Local Only 3G / HSDPA Access

[Stevie G]

yes i agree that vodacom's prices is too high. when i got online for the 1st time about a month ago or so i purched a 500mb. i thought it would last me for a couple of weeks up to a month, but when i used torrent and downloading software, mp3's, clips,etc. that 500mb looked like 50mb to me. so i think vodacom's prices is still to steep. if you guys promote the internet with affordable prices to 2nd class home users then you need to drastically drop your prices ASAP. By the time you guys get a wake up call Neotel prives will be to competitive for vodacom. 2gig for R199 and 5gig for R299 and 10gig for R599 sounds reasonable to me.

don't get me wrong, vodacom has the best service and speeds to go with it , buttttttttttt you need to drop your prices to stay ahead before your competitors will slash their prices to get ahead of you guys.

I personally prefer wireless to dsl. i don't know why ppl are raving bout Telkom's non-existent pathetic service and speeds.

I would personally like vodacom to make local free or reduce it by half.

I will stay with vodacom as long as they satisfy me with their prices, oterwise i have to rethink maybe in the future.

V3g and ic, i think you can do better guys

 

[ToxicBunny]

Stevie : Vodacom never advertises their product for use with things like torrents etc etc... and if you're doing that on 3g...

As for the prices you've listed, you do know how complex Vodacoms network is, and that they have to pay a large portion to Telkom for the backhaul links from EACH tower...

 

[Prometheus]

Uncapped for a fixed price is by definition not free, you probably mean when data usage is not charged per MB.

Also, Vodacom seems to reduce its data pricing annually in April - probably related to the end of one financial year and the start of the next financial year.

I assumed what he meant by free was uncapped. It's not reasonable to think it would be free but uncapped would be reasonable. A reduction after March would probably be too little too late for me.

The internetvpn APN is due for retirement very soon, the internet APN will then take over from the internetvpn APN and provide publicly routable IP addresses with incoming ports blocked just like the internetvpn APN currently does.

Doing so will reduce Vodacom's maintenance overhead associated with maintaining an additional public APN and the backend systems required to run such an APN, I don't think Vodacom will be keen to have 3 public APNs when it can have 2.

I haven't seen any commitment to doing so. The issues with a lack of available ip addresses would first have to be sorted out and I don't think that would be before IPv6. There is also the vlive apn which would be largely unneeded with better pricing plans. If Vodacom is to offer reduced local rates it would have to be on a separate apn or built into the whole system. Which would be the most cost effective?

It is public knowledge that Vodacom primarily peers with SAIX which routes all of Vodacom's international data traffic; locally it would probably make sense for Vodacom to peer directly into [searchforum]JINX[/searchforum] and [searchforum]CINX[/searchforum], although not every part of the local net is reachable via JINX & CINX, but it would be a very good start.

Is that a fact or an assumption? What I mean is that IS has nearly 2Gb/s international bandwidth. Bandwidth from SAIX is purchased at a usage based rate. Vodacom probably pays usage based rates when peering with SAIX and probably with IS as well but what is the international bandwidth. Vodacom is not as open when it comes to these matters.

I think that an on net APN would be a useful addition to the Vodacom data products. Its the nearest to local-only that VC could guarantee with their current network peering. It would also provide a very useful intermediate product for companies that don't qualify for corporate APN services. And once they get some fiber in the ground they could provide fiber access into this cloud. This would provide a great, cost effective VPN solution for small and mid-sized companies.

I think an on net apn would be more useful in terms of companies using it to provide cheaper access to their own services. If data is substantially cheaper on the same network they could move company servers onto a Vodacom connection to provide information to employees and clients and still end up saving. Or users could use it to share downloads at a reduced rate than if they all downloaded from other networks. But what incentive is there to sell it to Vodacom? If customers pay less then Vodacom gets less from same customers. There may be a saving in peering costs for one. It might attract more users but also increase the need for more internal bandwidth, something which would make it unviable if they didn't self-provision.

