The_Unbeliever
Honorary Master
Just want to throw in my own 0.02c into this mix. (Just a couple of ideas which I was thinking of... I have no idea of how iBurst's equipment works, or whether it will be feasible, but...)
Also, I cannot claim credit for most of the suggestions I give - some of these I have picked up on myBB, others was from observation.
Each iBurst subscriber has full speed when uncapped, whereas Telkom limits their customers to 384, 512 or 4Mb line speeds. Also, when you use Telkom as your ISP, you have a "softcap" (although that is shrinking rapidly) - and others hardcap you when you use your bandwidth up.
Except iBurst with their throttled softcap - people see that as a way to download (torrent) more stuff, and they did, with the result that iBurst had to shape everything to death in order to minimize their losses. (There is also other iBurst accounts who does not have the softcap feature).
Now the chickens have come home to roost, the network is in a mess (not almost) and people are up to arms about the high prices they have to pay.
So... what Jannie should do :
1. Remove the softcap.
2. Lower your bandwidth prices (to be more in-line with the industry), thereby creating an incentive that people will buy more bandwidth to last them through the month. As is, the prices are too high for people to afford.
3. Of course 1 and 2 will cause problems of their own - people will not be happy at having their free Internet access revoked, and might move away, and on the other side of the coin it might get more people to join, thereby causing network overloading problems.
4. Look at throttling the customers to within a reasonable level by day (say 512k or 1024k) during day and unthrottled during night, to ensure a satisfactory network experience for all. [Because the guy with a high speed, good signal link will most likely drown out the guy with a slow speed, poor link's internet transfers].
5. Regarding 4 - does the towers have a load-balancing feature, to ensure that all users get the same speed, and that nobody can "grab" a bit of speed from his/her neighbours? If so, look into it and activate it.
6.Why not create "local-only" accounts for those few who does not need international access, but only need to transfer files within the borders of SA? This can be cheaper with a larger cap than the usual accounts. (Like Telkom's local-only accounts).
7.Not going to touch on the billing system at this stage as this is WIP.
Regards
Libs
Also, I cannot claim credit for most of the suggestions I give - some of these I have picked up on myBB, others was from observation.
Each iBurst subscriber has full speed when uncapped, whereas Telkom limits their customers to 384, 512 or 4Mb line speeds. Also, when you use Telkom as your ISP, you have a "softcap" (although that is shrinking rapidly) - and others hardcap you when you use your bandwidth up.
Except iBurst with their throttled softcap - people see that as a way to download (torrent) more stuff, and they did, with the result that iBurst had to shape everything to death in order to minimize their losses. (There is also other iBurst accounts who does not have the softcap feature).
Now the chickens have come home to roost, the network is in a mess (not almost) and people are up to arms about the high prices they have to pay.
So... what Jannie should do :
1. Remove the softcap.
2. Lower your bandwidth prices (to be more in-line with the industry), thereby creating an incentive that people will buy more bandwidth to last them through the month. As is, the prices are too high for people to afford.
3. Of course 1 and 2 will cause problems of their own - people will not be happy at having their free Internet access revoked, and might move away, and on the other side of the coin it might get more people to join, thereby causing network overloading problems.
4. Look at throttling the customers to within a reasonable level by day (say 512k or 1024k) during day and unthrottled during night, to ensure a satisfactory network experience for all. [Because the guy with a high speed, good signal link will most likely drown out the guy with a slow speed, poor link's internet transfers].
5. Regarding 4 - does the towers have a load-balancing feature, to ensure that all users get the same speed, and that nobody can "grab" a bit of speed from his/her neighbours? If so, look into it and activate it.
6.Why not create "local-only" accounts for those few who does not need international access, but only need to transfer files within the borders of SA? This can be cheaper with a larger cap than the usual accounts. (Like Telkom's local-only accounts).
7.Not going to touch on the billing system at this stage as this is WIP.
Regards
Libs
