New 3G / HSDPA Tariffs

[vodacom3g]

You talking to me or Mydraadloos??

Sorry, hit the send button too quickly, no to you adsl3g....

 

[MyDraadloos]

You talking to me or Mydraadloos??

He allready has my e-mail addy, but I don't think I am on his Christmas card list....... yet.

(The wonders of editing your thoughts)

 

[vodacom3g]

He allready has my e-mail addy, but I don't think I am on his Christmas card list.

Why not? After our chat today, I actually though you're quite a nice guy. Just one who happened to be getting a shi**y service.....

The service bit we'll sort, the conspiracy theory tendencies might take a while longer...

 

[vodacom3g]

Unfortunately the faster speeds on access equipment and network infrastructure will amount to nothing if the backhaul links and backbone is not coping.

Agree, and upping the backhaul by a factor of 5 can't happen overnight, but it's constantly being upgraded where ever we pick up congestion. Sometimes we wait quite a while for our friendly Telco....

I don't think Vodacom has come to grips with the fact that for the second time round they are an ISP; yet again.(Remember Yebo net) They failed the first time.

Can't comment on the first time around, also that was more focussed on the dial-up market. This time its much more focussed....watch this space...

This brings questions regarding peering links and the status thereof. The net is fickle and the user experience is only as good as his service providers uplinks and peering connections.

Agree

Who is the 1st tier upstream provider ?

SAIX (at the moment)

Contention ratio's ?

Not sure. But way less than the 25:1 that seems to be the industry norm.

Why is there no QoS or SLA ?

Some links cannot support QoS, especially on the international links.

Are there some forms of bandwith prioritisation on the network i.e. voice before data and HSDPA before 3G or GPRS ?

On the radio network, voice before data. On the backhaul, data runs on its own network. No prioritisation between GPRS/EDGE/3G/HSDPA.

Are we paying premium rates for what is essentially a best effort service ?

Obviously I'm going to say no. Any IP network with links where you cannot ensure QoS will be a best effort system. You can go CS, but at what cost?

 

[MyDraadloos]

Why not? After our chat today, I actually though you're quite a nice guy. Just one who happened to be getting a shi**y service.....

The service bit we'll sort, the conspiracy theory tendencies might take a while longer...

After we spoke on the phone I thought how wonderfull it would be if all my telecoms woes would simply go away ........... 10 minutes later a I get a call from a Vodacom techie saying he will stop by today ..... not later this month, but today ......... as I put down the phone 2x Telkom vans drove past and another car which belonged to some Telkom planning manager.

Seems they are finally gonna get round to pulling their fingers and putting in the 10m worth of trunking cable that was required.

So no, I am not prepared to let go of the conspiracy theory just yet.

Have been disconnected 6 times already tonight, but somehow I feel optimistic ........ that it might get better.

PS. I did have to go "postal" inside the Telkom shop to get their attention, seems they did not want me to come back. (I seem to have that effect on people)

Edit - Thanks for the info ..... have found copy of NetMonitor and will run some tests after a some RTFM.

 

[Prometheus]

But then we did two things wrong:

1) We listened to subscribers who said a lower speed should reflect in a lower tariff, not a higher speed in higher rates, i.e. don't make HSDPA more expensive than the then-3G rates.
2) We listened to subscribers who said that the contracts were only a few months old and to get all this new, cool technology they would have to wait a year or so. (I was very vocal on this)

Nooobody listened to the "people" here who were saying that it doesn't make sense to charge more for HSDPA, in which case we wouldn't have this mess. I'm staying clear of fans and pawpaws here.

3) We need to have some method on determining your access speed to bill you accordingly. Currently it is determined by the device. In the future, it'll be on the network.

But didn't you say it is determined by the device and the network and that the swapping back to 3G cards is only because of supply issues? What would happen if someone used a HSDPA device with a 3G bundle without this being implemented? I guess it's not so much of a problem without the prepaid bundles.

Just something to consider (i.e. I'm not disagreeing with you):

HSDPA might have been a software upgrade on the towers but the impact on the (Telkom supplied, thus paid-for) backhaul is substantial. As is Internet connectivity.

But, v3g, I can't see how substantial this has been with the current pricing. This has been mentioned and Rpm has even put a piece of one report on this site stating that HSDPA is less expensive per meg. I still think that there should have rather been a reduction across the board. The backhaul issue even though supplied by Telkom doesn't make sense to me. An increase in traffic also means an increase in revenues which should be able to pay for that bandwidth. To me this sounds like the old shenanigans where most are already paying for the faster service and now Vodacom wants them to pay even more for it. Doesn't sound fair to me.

 

[vodacom3g]

But, v3g, I can't see how substantial this has been with the current pricing. This has been mentioned and Rpm has even put a piece of one report on this site stating that HSDPA is less expensive per meg. I still think that there should have rather been a reduction across the board. The backhaul issue even though supplied by Telkom doesn't make sense to me. An increase in traffic also means an increase in revenues which should be able to pay for that bandwidth. To me this sounds like the old shenanigans where most are already paying for the faster service and now Vodacom wants them to pay even more for it. Doesn't sound fair to me.

If the load increase on the back-haul came from more users, your point will be valid. Let me try an example:

Say there are 10 users in total and each used to get 300Kb/s, total back-haul required is 3Mb/s.

If you now add another 10 users, you buy another 3Mb/s and all's fine, more bandwidth costs but also more users (20) resulting in more revenue.

