ICASA ADSL Hearings: Your Feedback Needed

[jmulder01]

Telkom is like a cornered snake., ready to strike whenever threatened.
Initially we were promised a 3Gig cap with unlimited local bandwidth.
The local torrent sites gave Telkom such a squeeze that they changed to a “threshold” based service.
When other ISP’s offered a 30Gig cap they simply forced them
back to useless old Telkom standards.
My line speed suddenly degraded from 48 Kbytes/s to 35 Kbytes/s and I am not the only one complaining.
I want to download the latest Linux distro or pre-load the latest Game release
without worrying about my cap.
Broadband was developed for streaming media , downloading larger amounts of data etc. so why can’t we use it the way it was intended to be.
Telkom is offering “Narrowband” ADSL at unaffordable prices.
Telkom ADSL is so expensive. I can actually buy a used car or bike worth R40 000 and the installments would be less than the amount on my monthly Telkom invoice.
That is Totally Unacceptable.

 

[LinkIT]

Tell me if i am wrong about the bandwidth please

I THINK South Africa (telkom) has a limited bandwidth to the rest of the word, and they are afraid to start letting it all go, that is why the prices are that high and there are cap limits on almost every internet connection.

It has been said that adsl or any other broadband internet helps to develop south Africa, it gives the smaller communities a chance to get part of South Africa and help with the development instead of waiting to be helped by someone.
SO why not make broadband available to smaller town, rhe whole of south Africa will benefit at the end of the day !

 

[Robin Hood]

1) Lowering prices ( per gig ) would be a good thing meaning more ppl will subscribe...If they know anything about business and how it works, this will make ppl more happy and will also make them more eager to subscribe...At the end, because of this....Telkom WILL make more money AND the ppl will be happy as well....
2) Lowering prices on "rental" ie R404 for 512kb is ridiculous when most of the ppl here dont even GET those speeds when connecting internationally, because at the end, thats where most ppl surf......internationally..

 

[jrbeck]

Competition

The only thing that would ever make Telkom possibly do anything for the consumer is competition. Ask ICASA what steps is they are taking to pressure/empower the powers that be to open up the phone/internet biz to competition.

I would suggest reading over AsgiSA (here) and point out how absurdly high phone and internet costs will only impede South Africa from reaching the goals of AsgiSA, especially 6% growth in GDP by 2010. Also, you can point out how the absurdly high costs of phone/internet impedes the 'shared growth' part of AsgiSA, putting these services only in the hands of the rich.

Thanks for your efforts MYADSL.

Cheers,
Jason

 

[albert123]

R404 for 512kb is ridiculous when most of the ppl here dont even GET those speeds when connecting internationally, because at the end, thats where most ppl surf......internationally..

if you dont get that check your isp and your side, cause i always get 512k no matter where i go, unless the site is like seriously slow but then even a rocket wont get it to you faster....

 

[devnull]

telkom can afford it

don't let telkom try say they can't afford lower prices
it is disgusting how much money telkom/vodacom make, just think
every major sports team in the country is vodacom X, you would think that instead of giving all that money away (for tax purposes) they could
make communication (voice/data) cheaper

 

[albert123]

hows about a "coke on tap" system??

 

[McDuke]

What I want for Christmas

This was probably said a thousand times already:

First price: No cap, Second price: Very high cap (30-50GB)
Then any bytes I did not use must roll over to next month for 3 months.

Finally the price must come down e.g. R300 for 512K (ADSL + ISP costs)

We are being nailed from all dimensions: price, cap and shaping. We have never experieced true ADSL is.

 

[paulcam123]

Uncaped Local

I think we need to be careful of soft capping or uncapped local acess.

The problem is that local access includes many local ISP's, almost all of which pay for bandwidth to SAIX. Forcing Telkom to offer uncapped local access (as much as I would like it), would push up the prices of other ISP's, and give Telkom even more of an unfair advantage.

SAIX (and every other ISP) should be forced to provide sufficient bandwidth to a neutral peering point at their own expense (yes, I know), and to provide free local peering to every other local ISP.

 

[me]

#130! Just lay a few more undersea fibre optic cables. What are they, a few months' profit? Screw eassy, we need just a handful of investors so someone can take responsibility, and get another guddamn cable laid down. Supply-demand. There's no supply.

 

[Broadshoulders]

ICASA hearings

Hi

There is a huge amount of aspects one can comment on, but the one thing that concerns everybody is to increase the living standards of all South Africans. Everybody from the highest political office to the private sector businesses propagated that the SMME/entrepreneur will provide this country with the vehicle to alleviated poverty. That would have been true if we had firstly governmental and non-governmental entities that were truly supportive of SMMEs and secondly delivered superb services. As a young entrepreneurial business among the many things that I found frustrating I am appalled by the absolutely horrific services delivery standards of our beloved Telkom monopoly. Unfortunately in capitalist system the only thing a business the size Telkom takes serious is the loss of significant revenue. Our options are thus
That a forum like this or entity like ICASA should deploy pratical measures to financial penalise Telkom or any Telco entity for non services delivery (not more legislation that can not be policed)
That true competition (No duopoly or N-oply) exists and market share is gained by affordability and services delivery

So I pray and hope that this forum can make a useful contribution/difference at the ICASA hearing.

