International bandwidth throttled?

You must also remember ADSL is a contended service with an oversell ratio. You share your bandwidth & by nature your latency with others.

You cant expect predictable low latency on this type of service ... if you must have it, you'll have to spend huge $$$$ on a Diginet with a 1:1 oversell ratio on international access.

In 2001 ADSL was basically a pilot in S.A. with very few users to contend with. Now your wrestling with 75,000 of your buddies ... and about 2000 more are joining the party every month.
 
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The problem I have with this is: why only SA? ADSL lines in the US, UK and even AUS don't have these problems with contention or latency and they're signing up more than our subscriber base (75,000) every month? BT contention ratio is 20:1 and 50:1 (from the ICASA report mentioned) and they have a heck of a lot more subscribers than SA does. They have hundreds of thousands of users, but their service is umteentimes better than ours. I think TELKOM doesn't want to spend money upgrading it's network. That's the only justifiable answer that seems logical to me.
 
Peter7 said:
They have hundreds of thousands of users
Click to expand...
There is one of the answers. Even if (hopefully when) Telkom's greediness is curtailed, we in S.A. cannot be immune to the basic economic principal of 'economy of scale'. Like any service, the better the uptake, the cheaper cost per user or conversely the more service per user at the same cost.

The S.A. broadband market is 'piss ant' compared to the European, US or even Australian markets. We will never get to their economies of scale and therefore never be as cheap or have as good a quality of service. We can hope to get MUCH closer tho.


Peter7 said:
BT contention ratio is 20:1 and 50:1
Click to expand...
Here is where the Telkom greediness comes in. Since they wont publish their contention ratios we cannot make a comparision to the likes of BT or any other internalional DSL providers. Hopefully the ICASA recommendations will bring visibility to this.
 
Roman4604 said:
The S.A. broadband market is 'piss ant' compared to the European, US or even Australian markets. We will never get to their economies of scale and therefore never be as cheap or have as good a quality of service. We can hope to get MUCH closer tho.
Click to expand...
I disagree, I think you've been taken in by Telkom's propaganda/excuses. A simple analysis of the economics reveals that the potential South African broadband market is MORE than large (and wealthy) enough to support cheap, fast, good broadband. See my posts here: http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showpost.php?p=227946&postcount=13 and here: http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showpost.php?p=213045&postcount=60

The population size of the "first economy" of South Africa ALONE is far larger than New Zealand's entire population, their GDP less than one fifth of ours --- and yet they have affordable, decent broadband! It's just impossible that the problem is that we "lack the economies of scale", as you say. And there are plenty of other examples. It is a commonly held misconception/myth by South Africans that we have a tiny economy ... check these GDP rankings ... our country just has a "low self-esteem problem". The potential market size for cheap (i.e. in line with international rates) broadband connections in SA is over a million. Price/demand curve is elastic --- you can't attain economies of scale by starting with a high price, like Telkom is doing. It is up to the company e.g. Telkom not its customers to sink investment capital in the beginning by offering a low-cost product and in so doing attaining a large enough user base for economies of scale to apply. Problem is there is no incentive for a monopoly to do that when it's raping businesses with fixed lines that in most cases could easily be replaced by cheap broadband if it were available.
 
Turtle said:
I think you've been taken in by Telkom's propaganda/excuses.
Click to expand...
Thats a little dramatic ... I do mention that Telkom is the primary inhibiter to S.A. moving MUCH closer to international broadband norms and standards.

Turtle said:
The population size of the "first economy" of South Africa ALONE is far larger than New Zealand's entire population, their GDP less than one fifth of ours --- and yet they have affordable, decent broadband!
Click to expand...
I never disputed that S.A. will eventually have "affordable, decent broadband" (once Telkom's stranglehold is ended). My point was that the S.A. broadband experience will never truly match that of the UK and the US (it was a mistake to mention Aus). I believe this is true for the following 2 reasons ...

1. Compared to these large markets the economy of scale does apply, tho not as dramatically as Telkom would plea (this applies to Aus & NZ also). A quick scan of comparable broadband offering from ex-incumbents in NZ, UK & US show ...

UK is 12% cheaper with 50% larger cap than NZ
US is 50% cheaper with no cap & 1 Mbits faster than NZ

2. Those markets are ON the Internet ... we, Aus & NZ connect to the Internet. Again not as dramatically as Telkom make us believe, submarine cables do add costs and reduce performance (latency & points of congestion). This counts as from what I've seen, the S.A. surfing distribution is around 5:1 in favour of international sites.
 
