Open Letter to Ed

peterleroux said:
Arr.
Looks like there is a mutiny on it's way, uh, imminently. Watch this space!

Must be honest and say that it's long past time to announce some good news for iburst subscribers (hint: good news does not mean a new tower in tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietsfontein either)
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The good news also does not include new packages since WE want positive progress on the packages WE already have, eg. higher speed, higher cap and a reduction in pricing for the various packages that WE already have.:p

fire away.:rolleyes:
 
Yup, I'm all ears on this one. I finished my 2 year contract in December, so that makes me a beta customer too. I fully agree with the sentiments expressed in the opening post, btw. Well said indeed.
 
And I'm one of iBurst's oldest subscribers - got a handshake from the CEO when I went to Auckland Park to pick up my modem, all in a nice WBS bag!

Where's iBurst's new packages??
 
I've also been with iBust for almost 2 years now... as a month-to-month customer. I reckon its high time they cut the crap and raise my cap!!!
 
Too late

Got iBurst May 2005
Still got it but moving from 3G to lowest offering 1 March
Got Closer opt 5 on 9th Feb
I always have better performance than on iBurst and I save money.

If iBurst had done anything to improve my performance or reduce my costs, I would not have chosen to expose myself to Telkom.
 
Well my patience is wearing thin with them, I have been with them since pre-launch. The speeds suck and at home, I am very close to a tower. At the office in Town, the signal sucks big time. It is slower than dial up and I have an external aerial. :( Iburst - WAKE UP.
 
Can iBurst really survive this price drop by MTN? I mean R400 for two gigs is pretty decent in the SA context.
 
hj2k_x said:
Can iBurst really survive this price drop by MTN? I mean R400 for two gigs is pretty decent in the SA context.
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Read the fine print, the 2GB is only a promo, your then stuck in a 24 month contract with very costly bandwidth once that cap is reached.
 
They probably have no option after promising shareholders a quick return on their investment which was the only way to attract them in the first place.

It's the short term thinking and quick buck mentality of many business in this country, screw the consumer for what you can and then tell him it's for his own good.:sick:
 
MrH.... I think you just hit the nail on the head. Couldn't have said it better
 
Guys, just hold back for one moment. Have you thought this through. It is very easy to form a nice little forum mob and shout and jeer. But let's start doing a bit of maths:

Cost of installing a tower (estimate) R1000000 (Including EIA, rent etc)
Number of towers (approx) 130
Total Cost R130 Million
Other costs (eg bandwidth, salaries, rent blah blah) R500 million (Guessing here)
Total subscribers 60000
Average subscription R500
Total income per month R30Million
Number of months to cover expenditure: 20 months

If you look at our friends Vodacom and MTN, and what they charge per call and the COSTS for them to make this call (considering that MUCH of the infrastructure costs have been paid off), they are creaming it MUCH more than IBurst is. For some reason Saffers are happy (relatively) to pay big phone bills, but make them pay big internet bills for a service that has MANY parallels and we get very grumpy. Do you know how many MB's a 1 min phone call uses on Vodacom/MTN? Probably around 1MB. And it costs R1.80. So we are paying MUCH more to those guys than to iBurst relatively speaking.

I am not saying that IBurst are perfect or saintly and I too would appreciate seeing some movement on price or speed or caps etc, but I don't think they are raping it.
 
Connection that sounds all good and well but what happens if you change the subscribers number to 50 000? That is what will happen unless iBurst keep up with other options. Once subscribers start bailing it becomes another Sentech episode...

It's not an easy business to be in but it is highly profitable and they must work to make it in the industry.
 
Connection, call it what you want the fact is we are still not getting our moneys worth from iBurst or for that matter any other isp in sa.

We all thought that iBurst would be different but we still feel like we're been raped, and iBurst is still making a huge profit.

BTW what happened to Ed or did he pass on the PR work to you ?:rolleyes:
 
Do you know how many MB's a 1 min phone call uses on Vodacom/MTN? Probably around 1MB
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Excluding GPRS and 3G, a voice call on the cellular network consumes roughly 4kbyte/sec and the handset doesn't transmit or receive coded voice data during silences so a good average is about 240kbyte * 2 of data for a minute of bi-directional telephony.

Remember that voice is not packetized into the switch, It is however packetized when it's sent out over the air after being compressed by the phone. The voice signals are expanded at the BS and stuffed 2 in a timeslot and sent via standard TELKOM PCM link to the exchange.

Cellphones heavily compress the voice data, and therefore consume relatively little bandwidth. The CELP algorithm yields very low data rates for given quality of speech. I read that if you have the processing power available, you can compress toll quality speech down to 9600bps.

In normal POTS lines, the data rate is 64kbit/sec both ways, giving a data rate of 8000 bytes/second (8000 x 60 = 480 x 2 = 960 kbytes/minute)
 
GavinMannion said:
Connection that sounds all good and well but what happens if you change the subscribers number to 50 000? That is what will happen unless iBurst keep up with other options. Once subscribers start bailing it becomes another Sentech episode...

It's not an easy business to be in but it is highly profitable and they must work to make it in the industry.
Click to expand...

Just what I was thinking!
 
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