BS

 

[lucifir]

I would like to see more reasonable pricing and better customer service. Being a monopoly, telkom does not bother adhering to any sort of service levels. They make promises about delivery and always unable to deliver.
The monthly line rental fee is a joke as this line is already being paid for by the normal telephone line rental, so this adsl line rental is pure profit as it offers no other service benefit. None of the other countries have this line rental for adsl, as this forms part of the ISP charge. This line rental causes further confusion for the lay-man as he will understand this as the cost to connect to the internet and not realise the cost of ISP is a separate charge.

 

[Padded Mouse]

This country needs to step up to the plate where shaping , capping, services, competition and mostly PRICE are concerned.

At the moment we are an international "joke", it is an embarrasment. Not to mention the frustration of trying to get an edge in on the global business market using IT as the foundation for one's business. Again laughable. We are not even vaguely competitive.

We are not in the arena where forward thinking IT based business is concerned and it is sad cos it's not as if we don't have the talent, the infrastructure etc etc.

When I look at communications in this country, I am reminded that we are largely still very much a controlled "police state".

As other people on this thread have stated, this will only happen when the quazi-government organizations like Telkom etc have their absolute power taken away and TRUE COMPETITION is encouraged in the Communications arena

 

[Padded Mouse]

Hi

There is a huge amount of aspects one can comment on, but the one thing that concerns everybody is to increase the living standards of all South Africans. Everybody from the highest political office to the private sector businesses propagated that the SMME/entrepreneur will provide this country with the vehicle to alleviated poverty. That would have been true if we had firstly governmental and non-governmental entities that were truly supportive of SMMEs and secondly delivered superb services. As a young entrepreneurial business among the many things that I found frustrating I am appalled by the absolutely horrific services delivery standards of our beloved Telkom monopoly. Unfortunately in capitalist system the only thing a business the size Telkom takes serious is the loss of significant revenue. Our options are thus
That a forum like this or entity like ICASA should deploy pratical measures to financial penalise Telkom or any Telco entity for non services delivery (not more legislation that can not be policed)
That true competition (No duopoly or N-oply) exists and market share is gained by affordability and services delivery

So I pray and hope that this forum can make a useful contribution/difference at the ICASA hearing.

BS

Couldn't have said it better myself, the restriction of Telkom's powers and the encouragement of competition will gild the future not just for SME's/Entrepreneurs but for all South Africans

 

[Lipe123]

t3h fuxoring LAG!!!

Look why is everyone just focusing on downloading tons of linux distros and game demos(aka LOTS OR PORNZZ).

What about shaping?!
I got me a silly little 1gb unshaped account(due to ridiculous price) to play a rpg game and HOLY CRAP it still lags like a dialup connection hopes to lag! In fact my cellphones GPRS is only a tad worse.. *sigh* I dont even want to think of trying to play CS or whatever the kids play nowdays along the lines of FPS on a international server. Not only games.. things like SKYPE, Video conference.. its LAGGY and slow!

Some dude said he always got his full 512 from his line.. I say WTF man does ur papa work for telkom?! I've had 512 lil over a year now and on my 2nd router, max speed is 48kbps soooometimes 52kbps.. and im 1km from exchange.
So yea.. sucky line speed needs to be looked at, if i pay for 512 and get 384 i wana pay for 384!!

Need we talk about cap? where are the 30gb cap days.. I finished 3 of those accts in a month which cost me R900. Now R900 for 90gb isnt bad, still a lot but it wasnt too bad - bring back the good ol times!!

To samaraaize
Unshaped that actually is UNshaped.
30Gb cap or NO CAP FTW!!!
Want the speed i pay for

 

[StewartDiss]

ICASA and Telkom regulations

Hi All,

It is pretty basic what needs to happen. Telkom needs to take the knock and allow companies that have all the ICASA licenses (USAL + PTN) to own the last mile of copper cable. If this is made clear that it is legal and not such a grey area, people companies would be able to supply DSLAM’s to the exchange and help Telkom out with the huge backlog of supplying telephone lines and ADSL connections to the homes and offices. Honestly, this is all that is needed. Pricing will fall when this is put into place as there will be an easier market to supply ADSL to the home.

 

[steed]

Cap vs No Cap vs Prepaid

Hi,

I have a suggestion if that capped accounts have to remain, then they should be turned into more of a "PREPAID" type account, where the bandwidth allocation will carry over indefinately while the account is active (say six months of no use will void it).

