ICASA findings in layman speak

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sybawoods

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All credit to Gldm at the NAG forums for this wonderful . Thought it may be useful for any visitors here who don't have time to wade through the full document. Hope Gldm doesn't mind me copying his post here :cool: :

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Ok, part 1: This is the result of the survey we did about DSL from december 17th to jan 21st. Here's some definitions of what broadband and ADSL are.

part 2: We are ICASA. We come to kick ass and take names, because it's our job. We heard people were bitching about Telkom.

part 3: Telcom whined a bit going "What about Sentech and Vodacom and the upcoming SNO? Why pick on us?" and we said "We recieved 46 detailed complaints about your specific service. You are the problem."

3.1: We looked to see if Telkom was ripping people off unfairly by charging for a line, then dsl over the same line, and other stuff...

more of 3.1: We noticed broadband is getting cheaper everywhere else but not here, and got suspicious. People hinted Telkom was charging more for the same lines than other international providers, despite Telkom being one of the largest line owners in the world. So the idea of them paying more for international data is bull****, and we think they're holding out on the actual line capacity.

more 3.1: Plus, THE ISPS ARE PAYING FOR THE INTERNATIONAL NOT TELKOM!

more 3.1: We told telkom "You know, in other countries they don't get ripped of by seperate fees for lines and traffic like this", and Telkom tried to play dumb.

3.1.2: We listened to what people said, and noticed that Telkom is charging for the line as well as the service. This isn't right, because it doesn't cost Telkom any more to roll out the DSL line, it's the same copper as the phone line.

more 3.1.2: It's unfair for Telkom to force people to rent phone lines when they only want DSL. We also noticed Telkom claims it's "investment in infrastructure" yet even after the 3 years of their recouping cost are up, they still charge hideous rates. Only in SA does this happen, other countries don't do it.

more 3.1.2: Telkom whined alot saying they need it to cover costs.

more 3.1.2: They also tried to bull**** us, but we didn't fall for it.

more 3.1.2: The following suggestions were made: 1: ISPs get to provide the local lines, not Telkom. 2: Force Telkom to reduce prices by up to 70%, as this was successful for India. 3: Remove the retarded access charge, which you only find in SA...

4: Step in and take the international lines away from Telkom, declaring them a government/public resource, then subsidize them. 5: Let ISPs share rackspace with telkom so they don't monopolize the DSLAMs, and 6: Audit Telkom's books to see if they're ripping people off.

Part 3.1.3: What we're actually doing...

3.1.3.1: We're still looking into taking over the international cable. Some other stuff has come up, so it's on hold, but we're still considering it, just waiting to see what's up with the Convergence Bill first.

3.1.3.2: We like MyADSL's idea: Telkom gets only a once off install charge and then only line rental. They're not allowed to charge for access, the ISP gets that.

3.1.3.3: We noticed that local loop competition (letting other providers install lines and provide DSLAMs) has lowered costs for many other countries. Lowering costs is a good thing. We would do this, but the Convergence Bill which is already in progress should do it already, so no worries.

3.1.3.4: As for the suggestion we do what India did... There's some slight problems with this because of the tools we have to estimate costs. We could force Telkom to lower their cost if we found they were overcharging, but we don't really have a way to estimate this properly for individual users.

more 3.1.3.4: However, we have a way to do this for broadband as a whole, so we will. We've got Telkom's books, and we're analyizing what it costs them to provide broadband. When we're done, we're going to team up with the Department of Communication to create a universal set of rules for ALL broadband in SA.

more 3.1.3.4: We also remind Telkom of what they said about helping SA progress on June 6th of 2005. You better not be bull****ting us.

3.1.3.5: In regards to letting ISPs colocate their equipment at Telkom sites. ISPs you need to submit your comments to us so we can get to work on that.

3.1.3.6: Telkom is hereby locked to their prices that will take effect August 1st. Any increase in pricing must be ok'd by us.
 
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Part 4: How we're going to protect consumers:

4.1: We found out Telkom wasn't telling people you can buy cheaper modems. Telkom said "We're not required to, but we put it up on our website because we're nice guys." We said "Fine then."

4.2: Are DSL customers restricted to the 2 brands of modem Telkom will provide? No. In fact Telkom's modems are crap, but they're whiny about supporting any other brands. You can use your own if you know what you're doing.

4.3: What we decided after looking at consumer complaints:

4.3.1: It's our job to tell you what modems work with Telkom, not theirs. It's now up on our website.

4.3.2: Telkom has some on their website too.

4.3.3: You're allowed to use your own modem, and Telkom can't try and give you lower priority on line fixes and such for it.