This is your point, I believe.

Now you suddenly give all your users a 3.3 times capacity increase, to 1Mb/s. To serve the same 10 users you now need 10Mb/s.

Your back-haul just costs went up by a factor of 3.3 but your revenue stayed the same.

Makes sense?

 

[diabolus]

Now you suddenly give all your users a 3.3 times capacity increase, to 1Mb/s. To serve the same 10 users you now need 10Mb/s.

Your back-haul just costs went up by a factor of 3.3 but your revenue stayed the same.

Makes sense?

Well that only applies if the users do not utilize the additional capacity [i.e. using the exact same MBs per month] .

Few remarks:
1. I don't believe it COSTS vodacom 3.3 times more to serve 3.3 more capacity [economies of scale + new tech]..

2. Vodacom is basically giving users a larger pipe, the assumption is that the user will actually USE this larger pipe [read: use more bandwidth]. If they are not, reasons would be (a) Too expensive and/or (b) Not enough services requiring such capacity and/or (c) user do not actually get this capacity [contention/congestion etc etc].

3. Same price + more bandwidth usage due to additional capacity + economy of scale = MORE profit [definitely not less].

4. The only way you will encourage someone to use more bandwidth is to lower the price. The amount to lower by is obviously the balancing act between what the economy of scale factor is and what will encourage users to use more bandwidth .

--> This is where streamed content and pay per month services [tv channels] comes in.

 

[Prometheus]

The service bit we'll sort, the conspiracy theory tendencies might take a while longer...

And what is wrong with a bit of conspiracy theory here?

Can't comment on the first time around, also that was more focussed on the dial-up market. This time its much more focussed....watch this space...

Sounds like MTN talk. Can you give us a hint?

If the load increase on the back-haul came from more users, your point will be valid. Let me try an example:

Say there are 10 users in total and each used to get 300Kb/s, total back-haul required is 3Mb/s.

If you now add another 10 users, you buy another 3Mb/s and all's fine, more bandwidth costs but also more users (20) resulting in more revenue.

This is your point, I believe.

Yes, but not exactly.

Now you suddenly give all your users a 3.3 times capacity increase, to 1Mb/s. To serve the same 10 users you now need 10Mb/s.

Your back-haul just costs went up by a factor of 3.3 but your revenue stayed the same.

Makes sense?

If all of them used it at the same time yes, but we know that is not the case. If the usage stays the same then it would be spread out the same. This is with a large number of users like 10 in this case and Vodacom is likely to have more in some places. Obviously in the areas where there is only one or two users this wouldn't be the case, but then it doesn't make sense to offer faster services until there's more users.

It only becomes necessary to increase the bandwidth when the usage increases in which case the revenue also increases by the same ratio. There will still be times where the demand is more than the supply, but in those cases each user should get an equal share and if there isn't a price distinction then no one can complain that they aren't getting what they paid for. The price distinction is making things unnecessarily complicated here for both Vodacom and users alike and it would be wise of them not to do it with the next price decrease.

 

[Daveogg]

If the load increase on the back-haul came from more users, your point will be valid. Let me try an example:

Say there are 10 users in total and each used to get 300Kb/s, total back-haul required is 3Mb/s.

If you now add another 10 users, you buy another 3Mb/s and all's fine, more bandwidth costs but also more users (20) resulting in more revenue.

This is your point, I believe.

Now you suddenly give all your users a 3.3 times capacity increase, to 1Mb/s. To serve the same 10 users you now need 10Mb/s.

Your back-haul just costs went up by a factor of 3.3 but your revenue stayed the same.

Makes sense?

Sorry but this makes no sense. Your revenue is not dependant on the number of users, but rather their consumption.

In your above example your revenue would not be static, but would increase 3.3 times as well. In the real world of usage based billing those 10 concurrent users would would reduce to 3 once higher speeds were offered since each user would get what he could afford much quicker.

 

[noxibox]

http://www.mybroadband.co.za/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=23&d=1149090384 so if you happen to use EDGE, it will cost more than using 3G?

http://www.mybroadband.co.za/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=23&d=1149090384That appears to be good news for customers that want lower prices [IOW just about everyone] .

Yeah, there is absolutely no logic to Vodacom's pricing.

 

[noxibox]

• Firstly, backhaul links [fibre] do not have unlimited bandwidth - the available bandwidth depends not on the length of the fibre but on how many 'strands' of fibre have been layed;

As far as I know the carrying capacity of fibre is dependent on distance. But also that fibre has huge capacity.

Of course as usual we're being hamstrung by our number one anti-South African company Telkom. Almost everywhere in the world there is a massive oversupply of bandwidth. So much that it is essentially worthless.

 

[noxibox]

3G and HSDPA are on the same tower, but are charged differently. I was sold the HSDPA enabled card (also is enabled for 3G/EDGE/GPRS) for 3G.

What I find ridiculous is that there isn't a setting in the software to determine the card's operating speed. Otherwise Vodacom should be doing this on their network.

This all makes me glad I don't use Vodacom for data.

 

[Prometheus]

so if you happen to use EDGE, it will cost more than using 3G?

That appears to be good news for customers that want lower prices [IOW just about everyone] .

When was this posted? Didn't we establish that it's because the only EDGE capable cards are the HSDPA ones and that it doesn't apply to when you're using a cellphone with EDGE?

Btw. Saw some HSDPA phones somewhere so Vodacom had better hurry if they are going to implement speed throttling before they hit the market here.