Line Speed upgrade

S

SadIvyParrot

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Hi Afrihost...
When openserve announced there was to be a speed upgrade at no cost to the ISP, I was so happy, I never once got any speed upgrades during co-vid times... I am on a legacy 8meg line, so a few weeks ago Openserve announced a free line speed ugrade to 25meg down, so I was expecting to go from 8meg to 25meg for R399..

Having spent an hour on the phone today Monday 22 Feb 2021, the senior client manager confirmed that I am staying on the 8meg line, and that this costs Afrihost money as they have to rent an 8meg account to allow this 8meg account I have with Afrihost...

But when going to 25meg is free, and you Afrihost are no longer having to rent a 8meg line for me, why am I not upgraded? I feel I am bein g punished for not upgrading to 10meg.. The cost of that extra 2meg was more than 100% of what I was paying for 8meg, so the extra 2meg a month made terrible financial sense..

Years ago I had dsl and the line speed was 512kbps, then one day Telkom increased this to 1meg down, yay, then about a year later it was upped to 2megs down, joy of joy, we were not punished and forced to stay on 1meg, we had no choice, that was what the line was, the slowest speed you could buy was 2meg...

Then in 2019 when fibre came to town the slowest was 8meg down, for R399, which was fine, now in March 2021 the slowest speed offered by openserve is 25meg down, so what is the issue with pushing all clients to 25meg down for R399? I cannot see the logic of renting an 8meg account when there is no reason to..other than what?? I am so confused
 
Thanks, that is not the problem, the problem is that Afrihost are not understanding the issue, they have to opay openserve to slow my line down, when from 1st March at 25meg this is no longer a cost, so I cannot understand why anyone would pay a cost such as Afrihost are doing, when there is no logical reason to pay this.. What are they afraid of? Not sure...not once during co-vid was my line speed increased... I was "legacy" and this somehow justifies Afrihost wanting to spend money.. Makes no sense...

Telkom owe me 41 cents from when I closed the account when I got fibre, I paid Rx.50, instead of Rx.09...
 
Well the cost of the 10meg is more than R399, the 10meg is being upgraded to 25, if you were paying for the full 10megs then you would get upgraded, you have a legacy package which Openserve are not doing anything with.

You paying a reduced fee for a slightly slower product (Openserves base product was 10meg - now going to be 25). You basically on like a promotional product like Vumatel have 1000/100 for around R1399/R1499 it is discounted because it is promotional and could end. They are more than likely paying a reduced amount for this legacy package, which they passing on to you.
 
I still don't get it... Telkom/Openserve offer 25 and above... There is no extra costs to bump everyone to 25.. I am sure folks would be pissed at newbies getting 25..I am sure this was the case when telkom bumped the speed from 512kbps to 1meg, the 1 meg users felt the burn... Tough this is life... What is the difference????
 
SadIvyParrot said:
I still don't get it... Telkom/Openserve offer 25 and above... There is no extra costs to bump everyone to 25.. I am sure folks would be pissed at newbies getting 25..I am sure this was the case when telkom bumped the speed from 512kbps to 1meg, the 1 meg users felt the burn... Tough this is life... What is the difference????
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There is two costs involved here with Openserve, one the line rental and two the cost of carrying data, if they pushed your 8meg up to 25 you would use more data which would cost them more money in the end and you already paying a reduced fee

EDIT: "Openserve has made significant changes to its wholesale broadband offering over the past year, although it still comprises a fixed-line rental fee in addition to a wholesale charge for bandwidth (historically referred to as IP Connect, or IPC)." - https://mybroadband.co.za/news/fibre/385230-bad-news-about-openserves-fibre-price-cuts.html
 
Use more data? What? It is light, it travels at 125 000mph through glass fibre, that is a fixed speed, it cannot be changed, it is what light travels at through that medium...All I am doing is what exactly? How is using more data more expensive? If that was the case, then we would be capped to 1gig a month...We are not...

