Misleading ADSL services

[Pixual]

All these new ADSL services claiming to be "uncapped" are getting to be a bit much.

Either you charge a customer for usage, which you meter and charge at a specific rate, or you charge them to subscribe to a service and maintain that service for the entire period that is being subscribed for without crippling the service in any way based on one's usage of it. You can't marry two different business models and expect to keep your customers happy.

It seems to me that MWEB are the only ISP currently offering a proper uncapped product and that all the other ISP's are trying to stem the flow of users to MWEB by coming up with some very misleading products that they are labelling "uncapped". Sorry, if you are throttling a customer in any way after a specific amount of data usage then I am afraid your product is usage based and not subscription based. You can't call your product "uncapped" internet. Attempts to do so are simply misleading.

I'm not with MWEB (yet) for two reasons;

1) I don't need uncapped internet
2) I think they are an awful bunch of people who have been ripping people off for years and are now trying to force smaller players out of the market.

My advice to ISP's who want to do business with me is quite simple: offer me a metered product that is not crippled in any way, at a reasonable price and I will buy it from you.

The closest I have seen anyone come to this is Axxess with their R19 per gig ADSL Lite product, but I'm pretty sure that they can bring the price of this product down to between R10-15 a gig and still make a decent profit. If I am using 20GB's a month @ R15 per GB, they're getting R300 a month from me, whereas if they are charging me that for an uncapped product and letting me d/l in the region of 60GB's before they "cap" me on speed or port shaping, I'm costing them more as a customer.

Your thoughts?

 

[who.is.michael]

Agree fully with point 2 and can add a list of issues with that company's service, support, products and over reliance on PR - however they are currently the only option for an affordable high volume account, although not a stable or un-throttled, low contention ratio service.
Think this will become the future benchmark for the poorest Internet connectivity account in South Africa.
When I can find an ISP that delivers a similar account even if it is a few Rand’s more I will cancel all three accounts I currently hold with them.
It frustrates me that there is no competition and I am forced to utilise their service due to cost.

 

[davemc]

Here's what I want:

1. Amount of bandwidth that I may use for the money I have handed over, at full downloading speed.
2. At least 24 latency figures per day to 5 different parts of the world, so that the true nature of the online-gaming nature of the product is visible.
3. An alternative login and password to use when their service goes down.

It's way too much to ask though.

 

[orin76]

Here's what I want:

1. Amount of bandwidth that I may use for the money I have handed over, at full downloading speed.
2. At least 24 latency figures per day to 5 different parts of the world, so that the true nature of the online-gaming nature of the product is visible.
3. An alternative login and password to use when their service goes down.

It's way too much to ask though.

Yeah. Especially point 3.

 

[D34M0n7]

You forget that a large portion (60%+) of an ISPs costs go to telkom, if they charge R15 per GB and you have 20GB thats R300... R180 of which goes to telkom before the ISP can see a cent of it, the rest goes to wages, advertising, tax etc...

So ISPs are very limited by telkom and are not capable of offering anything at a lower rate than they are right now without falling into a large margin of risk.

The uncapped offers are the way they are because of telkom, they can't afford it any other way. The uncapped offers are in a sense uncapped, for the term is debatable, for now. ICASA has not made a set a proper definition of Uncapped therefore in this country a 'uncapped' product with a threshold speed limit can be said to be uncapped as long as they never hard cap you.

As soon as telkom releases the local loop (if they ever do) then prices could drop by 40%... over time.

Right now we have what we have as a result of the monopolized physical network in this country and a lack of input from ICASA.

 

[Globetrotter]

Either you charge a customer for usage, which you meter and charge at a specific rate, or you charge them to subscribe to a service and maintain that service for the entire period that is being subscribed for without crippling the service in any way based on one's usage of it. You can't marry two different business models and expect to keep your customers happy.
It seems to me that MWEB are the only ISP currently offering a proper uncapped product and that all the other ISP's are trying to stem the flow of users to MWEB by coming up with some very misleading products that they are labelling "uncapped". Sorry, if you are throttling a customer in any way after a specific amount of data usage then I am afraid your product is usage based and not subscription based. You can't call your product "uncapped" internet. Attempts to do so are simply misleading.
I'm not with MWEB (yet) for two reasons;
1) I don't need uncapped internet
2) I think they are an awful bunch of people who have been ripping people off for years and are now trying to force smaller players out of the market.
My advice to ISP's who want to do business with me is quite simple: offer me a metered product that is not crippled in any way, at a reasonable price and I will buy it from you.

The closest I have seen anyone come to this is Axxess with their R19 per gig ADSL Lite product, but I'm pretty sure that they can bring the price of this product down to between R10-15 a gig and still make a decent profit. If I am using 20GB's a month @ R15 per GB, they're getting R300 a month from me, whereas if they are charging me that for an uncapped product and letting me d/l in the region of 60GB's before they "cap" me on speed or port shaping, I'm costing them more as a customer.

Your thoughts?

