Imagine Uncapped Feedback

We already do provide for those customers... private leased circuits / leased lines / diginet / neolink / metronet / metro-e / microwave / DFA / (and sometimes others). Essentially the company buys 3:1 or 1:1 bandwidth and we provision on one of the above intermediaries or own network (which are all very similar but potentially just different brand names and owners).

The costs here though are not R600 but generally R6000+ pm.

This market is on going and ever increasing as an ADSL line just isn't good enough to run a fast-paced business on. The telephony savings, Service Level Agreements (generally 99.5%) and quality of service you receive can quickly see these extra costs pay for themselves for even a small business of 5+ employees.

However, I believe that you are eluding to the high-end ADSL customer - of which the arguement is that they already have the R2,449 Vodacom uncapped, the R979 Uncapped Express or the R2,999 static IP. All running a good service level and at the middle-ground for the market.

Unfortunately, "abusing" home users are the lowest of the low priority to these guys... I use the word abusing as that is how they see you. Low profit, high demanding/custoemr service cost, high utilisation... I say that they need to re-think their product structures and services and I assume you guys would agree, however, in the face of the above info i think you'll understand whey they are not in a rush to do it.
 
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@ppedrick

My comment re 160 pertains to the staus quo - we are getting 160 for half the day currently and I was attempting to point out that if you (IS) were to market the current product as 160Kb/s uncapped rtther than 384 uncapped I doubt that there would be any takers.

If IS isn't keen on selling the current product I think they should get out of the marketplace, otherwise they should get their Arse into Gear and ensure that the speed doesn't drop below 250Kb/s.
 
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bekdik said:
@ppedrick - My comment re 160 pertains to the staus quo - we are getting 160 for half the day currently and I was attempting to point out that if you (IS) were to market the current product as 160Kb/s uncapped rtaher than 384 uncapped I doubt that there would be any takers.
If IS isn't keen on selling the current product I think they should get out of the marketplace, otherwise they should get their AOOG and ensure that the speed doesn't drop below 250Kb/s.
Click to expand...

Exactly the point I made last Thursday.
Don't release a **** product just to undercut. We could still sell a product that was R600 per month because it was good quality. Also, if you can't manage the 384k contention ratios, to make it profitable, then only launch the speeds you can. Fight the right fights and don't just give a knee-jerk reaction and hope like hell it'll come right.

Again, this was all said on Thursday and IS are a large business. I am hoping to see a slowly improving better service that improves over the coming 4-8 weeks and not an immediate pick-up... unfortunately.
 
bekdik said:
I'm thinking I read of your quest, something about white stallion, lance and windmills?
Click to expand...

Been a very long while since I read that - if I am remembering Don Quixote correctly!
Yeah - I'm not known for towing the line or for saying the things that people want to hear just to please them... However, I do ensure I have my facts and business models/knowledge to back things up... I've already changed a few major things in my life-time that people said could not be done. Let's see how this goes! :D
 
Thanks for the comments ppedrick, again it makes sense! Perhaps naivety from my side thinking its economically viable to offer a slightly better account for R100 or R150 a month more. I am not even looking for fully unshaped, I just think it'd be nice to be unshaped after office hours. I still dont understand why this is impossible! Does it just come down to infrastructure and not having resources to do so?
 
There are lots of opinions as to why. However, I'm sure that IS would point out that the Express accounts for R979 are unshaped in the evenings... although I still think that people would buy them if the daytime speed were better. Even 512k would do I think.

Speaking to someone yesterday about infrastructure they commented that IS were very 'cautious' when buying thier bandwidth. I obviously asked if that was a polite term for 'tight' and so are they under-provisioning.... he very quickly changed the subject - so there is a possibility that this has caught them out. As provisioning the correct amount of bandwidth 'just in time' never works due to the time scales involved. Also, when you summise that they would likely have to do that for the SEACOM cable (maybe SAT-3) and IPC you have several companies that you are relying on to react in time... plus i'm also not sure now if you can even buy more SEACOM until the guys light a bit more up!

Again, this is all suposition based on an embarrassed comment in the wrong place. However, you can see that there are could be so many spanners in the works with them that it will take a little while to know what to do... We were told 2 weeks 1 week ago so I'm guessing we shall see.
 
Also - been reading about the new guys TRL Tech on the boards. It would seem that they are selling the uncapped basic accounts at cost price. Obviously, unless they offer other services, which they don't seem to, they can not do this for very long. But I stand to be corrected.

They are making some wild claims about the Uncapped Basic account but what botheres me is that he stats that their IS sales rep has just informed them... so if all he knew about were the shaped per GB and finally the sales rep tells him... 4 weeks later... that there is a fully uncapped shaped product, he might be shooting himself in the foot. Or at least making promise that IS can't cash.