Peter7 said:
The problem I have with this is: why only SA? ADSL lines in the US, UK and even AUS don't have these problems with contention or latency and they're signing up more than our subscriber base (75,000) every month? BT contention ratio is 20:1 and 50:1 (from the ICASA report mentioned) and they have a heck of a lot more subscribers than SA does. They have hundreds of thousands of users, but their service is umteentimes better than ours. I think TELKOM doesn't want to spend money upgrading it's network. That's the only justifiable answer that seems logical to me.
Click to expand...

the uk's dsl network may not be anywhere near as bad as SA's but it does have its problems the BT atm network *a network of fibre connections that connect all the dsl exchanges to all the diffarant isp's you can get* has been starting to struggle this year with the upgrades to 2mbit. Everyone on 512kbit and 1mbit on most isp's had a free upgrade to 2mbit this year since then there has been a noticable increase in ping times for alot of people and slowdowns at peak time. Still at peak most people get over 150k/s on 2mbit alot and i mean ALOT still get max speed it depends where you live in the uk and how much people in your area have dsl. Im lucky i live in a small village i aint noticed any contention yet although ping times have gone up from 14 to 22. its not just the atm network thats struggling abit exchanges are too its at the exchanges that the 50:1 contention ratio really kicks in 50 people are connected to a dslam that has around 10mbit to 30mbit of bandwidth or something around that figure depending what speed dslam it is. it doesn't take someone smart to realise that 50x 2mbit users downloading at the same time or even alot of them would make the dslam run out of bandiwdth if it only had 10mbit or even 30mbit of bandwidth. But you gotta remember that there is no international cap crap here isp's that cap here cap everything till the next month but you can get isp's that dont cap it depends on how much your willing to pay. For example tiscali do 2mbit for what i believe is £14.99 or £19.99 a month with a 2gb cap i pay Zen internet £34.99 a month for 2mbit UNCAPPED and it is uncapped too i've downloaded over 200gb in a single month before and not heared anything from my isp.
 
Its amazing that Posix has direct access to the Google.com network
http://services.truteq.com/cgi-bin/nph-traceroute?www.google.co.za
raceroute: Warning: www.google.co.za has multiple addresses; using 74.125.77.147
traceroute to www.l.google.com (74.125.77.147), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 cisrb1-net109-64.posix.co.za (160.124.109.126) 0.252 ms 0.229 ms 0.100 ms
2 * cisldn1-cisrbc1.posix.co.za (160.124.1.2) 172.426 ms 169.700 ms
3 de-cix20.net.google.com (80.81.193.108) 182.620 ms 182.243 ms 203.857 ms (looks like in Germany possibly to the Google Swiss Data center)
4 209.85.255.176 (209.85.255.176) 182.261 ms 182.245 ms 209.85.255.178 (209.85.255.178) 181.626 ms
5 209.85.250.140 (209.85.250.140) 191.233 ms 209.85.248.182 (209.85.248.182) 188.105 ms 188.376 ms
6 64.233.175.246 (64.233.175.246) 191.475 ms 191.464 ms 191.240 ms
7 72.14.239.199 (72.14.239.199) 193.132 ms 72.14.239.197 (72.14.239.197) 192.496 ms 192.599 ms
8 209.85.255.98 (209.85.255.98) 193.239 ms 201.869 ms 209.85.255.110 (209.85.255.110) 203.232 ms
9 ew-in-f147.google.com (74.125.77.147) 197.362 ms 194.207 ms 195.734 ms
 
Posix is probably just peering with google.

Here is a traceroute from a Telkom LG:

Code: 
  1 tpr-ip-esr-1-fe-1-0-3.telkom-ipnet.co.za (196.25.9.45) 0 msec 0 msec 0 msec
  2 196.43.9.54 180 msec 184 msec 184 msec
  3 ldn-tch-i1-link.telia.net (213.155.141.153) 176 msec 176 msec 180 msec
  4 ldn-tch-i2-link.telia.net (80.91.250.218) [AS 1299] 184 msec 184 msec 180 msec
  5 ldn-b2-link.telia.net (80.91.250.213) [AS 1299] 180 msec 180 msec 180 msec
  6 pipex-104657-ldn-b2.c.telia.net (213.248.100.94) [AS 1299] 180 msec 184 msec 180 msec
  7 gi1-1-6.ar01.tn5.bb.gxn.net (62.72.140.142) [AS 5413] 180 msec 184 msec 180 msec
  8 ge-0-0-0-3801.jolt-gw.cust.pipex.net (212.241.241.14) [AS 5413] 184 msec 180 msec 184 msec
  9 clarity.jolt.co.uk (195.149.21.11) [AS 25346] 180 msec 180 msec 180 msec

Code: 
  1 tpr-ip-esr-1-fe-1-0-3.telkom-ipnet.co.za (196.25.9.45) 0 msec 0 msec 0 msec
  2 wblv-ip-lir-1-pos-7-2-2.telkom-ipnet.co.za (196.43.18.6) 176 msec 176 msec 176 msec
  3 83.245.76.221 220 msec 176 msec 180 msec
  4 209.85.252.42 [AS 15169] 180 msec 180 msec
    209.85.252.40 [AS 15169] 180 msec
  5 66.249.95.170 [AS 15169] 184 msec
    72.14.232.134 [AS 15169] 188 msec 188 msec
  6 209.85.252.83 [AS 15169] 188 msec
    209.85.251.231 [AS 15169] 188 msec 192 msec
  7 209.85.243.89 [AS 15169] 192 msec
    209.85.243.101 [AS 15169] 188 msec
    209.85.243.93 [AS 15169] 196 msec
  8 www.l.google.com (209.85.227.103) [AS 15169] 188 msec 192 msec 192 msec
 
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