Fully agree with your comments.
I've tested numerous accounts with different ISP's and the uncapped, albeit cheap, was the most unreliable and frustrating to use. Sure, if you just want to run a download manager and never worry about the actual performance during the day, then these accounts will suit those users. But for me the reliability and constant speed of the product throughout the day is crucial.

Yes, the R19 Axxess product is probably the cheapest you'll get for the type of account you require. Pity the WebAfrica Titan specials data accounts have been sold out already because you could have got more bang for your buck. Of all the tests I did, WebAfrica came out tops in terms of reliability/stability/performance. That's the beauty of metered access, you're in a pool where lower contention ratios apply and there's zero throttling since you pay for what you use. I can use any protocol at any time of day and the experience is the same. However, with the Uncapped products, when you use different protocols during the day, the experience is not as good. Not acceptable to me, but then again, I'm currently paying more for that privilege.

A lot of these issues will hopefully become obsolete when the remaining undersea cables are completed, with EASSy apparently operational in July and the big WACS cable (more than double SEACOM capacity) due in 2011. Apart from the extra bandwidth, it will provide better redundancy and hopefully lower contention ratios for the cheaper internet access product bandwidth pools. The ADSL landscape should look different (again) by the end of 2011. Hopefully the major ISPs will utilise all the extra bandwidth appropriately, when it becomes available.

 

[Pixual]

I think that tiered pricing based on volume usage is the answer.

First 10 Gigs will cost you R20 per gig.
Next 10 gigs will cost you R15 per gig.
Next 10 gigs (or more) will cost you R10 per gig.

Using this model the ISP is not running the risk of having you dominate the network and end up costing them money. Also, the cost per GB is fair and remains attractive to all customers regardless of their usage.

 

[killadoob]

Ok so i heard mweb buy speed as in a 100 meg pipe or something not bandwidth, now i am hearing per gb.

WTF is going on here, do you buy per gb from IS and not seacom or what?

 

[Stevie G]

Ok so i heard mweb buy speed as in a 100 meg pipe or something not bandwidth, now i am hearing per gb.

WTF is going on here, do you buy per gb from IS and not seacom or what?

If i may ask a dumb question. What is LLU since everyone is talking about it. The biggest stumble block is TELKOM. Telephone line rental is R130 p/m. Then we look at ADSL line rental - 384 = R152, 512mb - R350 and 4MB line = R430. How on earth can telkom charge these exorbirant prices to a 3rd world country. So that means before you even buy cap, you need to pay R285 for 384k, R480 for 512mb and R550 for 4MB. This is truly a clap in the face for all the people. This is the reason why may ppl, including myself are on wireless.

I don't need wireless, but i won't complain. all i want is a 4-10mb line can be shaped during the day, but unshaped after hours and weekends. 25GB will be enough for me and i will pay in the region of R450-R500 for uncapped including adsl line and phone line included.

You guys probably think i need to wake up and smell the coffee

 

[Pixual]

The main thing I want to stress in this thread is that the smaller ISP's are missing the boat completely. They can't compete with the bigger guys by offering "look-alike" products that are nowhere near being alike. Rather offer something that makes Rands and Sense at the same time. I would rather pay more for better service than less for poor service. That's where you have the opportunity to make your mark against the likes of the amorphous MWEB's of the world.

 

[rward]

That's where you have the opportunity to make your mark against the likes of the amorphous MWEB's of the world.

Good, and I hope you are.

A couple of months ago everyone bitched about telkom being so expensive and as soon as possible they would all jump ship to whoever else came along (Neotel at the time).
How many people have actually done this?
How many have moved at least their ADSL line to a different provider?
I'd bet that 90% of the people haven't put their money where their mouth was and still have their line direct via Telkom and their ADSL from Mweb.

The Web Africa Titan "all inclusive" packages are still avialable - go for one of those.
Or go with SAOL - my experience with them has been excellent (Line and bandwidth through them).

Unfortunately we are a 3rd world country and prices are high compared to other places. The introduction of SEACOM has done a lot for price reduction and big ISP like mweb pushing for dropping interconnect fees (even ifit is for selfish reasons) is a good thing. The landing of more lines over the next couple of years is going to hopefully make things even cheaper again.

Pixual - the ISP's need to keep the capped rates high so they can offset their losses on the uncapped stuff.
Uncapped will never make a profit, at least not down here with people downloading 24/7..
It's crappy but someone has to pay.

 

[Pixual]

Sure, but then why offer a product that you can't sustain? The likes of Axxess, WA and Afrihost should be looking to woo those customers who don't consume 50+ gb's a month and who are prepared to pay a reasonable price for data. Instead they seem hell bent on creating all sorts of buggery that firstly doesn't compare to the bigger competitors' products and secondly isn't priced particularly well either.

I think there's a much bigger pool of customers who are using between 5 and 20GB's per month than there are using 50+.

Anyway, hopefully the marketing departments of those smaller companies are reading this and will do some thinking on the subject.