Pre Paid Data Bundles [PPDBs]

[fergus]

<rant>
Here's an idea for the geniuses at Vodacom. Forget about PPDB, in-bundle, out-of-bundle and all the rest. Just charge everyone a flat rate of 10c / meg. That is R100 / gig and you're still making a profit! This is what consumers really want!
</rant>

Disclaimer: This is aimed at Vodacom decision makers, not vodacom3g, whom I have nothing but respect for. I just get frustrated with Vodacom sometimes and their unwillingness to accomodate their customers, especially prepaid. They should take a hint from Virgin Mobile and treat prepaid customers better if they want to impress me.

 

[Prometheus]

<rant>
Here's an idea for the geniuses at Vodacom. Forget about PPDB, in-bundle, out-of-bundle and all the rest. Just charge everyone a flat rate of 10c / meg. That is R100 / gig and you're still making a profit! This is what consumers really want!
</rant>

Disclaimer: This is aimed at Vodacom decision makers, not vodacom3g, whom I have nothing but respect for. I just get frustrated with Vodacom sometimes and their unwillingness to accomodate their customers, especially prepaid. They should take a hint from Virgin Mobile and treat prepaid customers better if they want to impress me.

It's of no use Fergus. I don't think they listen to their customers. It took them 1.5 years to finally implement ppdbs and now they are testing it for how many months we don't know. It's been about 4 months that Virgin has been charging the 50c tariff and Vodacom hasn't matched it in this time and still insist on expiring bundles which you probably can't buy using your top-up airtime. They still have the impression that HSDPA data costs more than other data when that doesn't make sense with a per mb tariff...

 

[AirWolf]

Hi mr / ms v3g. Seeing that vc were the first network to drop data prices from R40/MB to R10/MB then to R2/MB. Can we expect similar reductions in future? Eg. R2/MB reduced to R0.50/MB. Then shortly after to R0.10/MB?

 

[vodacom3g]

Hi mr / ms v3g. Seeing that vc were the first network to drop data prices from R40/MB to R10/MB then to R2/MB. Can we expect similar reductions in future? Eg. R2/MB reduced to R0.50/MB. Then shortly after to R0.10/MB?

Of course I'm going to argue that VC were the first to drop data prices to 50c/Mb, long before anyone else.

 

[Prometheus]

Of course I'm going to argue that VC were the first to drop data prices to 50c/Mb, long before anyone else.

PLEASE don't pull an MTN.

 

[rekall]

I'm not quite sure why the constant comparison between Virgin and Vodacom rates is being made.

Virgin do not offer 3G let alone HSDPA. You will be able to get poor EGDE coverage and fair GPRS coverage with Virgin.

vodacom have the best 3G coverage in the country at the moment. (and I think the extra speed is worth a bit more)

Vodacom do plenty wrong in my eyes but this isn't really a fair comparison.

 

[Syndyre]

It took them 1.5 years to finally implement ppdbs and now they are testing it for how many months we don't know.

Isn't it better to test something before you launch it though, rather than be like Virgin who's GPRS goes down every other day?

 

[Syndyre]

I'm not quite sure why the constant comparison between Virgin and Vodacom rates is being made.

Virgin do not offer 3G let alone HSDPA. You will be able to get poor EGDE coverage and fair GPRS coverage with Virgin.

vodacom have the best 3G coverage in the country at the moment. (and I think the extra speed is worth a bit more)

Vodacom do plenty wrong in my eyes but this isn't really a fair comparison.

Exactly, Vodacom is offering what could be described as a premium service I suppose, so you can therefore expect to pay more. Not saying their prices or bundles are justified, just saying you can't make direct comparisons all the time.

 

[vodacom3g]

There are 3 parameters that determine the system you end up with.

1) Price
2) Cap
3) Access Speed

So any comparison should be measure in R/Mb/bits/second

This will give a more accurate 'value for money' rating.

Not sure if anyone has done the tables to compare?

 

[kaspaas]

There are 3 parameters that determine the system you end up with.

1) Price
2) Cap
3) Access Speed

So any comparison should be measure in R/Mb/bits/second

This will give a more accurate 'value for money' rating.

Not sure if anyone has done the tables to compare?

Based on this MTN pre-paid bundles are a bargain at R10 / 10 MBytes at speeds similar to VC and available when VC is'nt.

Even VC's bundled rates for MyMeg20 and Mymeg75 are more expensive for equal service to MTN Prepaid data (In my experience)

PS: I've not been able to try VC when MTN was not available yet.

PS: I've never tried VM or Cell C yet as I need total network independence for data access backup.

 

[rekall]

EDGE has a maximum throughput of 236Kb/s
3G with HSDPA has a maximum throughput of 1.8Mb/s on Vodacom's Network.

A bit of arithmetic later...
Vodacom HSDPA is 7.62 times faster than EDGE.

The price difference seems *justifiable* to me..?!...

I personally feel that Vodacom should be charging less for data services etc etc etc, but at least lets compare everyone using the same benchmarks.