4.4: Did Telkom tell people about the 3GB cap? Half the people said they found out on Telkom's website or through other people. A third said they didn't know. The rest didn't answer. Telkom said originally there was no cap until DSL hit critical mass, and then they changed the deal. Alot of people have complained that's not fair.

4.5: So is the 3GB cap fair, and are people actually getting 512k service as promised? What's considred abuse by Telkom? Does it match international standards? Is it alright to penalize people who use lots of bandwidth?

4.5.1: Telkom said "The ISPs handle the caps." Internet Solutions said "No we don't, look at your own damn diagrams." Telkom said "Oops, guess not then."

4.5.2: People complain the cap is unfair and should not include local bandwidth. Everyone hates the cap. So the issues with the cap are: 1: the 3GB cap is 50/50 split between upstream and downstream, 2: local traffic counts on the cap, 3: once you're capped, your international is dead. Not slow, just dead.

more 4.5.2: Telkom says "You're only supposed to browse the web and get email like good children. 120 photos per month, 1600 emails, 80 songs, one two hour video, and 1.5 hours PER WEEK of online gaming is the standard". Everyone else complained that this is unreasonable and in many countries caps don't even exist, and the most common use for ADSL is online gaming.

more 4.5.2: Telkom says about 2.5% of the users "abuse the service" but it doesn't list the above info on what is "normal use" anywhere. Users said Telkom just flags anyone who uses the service as it should as abusers. Capping is not the standard, but the exception internationally.

4.6: What we decided about the 3GB cap:

4.6.1: Telkom didn't specify what "critical mass" was to start imposing a cap. They have no justification why the cap should be 3GB, and Telkom justifies the cap by saying they don't have enough bandwidth. We asked "Why can't you buy more?" Telkom said "It costs too much." We said "Other countries are managing it." Telkom said "No they're not! Australia and New Zealand have caps!"

more 4.6.1: MyADSL made short work of this, pointing out Telstra (Australia) caps at 50GB. We've decided that the cap is getting a full investigation where we will decide how big the cap should be, but it definately seems way too small at 3GB. But the cap WILL BE INCREASED.

4.6.2: We talked to Telkom and MyADSL about what constitutes abuse:

4.6.2.1: When people originally signed up, Telkom should have told them when they started capping and offered to let them out of their contracts. They should get that option now. Anyone who signed up after the cap knew what they were getting into.

4.6.2.2: In regards to Telkom crying "Abuse" and limiting what you can do, we asked the ITU what ADSL is. They said "modem technology that converts twisted-pair telephone lines into access paths for multimedia and high-speed data communications." Ok, so then what exactly is "multimedia?" We checked with the Telecommunications Act and ITU, and it says:

a) internet through Television
b) pay-per-view
c) video on demand
d) electronic transitions and e-commerce
e) text
f) data
g) graphics
h) animation
i) audio
j) visual content, but not including celluar service

the combination of multiple forms of media such as audio, video, text, graphics, fax and telephony in the communication of information.

more 4.6.2.2: Telkom's restrictions of what you can do with ADSL are bull**** and illegal. Telkom can't claim gamers and online traders and downloaders are abusing the service, as it's what ADSL is for.

4.6.3: Should Telkom monitor bandwidth use or should end users? Turns out Telkom has a service you can sign up for that will email you with daily, weekly, and monthly use so you can keep track of it.

4.6.4: Since Telkom can email you usage stats, they should let you know when you get close to cap. We'll make them do it.

4.6.5: So what about port shaping? Is it ok for some users to get performance penalties because of other people using the line (i.e. their traffic takes priority)? Why do businesses pay more for the same lines? Telkom says "Oh but businesses make more peak hour traffic and that costs us more!"

4.6.6: What we found out about that:

4.6.6.1: Bull****. Telkom wants to charge seperate fees for access and then let the ISPs charge for traffic on top of it? Well then they're not paying for the bandwidth are they? Telkom may only charge for the speed of the line. Period. If the service is identical, you pay the same.

4.6.7: What kind of speed does the average user get? Are people satisfied with the service? Telkom says "Oh yes we did this survey and 84% of home and 87% of business users are happy with it." We said "Let us see that please. MyADSL also gave us a survey conducted among their users. 83% said they were NOT satisfied, and 98% said they believed the price of it was unfair.

4.6.8: What we're doing about that:

4.6.8.1: Telkom's survey was old. So they have to do open ended surveys on a regular basis. And post the questionnaire and the results on their website where everyone can see.

