges, the true villain is our own government.

ICASA is window dressing put in place to make us think we have a fair shot at change. If that is the case then why are ICASA members government appointed and not industry appointed? And I quote ...."said ICASA chairman, Mandla Langa.“We bid farewell to councillors Hope, Ncetezo and Petrick, and wish them good luck with their careers post-ICASA, while also welcoming on board our three new councillors, who assume office tomorrow after being appointed for four-year terms by President Thabo Mbeki.”The regulator also announced that its new CEO, Jacqueline Boitumelo Manche – who joined ICASA from the Department of Provincial and Local Government, where she served as deputy director-general – would take office as of the beginning of July......." ITWEB 5 July 2004. for the full transcipt.

I say take the fight to Government, Telkom will never change until the laws change.

I would also like to know what the likes of Internet Solutions, ISPA, etc have spent on legal fees just trying to get a fair shot at ADSL provisioning and why they would even need to take these matters to court unless Telkom are playing the time game, extending the outcome we as consumers are entitled to?

UNTIL THE LAW CHANGES TELKOM WILL NOT!!

Any suggestions on a course of action appreciated.
 
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What about world class ADSL service. 4GBit connections 30GByte Cap at a price of R360 pm. These are typical ADSL in other countries.

But then ICASA has proven itself to be a barking dog at best. Nothing has changed in Telkom's or any of the other 'Broadband' provider services since their last great finding ....
 
Adsl Hearings

Our prices are quite ridiculous and ADSL should be boycotted by users by making use of another broadband offering. Enough pressure like this would force change much more effectively:mad:
 
I would focus on benchmarking with other countries - particularly Europe. In the UK, you can get an 8Mb connection with a 40GB cap, including line rental and UNLIMITED local and international (to a selected number of countries) for a total of 21 pounds (see www.talktalk.co.uk). In Germany, you can get a 6Mb connection without any cap for €25 (see www.gmx.net). Speeds of 4Mb-24Mb are common in Europe and most of the countries have similar pricing structures.

The argument that international bandwidth in South Africa is more expensive may, or may not, be true. However, if that is really the issue why is local traffic included in your cap? Surely, if it is a matter of expensive international bandwidth, they should only cap international bandwidth and not worry about local trafic when calculating the cap? The fact it gets calculated the way it does is a good indication that Telkom is just trying to make huge profits out of the whole thing.

Obviously, a 3GB cap is nonsense. There is so much legal multimedia content out there that it is very easy to hit your cap without even trying. And then we are not even talking about downloading the latest linux distributions or other open source software!

Finally, shaping seems to be another way to make sure Internet usage gets restricted. Particularly if you consider Skype, it seems to be just another way for Telkom to retain their profits from voice calls.

I moved to South Africa about 18 months ago. Although this is a wonderful place to live with great people, the complete lack of broadband (you cannot really call 192 or 384Kb broadband!) has always been a major annoyance to me and shown me how much South Africa is still a developing country. In order to improve this, we will need to see the following:
1) Dramatic increase of the caps to international levels
2) Dramatic reduction in the prices
3) Reduction in Shaping
4) Significant speed improvements (both in terms of speed offered as in actual speed that you get on the connection)

I am probably just dreaming, but if the ICASA is serious about improving this, they really need to take some action!
 
Pretty much all that could have been suggested has been suggested in all these posts.

Just add my name to the list, maybe the numbers will make a difference!

Good luck to RPM and everyone else involved!
 
Tell them to have a look at hellkom.
its been said before but the more the merrier: increase or take away the cap and god please help me here, lower the price? internet is a luxury in south africa where in the rest of the world it is a norm. HELP US ADVANCE!
i am a GuildWars player and the updates and the browsing of internet pages usually caps me by the end of the month, i dont even have a chance to download anything.
 
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Business Vs Private Usage

I think Telkom should be forced to offer equal pacages to business and home users. Telkom seem to think that they have a bigger cow to milk in businesses and therefore do not offer them the lower speed (and lower cost) packages. Many small and home businesses could use the slower offerings as an alternative to a dial up connection but they now have to do this in their private capacity.

ICASA must also stop talking and actually do something. I had a guest out from the UK who could not use their software because it required an 8M link for which he paid 9.95 pounds per month. The uncapped link included a telephone line and a cable tv connection.
 
Changing the fundamentals

The way that I have always seen the big picture is that two of the most important resources are controlled by the monopoly. Ultimately these two factors are what keeps prices high and at the end of the day we as consumers want lower prices.
The two factors that are most important are the local loop and the international connection. If the last mile is easily accessible to competition at a reasonable price, competition will be increased and prices will fall thereby achieving the lower prices required by consumers. I believe that the only solution to this factor is to take control of the local loop away from telkom and allow other providers to self provide.
The international link linking SA to the rest of the world needs to be made cheaper. I am not sure what the best way to do this would be but a good start would be to take control away from telkom.

I think that telkom is the biggest driving factor behind the high prices that we currently see. I am not sure whether it is greed or incompetence that makes them charge the prices that they do, but neither greed nor incompetence is a good thing. telkom Cannot be trusted with the resources that have been put under their control. As proven in many other countries, comparable with SA or not, market forces have been proven to be the most effective custodians of these resources.

In short break telkom up and take away control of the local loop and international link (SAT3) from them.
 
ICASA should be empowered to enforce its decisions, be it via fines or legal action.
Opening up the SAT3 would be a good thing.
If a cap system has to be implaced, a less restrictive capping system
No shaping
Lower costs, perhaps a cheap or standard cost upto 30GB and after that each GB be a little more expensive.
Better Transparency from the Telecoms market.
No more best effort, a guarentee of service, with each service clearly defined.
No more line rental, if a line rental is to exist it should then have value added to it ( eg set number of GB's per month ) if line rental is to stay then the same line rental for everyone.
Educational facilities should be given either free or heavyily discounted rates
 
Telkom expensive

I had a look on a Dutch website. www.kpn.com
ADSL Line rental, fixed line PLUS service providing without a CAP is 34 Euro.
That is under R300 for everything.

That is however for their slowest link (1.5MB), which is faster than Telkom fastest line(1MB).

:mad:
 
Telkom's Security

I run a small computer business, this month alone I've had 3 clients who subscribe to Telkom as an ISP and have been hard capped. One guy uses his internet for home use and hit 27Gigs of usage in the first 10 days of this month (Check it out: http://www.bramley.co.za the whole story is there). Another is a church who hit 11.6Gigs in the first 2 weeks. I know these people, they don't download that much. Something is wrong, Telkom is dishing out our account details somewhere.
 
cable, decent speed, no limits, co-loc, 'nuff said.
 
Competition

Legislation should be used as a tool to encourage competition in the telecommunications sector. This should be the no.1 priority.

Consumers need more alternatives. Many of us would switch to other providers if there were viable fixed line offerings available. The introduction of the SNO will not serve to lower prices. We need at least five or six companies to choose from.

Competition needs to be fostered on every level of the food chain; namely:
- supply of bandwidth from overseas
- supply of modems and equipment
- adsl installation and services
- isps
- etc.

The government should consider building additional undersea cables to various parts of the world, and provide them at cost.

Having one company with all the power is not only extremely damaging to our economy, but is also a serious threat to our national security. Our entire fixed line telecommunications infrastructure is controlled by one company. How much redudancy do you think that offers?

The government must aim for South Africa to take the lead in telecoms. If the UK offers ADSL at 10 MB per second to consumers, we should offer 20 MB per second. If the US offers it at $20, we should offer it at $10. If our economy is to be successful, we need to be leaders, not followers.
 
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