I have not used Virgin's EDGE but I do know that when I'm on Vodacom 3G HSDPA i get download speeds of anywhere between 400Kb/s to 1.2Mb/s. Thats pretty fast.

Can anyone using Virgin EDGE give me an idea of what sort of speeds they achieve. I'd be interested to hear about it.

Although I don't agree with some of Vodacom's pratices do you really think that they just don't care. do you think that they became South Africa's flagship company by abusing customers repeatedly? It's unlikely!
Any company know that they can go under at the drop of a hat. Share prices drop when bad things happen and a rich successful company can go to crap faster than one thinks.

There's a good chance data prices will drop as the cellular world is being shaken up quite a bit at the moment. Number portability will encourage all of the service providers to up their game which will in turn be good for the consumer.

When companies like Virgin swoop in and offer well priced products due to the fact that their operating overhead is so low it forces the industry into a better place and the competition have to adapt and they will otherwise they'll dissapear.

Cellular in SA is definately in a transitional phase and I think that there are some great things to come. I mean hell! I'm busy surfing full 3G internet (no WAP nonsense) on my Nokia E61 right now. If you'd have told me that 10 years a go I would have fell on the floor laughing!

 

[ajax]

EDGE has a maximum throughput of 384Kb/s. (I am being very generous here)
3G with HSDPA has a maximum throughput of 1.8Mb/s on Vodacom's Network.
A bit of arithmetic later...
Vodacom HSDPA is 4.68 times faster than EDGE.

EDGE is limited to 236 kbps. It can go higher yes, but the networks, and the current devices AFAIK, don't support it.

My Virgin experience is very up and down. Sometimes crawling, sometimes around 200 kbps. But I live with it due to the price.

 

[rekall]

You beat me. Dunno why I wrote that. (384Kb/s is the 3G data rate ). You have technically made my argument stronger though.

EDGE has the postential to go up to 348Kb/s but it is limited. The HSDPA protocol has the ability to go up to 14Mb/s but I dont suppose we have the infrastructure so handle that sort of clout.

 

[Mams]

I understand that this is a difficult comparison but lets compare apples with apples. Lets say you in a Free State dorpie where there is only VC EDGE, MTN EDGE and Virgin EDGE - NO 3G from VC nor MTN
Now you have a proper comparison...

VM : 50c per mb and
VC: anywhere between 49c to R2.00 per mb
MTN: anywhere between 49c to R2.00 per mb

and regarding speeds: i have used all 3 networks EDGE and the most stable is MTN (in EDGE ) infact, my experience in the FREE STATE (dorpie called Senekal ) was that Vodacoms EDGE is very bad....so letrs just compare the offering and not actual speeds attained. in the offering all are giving a potential same top speed (on EDGE ) and here VM fares the best - no need to buy bundles...

 

[rekall]

Thats a very fair point. I think that if you are only limited to GPRS or EDGE then Voda doesn't seem to be the best. Vodacom does have better NationWide Edge coverage than MTN(looking at coverage maps supplied on the company websites).

MTN have a large focus on EDGE so I hope that it would be very stable. MTN's 3G coverage is very limited.

I haven't actually used MTN or CellC(VM) data services so I can only really comment on data rates on paper.

If i didnt have the speed of Vodacom's HSDPA as an incentive i may very well flutter over to VM, but until they can offer the ear bleeding speed of HSDPA I aint going nowhere!

 

[Prometheus]

I'm not quite sure why the constant comparison between Virgin and Vodacom rates is being made.

Virgin do not offer 3G let alone HSDPA. You will be able to get poor EGDE coverage and fair GPRS coverage with Virgin.

vodacom have the best 3G coverage in the country at the moment. (and I think the extra speed is worth a bit more)

Vodacom do plenty wrong in my eyes but this isn't really a fair comparison.

Vodacom charges the same for gprs/edge/3G/hsdpa except when you are using a bundle and since it's only on contract I don't know how the separate bundles for 3G and hsdpa works for prepaid. I think the networks made the comparison first by charging the same independant of connection speed. Vodacom doesn't have 3G or even edge in more places that it has and Virgin/Cell-C has the most edge coverage of all the networks I think. Vodacom's gprs is also the slower than a 9.6k modem so for most people I think the price difference is a very valid point which brings us to the following:

EDGE has a maximum throughput of 236Kb/s
3G with HSDPA has a maximum throughput of 1.8Mb/s on Vodacom's Network.

A bit of arithmetic later...
Vodacom HSDPA is 7.62 times faster than EDGE.

The price difference seems *justifiable* to me..?!...

I personally feel that Vodacom should be charging less for data services etc etc etc, but at least lets compare everyone using the same benchmarks.

I have not used Virgin's EDGE but I do know that when I'm on Vodacom 3G HSDPA i get download speeds of anywhere between 400Kb/s to 1.2Mb/s. Thats pretty fast.

Can anyone using Virgin EDGE give me an idea of what sort of speeds they achieve. I'd be interested to hear about it.