4.6.8.2: Having sometimes good sometimes bad service during the month is not acceptable. I.e. good until your cap is blown and then useless. We'll be looking into fixing that.

4.6.9: What do people think the cap should be? We covered the cap size in 4.6.1. As for should local traffic count, most people said no. They also said the speed for local sites shouldn't go down once you're capped. We figured out this is making people avoid local web hosting, so it's bad for local web developers. Someone suggested you should be able to buy more bandwidth once you're capped. Telkom said "Oh nobody uses anywhere near that much anyway and the 3GB cap is fine." They also said they have no way to distinguish local and international data.

4.6.10: What we're doing about that: Local traffic will no longer count towards cap. We also believe you should be able to top up your account after cap without needing a new account.
 
Part 5: Technical Issues

5.1: Should Telkom guaranteed speeds? Some people said 56k minimum, some say 512k minimum, India went with 256kbps, ITU has reccomended 1.5-2mbps. Telkom whined "We're doing the best we can, the lines are oversold. You get what we can manage. We can't control speed other than from the end user to the local exchange."

5.2: Findings on 5.1: Broadband needs to be distinguishable from narrowband. 56k is not broadband. Telkom must guarantee minimum speeds in line with the ITU, i.e. 1.5-2mbps if they want to keep their broadband charter.

5.3: What about port shaping? Should specific users be given priority? Telkom said port shaping is only on 2GB and 3GB accounts for international transfers and not on 4GB, and that it's necessary to curtail peer to peer apps and DSL was only intended for web traffic anyway. Some people argued that you can't specify what DSL is "intended" for so port shaping should be done away with.

5.4: What we decided on that: Telkom failed to provide international precedent or financial justification for port shaping. Data is data, end of discussion. It's not Telkom's business what data you transfer, they should only charge according to line speed. This will be incorporated into the new regulations.

5.5: Should Telkom have a set contention ratio? People want to know the contention ratio. Telkom says it's a secret. MyADSL said between 20:1 and 50:1 would be inline with international standards.

5.6: About that: Telkom has no justification to not tell users the contention ratio. All the UK providers go by 20:1 and 50:1 rules. We will suggest set and known ratios for specific services, to protect consumers.

6: Additional Issues

6.1: 24hour DSL service reset: People complained Telkom resets at random which causes their downloads to fail and have to restart, eating their cap. Telkom said they need to reset for "technical reasons" and to apply the caps, which can't be done while the session is in progress.

more 6.1: Internet Solutions said this is bull****, you don't need to reset a session to measure the cap. MyADSL also said when you reset you switch IPs, and thus if the person who had the IP last was getting hacked, you're stuck with their problems. However, they said all that's needed is to know a predictable time when the connections reset so it can be planned for accordingly.

6.2: Dynamnic vs fixed IPs: Telkom was telling users dynamic IPs protect them from hackers. MyADSL says that's bull****, they're just protecting the much higher priced Diginet business. People could host their own websites over DSL instead of sending them overseas.

6.3: Findings on those two: Telkom couldn't justify the resets. The argument that it will kill Diginet doesn't work because DSL has high contention ratios. Daily reset and Dynamic IP should be done away with.

7: Legal Issues

7.1: We went looking for Telkom's Service Level Agreements. Didn't find any. We found a generic one for line rental that doesn't mention ADSL, and they tried to put up an "acceptable use policy" the day after these hearings started. Most people seem to want agreements that outline what they're going to get like speed and down and up time. Internet Solutions said SLAs should wait until competition is in the market.

7.2: Decision on that: Saying wait for competition is silly. These will protect customers from abuse by monopoly.

8: Conclusion and Reccomendations: Telkom is ripping people off. We should change things in these ways:

They should only charge once service actually starts and only for line rental, not access.

We're looking into price capping them, but they're reducing prices soon anyway. We're still looking at the international costs and if we should take the lines and declare them public.

It's our job to let people know what modems work with Telkom, and users can pick whichever they want.

The cap is going to be increased to match international standards.

DSL is defined as 1.5-2mbps, and Telkom will maintain that speed if they want to keep their broadband charter.

Port shaping is not reccomended. It's not Telkom's business what you use your DSL for.

Telkom must make the contention ratios publicly known.

The daily reset isn't necessary, and should be eliminated.

Service agreements are reccomended so that uses have a clear idea of what they're getting and a way to complain if they're not getting it.

We will begin working on the laws to implement all this within the next four weeks.
 
Nice one, perhaps to allow it to travel to Media and be accepted as a good 'deconstruction' - the language should get cleaned up a little, and remove the odd rude word here and there, maybe, and replace the ***** with 'nonsense' or 'this was shown to be a lie' :) Good work though.
 
