IS news server, maybe time for a change ?

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KinsZA

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Hi

Since everything seems to be going under "Is news server up the creek" maybe throwing some idea's into a different thread, since I got a few ideas I'll start.

1) Give the news server useage only to people with accounts direct from IS or a IS specified retailer. These accounts are more expensive by default.

2) Sell a news account (say R150 per month)

Of course some people will moan about this (probably the people who download everything they possibly can till they get hardcapped) but overseas people get charged for news service, and after all this is also costing them money. Of course if you going to charge for a service you going to have to guarentee it to be good.

As I type this I am getting a under a quarter of my maximum speed in otherwords 25KB/s average.
 
KinsZA said:
Hi

1) Give the news server useage only to people with accounts direct from IS or a IS specified retailer. These accounts are more expensive by default.
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KinsZA:

For (1): I thought that the IS news server was already only accessible to people on the IS network. Or is that untrue? Fairly certain that I was unable to connect from an SAIX-based acct.
 
You are complaining about 25 KB/s?! Remember that server is used by alot of people, you should easily be able to reach you cap.
Also one of the idea's of an IS acount is the news server, so I don't think you can complain for people actually using it and the news server is only available for IS users already...
Yes the news server is flaky, but I am still able too enjoy it fully just get a good binary news reader, when you schedule jobs and get the settings right you won't even notice it.
 
NameOfBeast: yes all IS accounts can access, but I saying basically a different batch of accounts, ones that come with news access.

Turbo_Aspiration: Is that you saying that you would pay but you think ppl with different speeds should pay different prices. dont accuse 1mbit people as "clogging up the server" heck I use less per month than some 384 people.

alma-tadema: IS accounts are basically the same price as SAIX accounts and they bundle the extra local, its not as if you are paying more for the same, you are paying the same for more.

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I think the majority of people are going to come up with some excuse because they want a free ride.
 
I forget too add did you try the new beta news server? Also an 1mbit acount is a total waste of money, you really think you are going too max it out? Especially in SA with it's starved bandwidth economy? The only people that should get those accounts is businesses or groups of people sharing the line with multiple acounts.
 
alma-tadema: I do actually max it out if the server on the other side allows and the beta server hardly works for a lot of people now.

You may be happy with waiting 3 hours for a download, personally I prefer waiting 1 hour. And I guess that makes the peope that get 10mb-1gb lines, they dont need them right ?

Sounds like one of telkoms arguments about their cap size
 
KinsZA said:
alma-tadema: IS accounts are basically the same price as SAIX accounts and they bundle the extra local, its not as if you are paying more for the same, you are paying the same for more.

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I think the majority of people are going to come up with some excuse because they want a free ride.
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Well it is called competition... IS is trying too differentiate from Telkom, trying too add more value. Free ride? Only IS users can use it so nobody is using it without paying. Yes IS can try and make it subscription but what would the use of an IS ADSL account then be? IS is bundling it in order too try and attract customers. Making it subscription would not make business sense.

The quality of service is the result of the (non-)competitive market, you only have too be marginal better in order too survive and that is what IS is doing.
 
KinsZA said:
Turbo_Aspiration: Is that you saying that you would pay but you think ppl with different speeds should pay different prices. dont accuse 1mbit people as "clogging up the server" heck I use less per month than some 384 people.
Click to expand...

I would pay but obviously a "free ride", as u put it, would be better. Also, paying extra would make an IS account alot less attractive. The problem of congestion is not spread over a month. The instantaneous effect is that some1 with a 1mb line is taking up the place of 5 192k users or 3 384k users
 
Well since there are two IS news servers another idea to make one free (and not guarenteed speeds) and one pay with guarenteed speeds.

So if someone wants free ride they gotta make do
If someone wants quality they gotta pay

and Alma, they already giving the extra local b/w. That alone is a large attraction point, they dont even advertise their news service.
 
KinsZA said:
alma-tadema: I do actually max it out if the server on the other side allows and the beta server hardly works for a lot of people now.

You may be happy with waiting 3 hours for a download, personally I prefer waiting 1 hour. And I guess that makes the peope that get 10mb-1gb lines, they dont need them right ?

Sounds like one of telkoms arguments about their cap size
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Well yes but without significant backbone improvements and demonopilization it is kind of useless, yes overseas servers and some local ones can easily provide the bandwidth, but when it hits the SA bottlenecks it is kind of moot. I mean it is a premium premium service with the little problem that it doesn't deliver...
 
KinsZA said:
NameOfBeast: yes all IS accounts can access, but I saying basically a different batch of accounts, ones that come with news access.

--------
I think the majority of people are going to come up with some excuse because they want a free ride.
Click to expand...

The IS accounts, n GB + (30 -n) GB, are slightly more expensive than the corresponding SAIX=based n GB accounts; I think most people view this as a surcharge for access to the IS news server; you are arguing in effect for an increase for this surcharge.

For quite a few (most?) people buying IS accounts the *only* real use for that (30 -n) GB is usenet leeching because there is little else to download locally (there was an article in this weeks M&G about how most local sites are almost devoid of audio/video material --- as a consequence of high b-band costs --- link somebody?). Taking away usenet access will make a lot of people very unhappy.