Provisioning 10% of your capacity for international is something very different from not charging for local. There are completely different parts of the network infrastructure responsible for routing and billing

As I already said there must be some form of charging for access to local or else you will get users using only local and not paying for it although most will probably need international access as well and use Vodacom for this. It's also not provisioning 10% of capacity for international. Any local package would have to include a proportionate amount for international use which local don't count towards. On a 1GB package this could be 100MB allowed for international use but the whole 1GB available for local if needed.

 

[ambo]

I assumed what he meant by free was uncapped. It's not reasonable to think it would be free but uncapped would be reasonable. A reduction after March would probably be too little too late for me.

I guess some people are just destined to spend their life contributing to the churn stats

 

[Lydon]

I think that having cheaper prices for local data during the 2-6AM period would be best.

 

[morkhans]

yes i agree that vodacom's prices is too high. when i got online for the 1st time about a month ago or so i purched a 500mb. i thought it would last me for a couple of weeks up to a month, but when i used torrent and downloading software, mp3's, clips,etc. that 500mb looked like 50mb to me. so i think vodacom's prices is still to steep. if you guys promote the internet with affordable prices to 2nd class home users then you need to drastically drop your prices ASAP. By the time you guys get a wake up call Neotel prives will be to competitive for vodacom. 2gig for R199 and 5gig for R299 and 10gig for R599 sounds reasonable to me.

I don't see how the prices are going to reduce much until there is some alternative to SAT3 and Telkom's backhaul links. And while Vodacom is putting in its own fibre, that costs a lot of money and needs to be recovered. I personally am not expecting much in the reduction of costs from any of the ISPs until we have more undersea cables up and running.

With regards to the local only debate. I think a local only bundle might be the easiest way to go with ~10% allowance for international. However what if I want to do heavy use of international during office hours and local only in the evenings (gaming, SAIX news feeds etc.)? Will there be a way to switch accounts?

I also like the idea of charging less for off-peak use, but it needs to be an easy to understand solution. Possibly you can deduct say half of what you download. So if you download 100MB you only deduct 50MB from you bundle.

 

[Prometheus]

Stevie : Vodacom never advertises their product for use with things like torrents etc etc... and if you're doing that on 3g...

As for the prices you've listed, you do know how complex Vodacoms network is, and that they have to pay a large portion to Telkom for the backhaul links from EACH tower...

Still people will want to do that because it's advertised as broadband. Many also don't know about the upload or non-download component and how to regulate it, it can take 10MB just to find an equal file. They can either make it broadband so people can do that or advertise it as what it really is - a limited browsing package.

What everyone is leaving out is how much the user base has grown since April last year both from the introduction of prepaid bundles and the price reductions. Even assuming they were providing the lowest rates possible (this is not the case but I'll play along with it for now) they can certainly now afford the major reduction the rest of the world has seen.

Vodacom had no problem advertising their rates as the cheapest in the world when that was not even the case. Now there's no reason for them to not compete with world standards and R300 for 5GB or R500 for 10GB is the reasonable norm now. The time to act is now, not wait for Neotel to better the price and then simply match it in April again.

I think that having cheaper prices for local data during the 2-6AM period would be best.

Cheaper prices for local from 2-6AM will not help me. If it does not include international I would have to use a local proxy and I can't schedule my downloads. 2-6AM may be when almost nobody is using it but that is certainly not the off-peak period anymore than it is for calls.

are you retiring from the internet or SA at the end of March?

LOL no. I just don't see any need to go back to a service that may offers me less for more and it would be hard for Vodacom to convince me or anyone else of an exodus of new Neotel customers to use their service again.

If you don't believe that Vodacom gets its international bandwidth from SAIX, then do a tracert in Windoze to www.google.com, I have no idea what the amount of international bandwidth is, I think we would know by now if international bandwidth was not being increased regularly to cope with the increasing demands of a growing broadband customer-base, and I've recently read in a few news articles that Vodacom is a shareholder in the [searchforum]EASSy submarine cable[/searchforum] - so by the end of 2009 Vodacom can consider giving Telkodemonopolies-SAIX a partial extension of the middle finger and have international redundancy.