Woohoo

Ok Telkom - Especially Peter White - you 31tch. You had better stop supplying customers with those jars of vaseline. It looks like you are going to be needing it yourselves.

Ooom ICASA is come for you in the night :D
 
Thanks for posting the summary here sybawoods, saved me from having to read and interpret the findings - all in all its good news for the broadband community, hopefully we see some action on this soon. The only thing that worries me is the part where they talk about taking control of the international line and making it state property, this means that the governement will control pricing and initially it may be low, but when maintenance is required they may just sting us.
 
A question?

Firstly, thank you for the summary. I am not too clued up on the finer points of the debate, but it looks good to me.

May I ask a question - I hope this is the right place?

There has been talk in some threads of Helkom "selling" ADSL on a rand per gig basis - maybe as high as R 90 per gig. This is making me wonder if it is worth moving from ISDN to ADSL.

Based on the above can I assume / hope that this will not happen, or if it does then the rate will be a lot lower?

Thank you for your feedback
 
Thanks for this, Sybawoods. I started to write up something similar after reading the entire doc, but luckily saw your post first.

I think you may be off target on the following...

sybawoods said:
They should only charge once service actually starts and only for line rental, not access.
Click to expand...

I understood the ICASA statement to mean that Telkom should not charge an extra line rental for the ADSL service. Basically, if I'm interpreting it correctly, customers should only pay for a normal telephone line rental and the ISP charge for the ADSL bandwidth, but not the Telkom ADSL line rental.

This sure makes sense to me. I mean, once Telkom has paid for the DSLAMs (and that cost should be covered by a once-off installation fee), then why are they charging customers a high monthly price for it as well? No reason I can see.

Well done ICASA. Now let's see some follow-through.
 
It is great that ICASA have made those findings, now what is going to be done about it?
 
Nice translation!

Man, I really want to jump for joy but know i should wait till it's actually implemented....
 
This is good news indeed. I wonder how long it will take to actually get implemented.
 
Haha nice one Syba.

The question is, will any of this be forced down Telkom's throat or are they just going to carry on ignoring everything and doing as they please ?
 
I am just so scared that Ivy is going to put her foot down and squash this. I am seriously suspicious of why she always steps in and squashes good things that need to happen...
 
Ivy's probably having a snooze somewhere again.

We should send her a copy of this, we can also add a few stickmen pictures to make it easier for her to understand.

and WHITE,,,, lube up and bend over, the vaseline with the sea sand in it is for you!
:)
 
Not to be a kill joy, but I don't agree with ICASA on this one.

I asked my dad about it, and he told me to go wash the dishes.

So as a provider of internet services, this is my somewhat educated view.

ICASA should regulate issues in a "technology-neutral manner". They should only regulate things which are not in market controll, such as peering (good example being the Internet Solutions issue). They should not regulate things which are in market control.

The high prices currently make competition very attractive to those with the money to do so, however the governement and excessive regulation make this incredibly unattractive. For instance, why would anyone want to try and open a new telecomunications service if they could recieve all the negative publicity, consumer attacks and regulation by ICASA.

ICASA should not be messing with anyones business model, no matter how bad it may be.

Yes, this is great for consumers in the short term - but you will only be stuck with Telkom for even longer, and they will simply decrease network service to make up for losses incurred by whatever is forced appon them by ICASA.

---snip----------------
Your flames go here.
 
Fair enough but there is no market control. A monopoly exists and even if it didnt south african companies have shown a predilection to collusive environments. Look at the automotive and cellular markets where over-inflated prices exist in an 'open market'.

Even free market economies have regulations to protect the consumer from collusion and monopolies. In SAs case ICASAs regulations can always be relaxed or removed should the need arise in the future.

Still - its your opinion and you're entitled to it.
 
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Karn, you correct, BUT, it's a slightly utopian view.... Telkom's grossly overpowering monopoly must be treated uniquely..
 
I have to say that I very much side with Karnaugh here. As I pointed out in previous posts: We won't get better service in this country by micro-managing and micro-regulating Telkom. We will get better service when the issues that make ISP's bleed cash, such as peering, access, and international bandwidth become regulated so that Telkom cannot compete unfairly on those levels.

Yes, it's great that something is being done to rap Telkom over the knuckles and make sure they're not ripping us off. That should be the constant job of the regulator, not a bunch of disgruntled customers forcing an inquisition into the matter.

It's good that DSL will go into the basket. But prices won't get competitive unless the larger issues, and conditions change.
 
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