ICASA report has huge technical flaws !!!

ayanda said:
Is it not our expecattion that an "Authority" should keep itself informed ?
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thx, enough said ;) Good to know.

ICASA should indeed keep itself informed, but somehow I feel its splitting hairs when it comes to the bigger-than-3GB-cap ISP's. From a few posts I have read, since the prices started falling on existing 10, 20 and 30GB accounts, I got the impression that such high caps on a single account is not what Telkom had in mind in the first place. AFAIK one ISP dropped its prices dramatically - Think it was hyperlink - not too long ago, and the rest just followed suit as not to lose their customers.

See what happens with real competition?

Now lets change the topic again: What is your reaction to the post 'Open letter to Xolisa Vapi' in the news discussion section? Do you think it is out of line? I for one think it could not be more accurate and perfectly reasonable. I would really appreciate some feedback on that.
 
The way I read it was that they were refering to the minimum cap of 3 gigs that was ridiculous and needed to be revised as it was the standard package offered by Telkom to everyone at the time, and still is.
The offers from other isp's at the time I think was that you could have 3, 6, 9, a gazzillion gigs if you wanted to, it just meant paying more, normally in 3 gig packages @ the going rate.
It has only been very recently that isp's have had the means to offer higher affordable caps'
 
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What I don't understand is how Telkom can claim to operat in a competitive environment, when they're the only ones who are allowed to supply wired connections, and at the same time don't have any wireless offerings.
 
These are not actually huge technical flaws anyway - they are minor issues that are easily explainable or defended as has been shown.

I would say the the report is alot more clear and accurate than any of Telkom's propaganda. You remember the old days of the "Groot Gevar" - well they are still with us except it is now MyADSL that is the groot gevaar

I found a little something that aptly applies to Telkom

Weeping by Bright Blue
I knew a man who lived in fear (TELKOM)
It was huge, it was angry, it was drawing near (MyADSL)
Behind his house, a secret place
Was the shadow of the demon he could never face.

He built a wall of steel and flame
And men with guns, to keep it tame
Then standing back, he made it plain
That the nightmare would never ever rise again
But the fear and the fire and the guns remain.
~~Telkoms oppression of the masses~~

It doesn't matter now
It's over anyhow
He tells the world that it's sleeping
But as the night came round
I heard its lonely sound
It wasn't roaring, it was weeping
It wasn't roaring, it was weeping.

And then one day the neighbours came (Buddies in the Govt)
They were curious to know about the smoke and flame
They stood around outside the wall
But of course there was nothing to be heard at all
"My friends", he said, "We've reached our goal
The threat is under firm control
As long as peace and order reign
I'll be damned if I can see a reason to explain
Why the fear and the fire and the guns remain."
~~Telkom in bed with the investors proclaiming their
profits and expaining nothing to anybody~~

It doesn't matter now
It's over anyhow
He tells the world that it's sleeping
But as the night came round
I heard its lonely sound
It wasn't roaring, it was weeping
It wasn't roaring, it was weeping.