Not what I am saying. I assume any international traffic would go through SAIX as a network. There is a difference in leasing a dedicated connection to an international PoP than to only pay for bandwidth from SAIX when needed and not caring where it is coming from. A dedicated connection that is not used efficiently is a waste where if usage is paid for you would want to keep it down to a minimum and make as much as possible from it. Without knowing this we can not say for sure what data will be better to keep at a maximum rate.

 

[vodacom3g]

yes i agree that vodacom's prices is too high. when i got online for the 1st time about a month ago or so i purched a 500mb. i thought it would last me for a couple of weeks up to a month, but when i used torrent and downloading software, mp3's, clips,etc. that 500mb looked like 50mb to me. so i think vodacom's prices is still to steep. if you guys promote the internet with affordable prices to 2nd class home users then you need to drastically drop your prices ASAP. By the time you guys get a wake up call Neotel prives will be to competitive for vodacom. 2gig for R199 and 5gig for R299 and 10gig for R599 sounds reasonable to me.

don't get me wrong, vodacom has the best service and speeds to go with it , buttttttttttt you need to drop your prices to stay ahead before your competitors will slash their prices to get ahead of you guys.

I personally prefer wireless to dsl. i don't know why ppl are raving bout Telkom's non-existent pathetic service and speeds.

I would personally like vodacom to make local free or reduce it by half.

I will stay with vodacom as long as they satisfy me with their prices, oterwise i have to rethink maybe in the future.

V3g and ic, i think you can do better guys

ic is not in any way connected to Vodacom and therefore cannot influence pricing in any way....

...which is probably a good thing

 

[Prometheus]

ic is not in any way connected to Vodacom and therefore cannot influence pricing in any way....

...which is probably a good thing

Depending on which way you look at it of course.

 

[Prometheus]

You should know by now that Telkodemonopolies charges its wholesale bandwidth customers according to capacity and not actual data transferred, and that any company with significant international bandwidth requirements has to lease circuits of whatever combined size to cope with the demand they in turn need to supply.

Not entirely correct. Wholesale tariffs are charged for amount of data transfered with a sliding scale. The more bandwidth is sold the lower the rate to the wholesale customer. This is how IS and any other isp purchase bandwidth from SAIX. The rates were published last year when Telkom announced lower tariffs. There is the option to lease a national or international circuit between two specific points for predictable requirements.

v3g has also informed all of us - yourself included, that the backhaul links Vodacom rents from Telkodemonopolies, are priced in the same way - so if Vodacom's network is underutilized between 2am & 6am, then Vodacom is still paying Telkodemonopolies for bandwidth during those times that is effectively not generating a justifiable ROI.

That only applies to data on the network. A different scenario exists once data leaves the network. A packet to or from SAIX will be priced differently from one to or from IS. It also doesn't make sense to have a dedicated link to a destination where the data requirements are unpredictable or not enough, say iBurst or Sentech for instance. You may believe we have the full scope of when what rates are paid but in actual fact we don't.

 

[Keeper]

Shouldn't HSDPA users Fight for Free Local Usage?!

HSDPA is good and everything, but Telkom's ADSL offers 27GB's of free local usage after you have been capped!

HSDPA is much more expensive than ADSL on anyhing more than 3GB, so why doesn't Vodacom offer like maybe 3 GB Extra Local Usage, for Every 3GB purchased....or even 1 GB for every 3Gb!

1) would be better for the SA Market, as ppl would visit SA sites when capped, before they Topup

2) Be better Competition against other HSDPA Networks

3) Be better Competition against Telkom, as they already offer it. (27GB's of it!)

4) If telkom can offer 27GB's Free local, so can Vodacom. or, are they now worse than Telkom?