There are no increased costs to move everyone on less than 25 to 25 for R399.. Ok cap me at 2TB a month... I barely get to 1TB... The argument is that 25 is the new 8.. it shouldn't matter, back in the dsl days, telkom offered speeds from 512 to something like 20meg... and if you waited long enough you got upgrades for free.. I was not punished for not taking upgrades..

To go from 8meg to 10meg was economic suicide, it made no sense to go up 2meg in speed for an extra 80% on my account, it just was stupid... There was so little incentive, and for that I am punished??? Odd!!
 
Hi,

Unfortunately the legacy 8Mbps clients are not being upgraded to 25Mbps.

Currently Openserve does not offer a 10Mbps fibre line. Afrihost is paying Openserve for a 10Mbps line and capping speeds to 8Mbps. When the upgrades take place this will now be a 25Mbps line.

You are indeed right that there is no increase in the base fee but there is other costs involved like IPC, International transit costs and staff costs.

At R399 per month for the service the base line rental fee already exceeds this amount and Afrihost is subsidizing each client on these packages.
 
AfriNatic said:
Hi,

Unfortunately the legacy 8Mbps clients are not being upgraded to 25Mbps.

Currently Openserve does not offer a 10Mbps fibre line. Afrihost is paying Openserve for a 10Mbps line and capping speeds to 8Mbps. When the upgrades take place this will now be a 25Mbps line.

You are indeed right that there is no increase in the base fee but there is other costs involved like IPC, International transit costs and staff costs.

At R399 per month for the service the base line rental fee already exceeds this amount and Afrihost is subsidizing each client on these packages.
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Sounds a bit like fables, but anyway...
 
Well I see Afrihost finally came to the party, a day late and $2 short, late is better than not at all.. I knew it was going to happen, it had to.. There was no way Afrihost could justify their position, and I never believed anything the mod above posted about.. Fables I called it..correctly I guess! Yeah grateful, very!!!
 
SadIvyParrot said:
Well I see Afrihost finally came to the party, a day late and $2 short, late is better than not at all.. I knew it was going to happen, it had to.. There was no way Afrihost could justify their position, and I never believed anything the mod above posted about.. Fables I called it..correctly I guess! Yeah grateful, very!!!
Click to expand...

Hi,

Initially there were no plans to upgrade clients on the legacy 8Mbps package.

To simplify the offerings and give more value for money to clients that are on the legacy 8Mbps Openserve packages we will be upgrading these clients all to 25Mbps from tomorrow and that will come with a R98 increase in monthly fee to be R497 for these clients.

We hope this sweetens the deal and as big thank you for having us as your ISP for so long. :)
 
Yes, it does make things better, as to why it took nearly a month, and a lot of unhappiness, I am sure as today is Sunday that Afrihost must have been getting a lot of cancellations, or enquires as to the process, Mweb had a almost better deal, but the R497 was sweet enough for me..

Still a bit concerned as to why Afrihost felt it right and proper to not allow legacy clients upgrades during the covid, my app had a greyed out option... That hurts, that says we do not like you as a client.. even though I have been with Afrihost at least since 2013....

Thanks for the upgrade...cannot wait to see what fast is really like, never had a fast anything.. Even dsl was always so slow!!!!
 
SadIvyParrot said:
Use more data? What? It is light, it travels at 125 000mph through glass fibre, that is a fixed speed, it cannot be changed, it is what light travels at through that medium...All I am doing is what exactly? How is using more data more expensive? If that was the case, then we would be capped to 1gig a month...We are not...

There are no increased costs to move everyone on less than 25 to 25 for R399.. Ok cap me at 2TB a month... I barely get to 1TB... The argument is that 25 is the new 8.. it shouldn't matter, back in the dsl days, telkom offered speeds from 512 to something like 20meg... and if you waited long enough you got upgrades for free.. I was not punished for not taking upgrades..