It doesn't matter now
It's over anyhow
He tells the world that it's sleeping
But as the night came round
I heard its lonely sound
It wasn't roaring, it was weeping
It wasn't roaring, it was weeping.

~~~How does this end? It's up to us
 
koffiejunkie said:
What I don't understand is how Telkom can claim to operat in a competitive environment
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They are delusional
 
Guys do you ever wonder what the hell the bigger picture of life is all about...
were we ever meant to spend 9 hours of our day behind a pc everyday..do
a lot of work...all pointless if you ask me....there has to be a bigger purpose to
our lives most people never realise it....


'Now, here, 1 see. it takes all the running you can do, to keep in ;he same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!'



Man did not just come about through evolution...a single celled organism to
a multicelled organism...he wa created by God...to what purpose???....
is it to run a race of life and accomplish something and pass away...if it is it
seems senseless..."is it to be adventurous and daring" that seems shallow and
selfish...so what is it...



"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."


"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions."


"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."
 
ayanda said:
hi, I am back. now on a new note. Icasa's report is written as if they've never noticed this whole of this year that there has been so many ISPs with offerings other than 3Gig. They even propose in the report to to raise it from 3Gig
!!!
or everything they wrote is based on the status of 18months ago , when the complaint was lodged ?
Is it not our expecattion that an "Authority" should keep itself informed ?
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Good point Ayanda and nice try, .... but

ICASA is indeed well informed - TelkomADSL does not offer an account with a CAP greater than 3GB. (Standard Options)

The good work of other ISP's is NOT a feather in the CAP of Telkom.

Now if TelkomADSL (I mean TelkomADSL Telkom ISP) did not have a 3GB CAP on their accounts then your argument would have merit.

Your logic is flawed - Tell VAPI, before friday.
 
ayanda im sorry but you really do sound as if you do know too much and are a staunch Telkom employee - pls stop running ICASA down for doing their job well.

Any which way, the people on this forum know what's right and what's not.

And at the end of each day, one can disprove any one of Telkom's crippled rhetorts.
 
ayanda said:
hi, I am back. now on a new note. Icasa's report is written as if they've never noticed this whole of this year that there has been so many ISPs with offerings other than 3Gig. They even propose in the report to to raise it from 3Gig
!!!
or everything they wrote is based on the status of 18months ago , when the complaint was lodged ?
Is it not our expecattion that an "Authority" should keep itself informed ?
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Maybe you should read the ICASA report. If you did, you will notice that Telkom had right of reply to everything said at the hearings. Instead of using the opportunities given to them, they hid behind confidentiality issues to not give any proper input, for instance their refusal to provide contention ratios etc. They could falso or example have presented the authority with the cost of running the service, to justify there costing model and reason for the 3gbyte cap. I believe they underestimated the strength of their opposition and are thus now in trouble. Remember, that most of the submissions made were by private people without any consideraition other than their believe in what is right. How many lawyers and PRO people did Telkom have at the hearings?
 
The bottom line

When you strip out all the emotion, this boils down to a money issue, and I don't think anyone can argue that Telkom abuse their monopoly status. The profits say it all. They need to be restrained, but realistically. There is more monthly cost to providing an ADSL line - more equipment to maintain, so an add-on is reasonable. The question is "How much?". It's the same question regarding monthly subs. I, too have a whole bundle of adverts for broadband in other parts of the world at much lower cost. My belief is that broadband is really an international commodity with broadly similar input costs everywhere. The only thing that makes SA different is an entrenched monopoly. I don't believe that the SNO will make a huge amount of difference for the man in the street. I think the solution is to let VANs buy international bandwidth on the open market. Reselling should then be more nearly a true market, which would sort out price/quality differences very quickly. It's a complex subject, so I haven't really gone into all the detail that you need to think about to make a good judgement.

Back to the start - Telkom is an unhealthy monopoly. fix that and most other things will drop into place.
 
I tend to agree with ayanda up to a certain point. The cost of the network equipment and everything else is expensive and well maybe they have bargained that they can recover the cost using the line rental. I don't mind paying this line rental but then I want a decent services. Not max download speed using HTTP and less than zero speed using anything else. If telkom can't get that part right then why must we pay for line rentals.
I agree though that the 3GB cap is not enough and that part I think should change though, most average users would be able to get to at least 2.5Gb in a single month not doing anything else than a bit of browsing.
I play World of Warcraft using a shaped account although i also have an unshaped one, since 1st of august the shaped latency has increased to 20000ms from 800ms and the packet loss is atleast 50%. That isn't just something that just happens because they added a few ADSL subsribers they changed something in the network. And what really pisses me off about this is they claim it is bandwidth hungry applications, IT IS NOT. online games uses less bandwidth than browsing.
 
francoistk
They dont have a clue when it comes to what is acceptable and what is not regarding bandwidth, sadly not a clue. And this is our one and only operator.
Its amazing, it really is.
 
ayanda...r u working for telkom or do u have big investments with them? About a year ago, in Taiwan, ADSL cost about R150 for a 1.5Mbps line without a cap. This is all the monthly charges consist of...it doesnt get raised months later, as u said in the first of few posts with BT. Then the students there complained that the costs were too high and a week later the president intervened and asked the only sole telecoms company to drop it...they dropped it to R100 for the line....

Now why r u arguing in Telkom's side since everyone else here have used ADSL, know what it's like getting ripped off and receiving poor service?
 
Sneeky, don't know if you read the report ICASA published. Somewhere in there they specify what the ITU recomendation is for a service to be called broadband. If telkom would just at least meet that requirement then i think a lot of the latency, speed and i think almost every problem everyone has with slow access will be resolved.
 
tibby.dude said:
But why should he bother engaging this forum with constructive debate when idiots with only 7 lame postings to their name (yes you Jeinor30) call him a Telkom employee or a dumb ass ???.
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Even though you might be correct this time, it still does not mean post count = teh_1337 or some crap like that.

Start insulting people on intelligence or something else, and not post count. That argument is old and lame.

Besides for this, my take on this is that our dear minister should just open up the whole telecomms industry completely. What could possibly be the reason for keeping it closed? More compitition would mean more more job creation (even though telkom would probably close down). More compitition would mean more taxes (even though the government would lose revenue because of telkom closing down). We would get better prices and be happier with the level of service we get.

South Africa would contend on a global scale with regards to call centres, and other such industries because of the lowering in prices and we would start competing more seriouosly with the global trend of outsourcing your call centres to countries such as India where labour is very cheap, and so is their telecomms charges.

Giving the telecomms industry a boost, would give a boost to many other diffirent market sections too. Surely the government can see this?

Does anyone know of any reasons why the telecomms sector is still closed? Other than the fact that we sit with a ever so slightly less than capable telecomms minister, or the government wanting to keep making money out of Telkom?
 
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I don't think it's wise to insult people on the number of posts they've made. And here I was thinking that this forum was a good place to be?
 
I read the report and the hearing transcripts.
Telkoms big whine now is about the line rental. All the other things in the report are not getting really any mention in their moaning, In one report White said something to the effect that he actualy agrees with a lot of the ICASA report, then goes on to moan about recovering costs and return on investment via the rental, and blah blah blah.
Monopolistic approach of virtualy demanding immidiate return on their investement.
Telkom executive for product development Steven White said on Tuesday that overall the company agrees with the document released by Icasa last Wednesday.
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http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__business/&articleid=247104

We will always have a latency issue in SA due to distance but that can be improved on thats for sure.
Also if Telkom had acceptable contention ratio's, and a minimum level of service things would be better. At the moment you might be sharing with 100 or 200 people, you dont know cause the ratios are a frikkin state secret almost.
The 3 gigs bandwidth is horribly to little at a disgusting price. Go and ask the chaps that play an online game like BF2 and you will be shocked at the amount of bandwitdh the game chews up. Even Telkoms statements as to what you should use your connection and bandwidth for are pathetic.
Seperating local from international bandwidth, increasing the cap as they are just profiteering of it.The list is endless.
Nobody expects free adsl, we want a good realiable service for an affordable price and Telkom seem incapable of doing it. They have been weighed, they have been measured, and they have been found wanting.
shame
 
Seriously some people with massive amounts of posts have contributed far less than others with lesser amount of posts and in fact only clutters the purpose of these forums. This last week was extremely important for myADSL, but check how many important threads got ruined by one or two word off topic postings
 
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