Also, R2000 for 10GB is unreasonable.
It is cheaper to buy 5 x R389 (2GB) Bundles for R1945 and get 10GB, than R1989 for a 10GB Bundle.
PLUS THEN YOU HAVE 5 MONTHS TO USE IT, NOT 1!!!!!!!!!!

 

[stoke]

Cos they're part of the cell phone users massive bunch of people, they have been duped into believing that R2.40 a minute for a cell to cell call is an acceptable charge while vodacom quietly rakes in R40 BN a year profit.

Insane!

But, yea, you want help with demanding?

 

[Napalm]

I once mentioned in a thread, why isn't there ISP's or special deals for 3G/HSDPA people that include local data.

Currently you pay R2 per meg (out of bundle) for international cap. So if you just retrieve your local email, you are actually paying the same price.

ISP's like Internet Solutions and Telkom offer 2gig international with 30gig local for R159 (IS), telkom gives 20gig local extra after your 2gig cap for around R140 i think.

So why can't Cellphone work the same?? i mean, your basically just getting the data over a different medium. Not using a ADSL line but going via Cellphone modem or 3G router or PCMCIA modem.

 

[Keeper]

I Agree. if Telskum can do it, so can others.

maybe i should have spent my money on ADSL instead.....

 

[ambo]

The concept of 'local-only' access is one that is very foreign to most users of the internet and something that is very unique to ZA.

SAIX and IS are able to do this because they were the only two major 'national tier one' operators. This means that they are upstreams to most of the content in the country and have peering agreements with everyone who counts.

This situation is however changing with more 'national tier one' networks being built. In order for the 'local' content to be available to the consumers cheaply it needs to be available over cheap peering links between these networks. Unfortunately as the number of networks increase the chance of ubiquitous peering with all local content providers becomes less.

I expect this will become more prevalent in the coming years until we get to the point where locally hosted content from certain providers is not going to be available as cheaply as from other providers. Then the concept of a local-only account will provide you with access to different content provider to provider... and gradually this strange concept of 'local only' will break.

 

[Insider]

while vodacom quietly rakes in R40 BN a year profit.

QUOTE]

R10.86 billion profit = R30 profit per customer per month. (2007)

 

[Keeper]

Looks like us 3G Users don't deserve Free local...

Proudly South African Indeed! - just don't give a crap...

 

[AirWolf]

So how about cheaper local for say those of us wanting to download Hardy so that we don't have to pay an arm and a leg?

Or even better: how about a zero-rated linux download service?

 

[vodacom3g]

Looks like us 3G Users don't deserve Free local...

Proudly South African Indeed! - just don't give a crap...

I've been thinking on how to respond to this thread from Keeper's first post.

To give something away for free, in any business, makes obvious sense IF it costs nothing to produce.

If we look at the 'local' portion of the 3G/HSDPA network it consists of the new 3G radio network, interconnected by large numbers of transmission lines, terminated in large data centers where all the equipment is hosted that allows you to make a connection, do the billing, route your data, etc.

These were obviously also built new with the radio network and, just like the radio network, grow daily in size as the number of subscribers grow.

To date, Vodacom have spent a few Billion Rand on building this network and this building process is actually accelerating.

On top of this capital expenditure, there are huge operational costs to run this beast, from the monthly fees payed to the transmission providers and other suppliers to the hundreds of people who run the network and the supporting services like the call desk, logistics, etc.

All of the above is needed for you to access a 'local' site. Going international is actually just one extra transmission link.

So, if anyone can come up with a way to build and run a network at no cost, we're all ears and very open to charging nothing for it.

 

[vodacom3g]

So how about cheaper local for say those of us wanting to download Hardy so that we don't have to pay an arm and a leg?

Or even better: how about a zero-rated linux download service?

The rates are obviously based on a mix of local and international costs, but we've been thinking a lot on how to better utilise the dead(ish) time between 2AM and 6AM.