Your comment about a ``free-ride'' is a bit unfair; the one thing that ADSL in ZA is *not* is FREE! One aspect of this suppposed ``abuse'' of usenet is the following: we are paying a huge amount for an often unreliable service; under these circumstances people feel that they must have ``something to show'' for the R600-R1200 pm they are spending on coms costs --- hence the tendency to overdo the usenet downloads. If the basic ADSL service was more modesly priced (ICASA, someone say ICASA?) I think there would be less ``abuse ''. So, everyone together: ``I Blame TELKOM!''.
 
KinsZA said:
Well since there are two IS news servers another idea to make one free (and not guarenteed speeds) and one pay with guarenteed speeds.

So if someone wants free ride they gotta make do
If someone wants quality they gotta pay

and Alma, they already giving the extra local b/w. That alone is a large attraction point, they dont even advertise their news service.
Click to expand...

That may be a good idea but does it make business sense for IS? Also remember this is IS... guaranteed speed does not exist in their universe... you may be paying for a service that is only marginal better, kinda like your 1024k ADSL line.
 
NameOfBeast said:
One aspect of this suppposed ``abuse'' of usenet is the following: we are paying a huge amount for an often unreliable service; under these circumstances people feel that they must have ``something to show'' for the R600-R1200 pm they are spending on coms costs --- hence the tendency to overdo the usenet downloads. If the basic ADSL service was more modesly priced (ICASA, someone say ICASA?) I think there would be less ``abuse ''. So, everyone together: ``I Blame TELKOM!''.
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I agree, nice point.

And Alma, I think u should stop with your 1mbit line being pointless statements because your speed statements are so wrong its not even worth arguing about anymore. I do get my 110KB/s from international downloads, and I DID get my 110KB/s from IS news, torrents however not that great for me.
 
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well since u wanna pay more why dont u just get an uncapped account and YOU can pay for an overseas news server. be thankful that IS actually has a news server that connects to the overseas servers. at 25KB/s u can download 60GB a month from the IS server, is there even so much stuff on there that u wanna download in 1 month??? sheesh
 
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The idea of making one free and one pay is that is blatant profiteering. Much like Telkom charge more for unshaped accounts and less for shaped. The thing here is that as IS account holders we accept the fact that international latency is crap and speeds during office hours are crap, but we at least want our local to be full speed, especially the news servers.

It's not like most people have IS accounts for international bandwidth. Bottom line is IS should start getting their act together if they don't want to start losing customers. And in all this, not one IS reseller on this forum has even tried to help us out by getting in contact with IS to help sort this out. Very disappointed indeed.
 
Highflyer_GP said:
The idea of making one free and one pay is that is blatant profiteering. Much like Telkom charge more for unshaped accounts and less for shaped. The thing here is that as IS account holders we accept the fact that international latency is crap and speeds during office hours are crap, but we at least want our local to be full speed, especially the news servers.

It's not like most people have IS accounts for international bandwidth. Bottom line is IS should start getting their act together if they don't want to start losing customers. And in all this, not one IS reseller on this forum has even tried to help us out by getting in contact with IS to help sort this out. Very disappointed indeed.
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Problem is that IS could probably care less: they make more from their uncapped corporate clients (who don't particularly care about the news servers) than from the resold capped IS packages. So they loose a couple of usenet leechers? Who cares?
 
NameOfBeast said:
Problem is that IS could probably care less: they make more from their uncapped corporate clients (who don't particularly care about the news servers) than from the resold capped IS packages. So they loose a couple of usenet leechers? Who cares?
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It's not just with usenet, local performance lately has been sub-par as well. Let's not forget that lot's of people buy IS accounts for local bandwidth, applications which include VPN's, interconnecting branches, setting up VOIP systems between branches etc. - and not just the news servers. There's alot of SMME's relying on them, and not just the large corporates who can afford multiple uncapped lines. I'd go as far as to say that if they lose this segment of the market, it would probably hurt their margins by as much as 30-40%. So while they do make more from the corporates, they still stand to lose quite a large amount from everyone else.
 
Highflyer_GP said:
It's not just with usenet, local performance lately has been sub-par as well.
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You're quite right about that. Lately ive found IS has gone to the dogs. Since getting my 384 line, i havent seen very much of my line maxing out in speed, whilst on my nice webafrica prepaid account everything opens up in a flash!
 
Highflyer_GP said:
There's alot of SMME's relying on them, and not just the large corporates who can afford multiple uncapped lines. I'd go as far as to say that if they lose this segment of the market, it would probably hurt their margins by as much as 30-40%. So while they do make more from the corporates, they still stand to lose quite a large amount from everyone else.
Click to expand...

You're right about the general suckyness of IS ADSL recently; but I was commenting specifically on a change in news server policy not having much of an impact on their major client base. To an extent IS knows that There IS No Alternative for cheap(ish) local bandwidth (there are no local-only SAIX accounts are there?) so I'm not expecting any sudden improvement in their service. Does anyone have an idea of what percentage of the market IS holds? They started out by only offering coporates ADSL services IIRC.
 
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