A company that only resells other people's US hosting services and resells IS's ADSL might be in for a shock making refund claims like that... although what I do like is that all of the other companies that could never compete per GB, because of the crazy price differences, are now able to take on the larger resellers and force more service and price!
 
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ppedrick, do you guys offer an express account? I see on your website there is an "after hours uncapped" 4 meg... how does this differ to your regular uncapped offering?
 
The thing is, I don't want to watch youtube videos in the middle of the night!
 
Yes we do - the After Hours are the IS Express accounts where you buy a 384k Express and then get full 4MB line speeds in the evening.
We do offer the 512k and 1MB versions of this, if you want them, but we believed that the massively differing cost for such little daytime differences wasn't correct to sell to anyone.

Pooky - fully agree again... although full-line-speed on the Express accounts kicks in at 7-8pm which is perfect for most people who use their business connections in the day and then this home account when they get back. Not a great answer when you want it at 2pm but i'm just trying to offer solutions to the problems.


EDIT: P.S. We have been offering the Express accounts at the cheapest price in the market for a while now - R979, so if you know other people that want to revert you might want to mention us...
http://www.imagine.co.za/home/uncapped-afterhours.html
 
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ppedrick, this is something I might be interested in... although... Throwing away R879 on an account that might STILL offer unacceptable speeds is something im just not prepared to do :( Do you guys have a test account or something? If FULL SPEED really kicked in at 7PM and continued all weekend, i'd be game... but if I got 100kb at 7 and then full speed at 00:00 then its a joke!!

Yikes okay i think i misread, thats R979 isnt it? Coming in at just under a grand, add line rental, DSL cost all that stuff and you're up to like R1600 odd a month... for internet... that runs at 192kbps 7am - 7pm? That's just not worth it IMO!
 
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Yeah - it's the old pricing... although the R879 is the satellite version and R979 the fibre version.

We have not had any complaints on the After Hours speeds and have petitioned a few people on them. So we know that they are performing as should be.
EDIT: The accounts are pro-rata mid month but must be paid until the end of the month. So if you tried one now and cancelled immediately the remaining 8 days of the month would still be outstanding.

EDIT: and yeah - R1600pm is a crazy amount but does seem the better value for large downloaders at the minute. Coming from various first world countries I've been finding this very hard to swallow as well. It's never nice when teh thing you used to expect and only pay R100-200 per month for is now R1600 for a service not as good with massive restrictions.
 
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I might have this wrong but if it is the Axxess Express accounts, isnt it a 5gb rolling threshold that if exceeded limits your speeds during the day?

@randomguy: If the top 10 downloads on the Axxess site are anything to go by they all manage to exceed 700gb. I think the speeds must be okay.

On to business, Im more of a forum reader, dont write to often.
Survived 2 hellish months of Digi and came aboard Imagine, and was blown away from the get go. Customer service was amazing. I even saved my emails from you guys.
Only real hiccup started about a week ago, Ive had a reverse of what everyone else seems to be having. Business hours I get an avg of 20kb/s lasts till about 9pm, then the average drops to about 13kb/s 9pm-7am before going back up to 20kb/s. Weird thing as well is over the course of the week I havent seen my downloads going above 25kb/s once. Not even over the last weekend.

Any ideas what the frak is going on? Just thought it was kinda arb. More arb yet are the last 3 odd guys left on the Digi thread all seem to be getting fulls speeds, haha!
 
I'm not a HEAVY downloader though (not by my definition at least), I only want to do between 100 and 150gigs a month... I just want the data WHEN I want the data... Not having to wait a week to download something, which is why I didnt get a 384line... Although my 4meg account performs like 1 ;)
 
Well you are lucky at. I live in an area where 384k is the highest my exchange apparently supports and it aint a bad Dbn suburb either. Heres me finally working at a proper job, bringing home the proverbial bacon and cant get a decent line!

Was just saying night speeds appear to be fast. And if you don't download more then 5gb a day or exceed the rolling threshold (although I have no idea how that actually works) you should enjoy 24 hour speeds. let ppedrick confirm before you take my word though.
 
Have any of you been able to use Rapidshare? I wanted to grab something off it yesterday (was like 2MB) but RS just doesn't load past the "free/premium" buttons. I finally found the file on Hotfile (which worked, luckily).
 
It's your punishment for wanting to live in Durban ;) Just kidding man!!!

I hear you dude, thats rough!!!
 
I actually came back from Brasil cause the old lady was sickly and the old man missed me. Was enjoying cable for around R190pm was close to 4mb speeds and uncapped, it also included cable TV :P

EDIT: Sloppy grammer :D
 
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