The problem is when the price of bandwidth is so expensive, people feel the need to use up their bandwidth. I myself am on my last month of a 30gb allyoucaneat account, so my downloading days are going to be over next month. Now I have used up 13gb of my account and I see only 10 days left in the month, so I find I just have to find something to download or something to stream, anything to use up what I have paid for. The arguement being better use it than waste it. Now what this generally leads to is the SAIX network being very very unstable towards the end of the month as everyone with a slight brain is trying to find a way of using up their cap. One must remember that the customers Telkom digs up for their examples are the sort of little old granny that has to remember where her enter key is and she squints as she clicks send/receive on her email client. When the only thing she ever does is check email, how possibly can she use up her 3gigs ?
Now I dont have anything against old granny's, thats just a sterotypical example of an email only user. That sort of user has never ever been educated to the possibilies of whats available nevermind how to actually use them.

Now, if we have a prepaid senario where the allocated data does not expire, then if the price of the data is right (preferable less than R10 per gig), people wont feel this dire need to use it up because they wont have the fear of expiry haunting them. Granted, the cost of bandwidth must come down. When it gets to R10 per gig, it might just be affordable. With more than half of the country in poverty with most people not having even a land line, we have a long way to go to making the pricing right. The other job is educating users to the benefits of the internet. I keep meeting people and I tell them about the wonders of the internet and what can be done with it. Its like a lightbulb comes on above their head. But when they see its cheaper to buy a new car than have a decent ADSL line, the lightbulb goes out and they forget about it. They never even think about it again. However things like making the accounts prepaid can in theory be done overnight if one can force Telkom to behave. I unfortunately feel that the prices are not going to come down as fast as we want as there are always more greedy people waiting in the wings to pick the public carcass. Unless ICASA can somehow get the power to actually kick Telkoms butt, nothing nice will happen. So lets hope these hearings go nicely.

Regards,

Steed.

 

[LCBXX]

Telkom broadband Hardware/Equipment

I have a question about all Telkom's equipment and the speed / service they are offering. They brag in their advertising that they employ Sun and Cisco certified engineers, thus they should have Sun and Cisco equipment.
My question is: Telkom obviously buys hardware from these recognised leaders in communication technology, most likely from the U.S.A, where broadband communications are the norm more than a luxury. The U.S companies offering broadband are most likely also using the same hardware Telkom buys.
So why is it that people in the U.S/U.K/Europe have descent, fast and affordable broadband offerings whereas we in South Africa have a "Best Effort", slow and expensive service? How come we have excuses that "it cannot be done" and that "South Africa is a developing 3rd world country" when we have similar, if not exactly the same, equipment that is used by 1st world countries?

Thank You.

 

[LinkIT]

broadband for us is out

You city guys have adsl at least for what its worth as I only hear complaints about it. Ha.
We in the smaller towns only have 33.6 dialup and ISDN.
SO if I need to put my large clients on internet only for 24hr e-mail I have to make big big plans.
We can only use diginet (R3800) per month for 64k.
IT becomes ridiculous for us to operate, and just as much as you need broadband we need it to, but it cannot be made available.
I spoke at a conference a few days ago to launch our own telephone service provider over wireless links to all the farms and other users, using asterisk.
So this is our only way “out”

I am tired to for fighting, cause it gets me nowhere, but I am willing to fight if I know I am not alone.
Thanks to everyone

 

[woodbrowne]

SME Business Feedback - Telkom Monopoly

In terms of the price, we have found a VOIP service provider that provides us VOIP at 0.01 Euro per minute to a South African landline, which equates to 1/4 - 1/5 of normal Telkom pricing. So here are our thoughts and conclusions that we made regarding this.

Whether I use the VOIP solution or go though Telkom, both will have to eventually use the same Telkom infrastructure to route my telephone call to the landline recipient. So why do we pay 4 to 5 times more than a European company who then uses the Telkom infrastructure, pays Telkom for its use, adds on their own profit margin and is still so incredibly cheap? Well, if Telkom charged them the rates they charge us then the International company would just not provide their service to South Africa, we however are forced to use Telkom at the rates they charge us, as opposed to the rates that they charge the rest of the world. Internationally they have to compete, whereas locally they have a monopoly.

Secondly, it is anti-competitive for Telkom to hold the monopoly on our International line to Europe. They are able to dictate terms and conditions to every other communications provider in the country, and are able to set fees that allow them to make profits regardless of costs or competition within the market. An indepedent body should oversee the line, and be able to rent this out to other would be Telkom competitors.

At our company, We were forced to change service providers, not because of anything within the ISP's control, but because Telkom dictated price changes and forced them into a position where they could not compete, and so we changed to a new ISP.

Regards
Peter Browne
WB Solutions