To go from 8meg to 10meg was economic suicide, it made no sense to go up 2meg in speed for an extra 80% on my account, it just was stupid... There was so little incentive, and for that I am punished??? Odd!!
Click to expand...
Lol dude just because you got lucky once to be bumped up in service level doesn't entitle you to perpetual modern internet at yesterdays prices. Just take it down a notch and appreciate the fact that we have very reliable, tech-savy afrihost support directly on MBB. No fables being made up either. Did you read the article linked by CrypticZA?

Remember you are sharing that fibre (with 125 000mph light) with other people. A single mode fibre nowadays can carry up to 100 Gbps for only one wavelength x 100 different wavelengths. Its not just about capacity but also about supply. Consider pie as an analogy for the rate at which you receive data from the internet. If everyone gets a 2.5x bigger slice of the pie, then ISPs has to buy a bigger pie. Openserve is effectively saying, "hey end user, we got a new van! - we can now courier pie slices thats 2.5x bigger to your home and charge your ISP less for delivery!" Then they turn to ISPs and say "hey guys, remember that 1 ton pie I sold you last year for R100k, well I have a special on at the moment. A 2.5 ton pie for only R250k!". Then you turn to the ISP and say, "hey guys, my courier now has a bigger van. Mind loading it with more pie at the same price?". Fortunately for you it becomes less economical for the ISP to sell and delivery small amounts of pie to a handful of people - but only to a point.
 
Supply? That is not my problem, that is bad network design by openserve.. A bit like eskom posting that red warning every night at 7pm, switch off pool pumps...when they bloody well know we all have supper sometime between 5pm and 8pm.

They had a choice of what system to implement, they went with the wrong solution maybe? That is their problem, not mine, if 25meg is a problem, then why use it? Why not stop at 1 meg for the slowest and 8meg for the fastest...
 
SadIvyParrot said:
Supply? That is not my problem, that is bad network design by openserve.. A bit like eskom posting that red warning every night at 7pm, switch off pool pumps...when they bloody well know we all have supper sometime between 5pm and 8pm.

They had a choice of what system to implement, they went with the wrong solution maybe? That is their problem, not mine, if 25meg is a problem, then why use it? Why not stop at 1 meg for the slowest and 8meg for the fastest...
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You're still getting fibre at a very reasonable price. Even at the normal R579, it is VERY reasonable for 25mbps.
Internet is a luxury, and Openserve is one of the few networks actually reducing pricing, be grateful.
 
Why it is not just a plain access fee, 1Gps for everyone?.. South Africa should have a higher speed in metro than Singapore, but we rank at the lower end of access for citizens.. We have more capacity coming in than we could ever hope to abuse..
 
SadIvyParrot said:
Why it is not just a plain access fee, 1Gps for everyone?.. South Africa should have a higher speed in metro than Singapore, but we rank at the lower end of access for citizens.. We have more capacity coming in than we could ever hope to abuse..
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How about you start an ISP delivering this? I'm sure you'd make a fantastic success of it.
 
Old_Liver said:
Internet is a luxury
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Are you ****ing joking, or are you a complete moron?

How many people have been working from home? Our offices were closed through the lockdown. Same story across my field. If I didn't have a line I wouldn't. have. a. ****ing. job.

Luxury my ass.
 
SadIvyParrot said:
Why it is not just a plain access fee, 1Gps for everyone?.. South Africa should have a higher speed in metro than Singapore, but we rank at the lower end of access for citizens.. We have more capacity coming in than we could ever hope to abuse..
Click to expand...
Dude, I read your comments and this post and you are one serious cheap skate. Fsck. Thank goodness, I don't have the likes of you as friends . I would go mad


I pay for the service i need. If you want 1Gbps, pay for it. And before you post ****, read more about about why Singapore has 1Gbps as standard. History / context matters.

Anyway, done.
 
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