Let us make a comparison on all the speeds here. Edge can run up to 236.8 kbit/s for 4 timeslots with a theoretical maximum of 473.6 kbit/s for 8 timeslots. 3G can run up to 384kbps for mobile systems and hsdpa up to a "maximum" of 1.8mbps currently. I say maximum in quotes because it is rarely the speed you will get. Most users report between 600-800kbps and some report a speed equal or less than that of 3G. If this is what you call justifiable for what is "supposed" to be a superior service I would hate to see their inferior service ...oh wait, I already have, which brings me to the other part...

On a bad day I get gprs speeds of about 32kbps on Virgin where on Vodacom I am lucky to get 24kbps on a good day. On good days or during the evening/late night I get about 120-200kbps on edge. The best average I get on 3G is 320kbps. I can't try hsdpa but I don't think it will be much better where I am. Besides that the signal is always there with Virgin. I do see it go down when holding my phone but when using it it seems to always be available. With 3G I either have good signal or it disappears completely, there's no in between despite being well within the 3km radius. I don't see how they can justify paying R2/mb over 50c/mb when on a good day it is only 2 or 3 times as fast and on a bad day on gprs only half as fast.

Although I don't agree with some of Vodacom's pratices do you really think that they just don't care. do you think that they became South Africa's flagship company by abusing customers repeatedly? It's unlikely!
Any company know that they can go under at the drop of a hat. Share prices drop when bad things happen and a rich successful company can go to crap faster than one thinks.

There's a good chance data prices will drop as the cellular world is being shaken up quite a bit at the moment. Number portability will encourage all of the service providers to up their game which will in turn be good for the consumer.

When companies like Virgin swoop in and offer well priced products due to the fact that their operating overhead is so low it forces the industry into a better place and the competition have to adapt and they will otherwise they'll dissapear.

I think they care very much, about the bottom line that is. Actions speak louder than words however. Customers asking for what is now 1.5 years for a product to be implemented with the competition already offering it speaks very loudly to me "we just don't care". Listen to all the remarks like yourself stating that paying R2 is justified for the slightly higher connection speed.

If you have good (and lying) marketing it is indeed possible for a company to be seen as leading when it has in fact fallen behind. It is easy to offer a basket of services which are either of little value or completely unusable, but the real measure is in how good their main services are. Unfortunately most consumers are not that savvy in our country and most still remember Yebo Gogo! instead of poor service. Vodacom had nearly 4 months now to respond to Virgin's pricing and all they can come up with is the long awaited bungles which I and a lot of others no longer want or need. That speaks volumes that they don't care about what we want, but only about their bottom line.

I don't think Virgin has a lower operating cost. They pay their "fair" amount for the use of Cell-C's network and they definitely don't get it cheaper than what it costs Cell-C to provide it to their customers. They do have a lower profit margin because they are not as greedy as the rest. As I have mentioned in other threads it costs at least twice as much to deliver the same data over gprs/edge than over 3G/hsdpa so their 50c rate is far nearer to the actual cost of the service than Vodacom's R2 rate.

I hope this gives a complete picture of how we can compare Virgin and Vodacom. Virgin has an inferior product according to your standards, but we get what we pay for. Vodacom has a slightly faster (not more reliable or superior) service at a hughly inflated price. I am seriously considering jumping ship when my prepaid contract voucher expires in a year and this mnp debacle is sorted out even if Virgin charges me more for the same services by that time which I think is very unlikely. Vodacom has become just like Telkom is recent months and I want them to know it.

 

[Prometheus]

Isn't it better to test something before you launch it though, rather than be like Virgin who's GPRS goes down every other day?

Yes, but for how long after you held it back for 1.5 years. The problems on Virgin are just as much as the problems I have experienced on Vodacom a while back and then their (Vodacom's) gprs is also sub-standard. With Vodacom I had the inability to even connect at times and mostly when almost no one was using the service. My connection stalled and I had to disconnect and reconnect. My gprs connection also dropped after about 10 minutes. 3G solved the latter but not the former two.

I don't get why everyone keeps ragging on Virgin. Sure they have a few startup problems, but certainly not more than Vodacom are still having and they are suppose to be well into the game by now. For the price they charge I expect them to provide a near perfect service instead of a best effort one. People should start raking them over the coles.

There are 3 parameters that determine the system you end up with.

1) Price
2) Cap
3) Access Speed

So any comparison should be measure in R/Mb/bits/second

This will give a more accurate 'value for money' rating.

Not sure if anyone has done the tables to compare?

You haven't taken into account what is an acceptable price for the amount of data we use and how fast we really need the connection to be. A simple devision of price over speed just doesn't cut it and will also make Vodacom's service the worst value for money for their gprs/edge? customers even if they charged Virgin's rates for it. After getting edge speeds I no longer see it worth paying R2 over 50c for what is only negligibly faster browsing on 3G and I have the time to wait for any downloads to complete. Price is far more important so any equation should have an exponential multiplication factor for price.

 

[vodacom3g]

You haven't taken into account what is an acceptable price for the amount of data we use and how fast we really need the connection to be. A simple devision of price over speed just doesn't cut it and will also make Vodacom's service the worst value for money for their gprs/edge? customers even if they charged Virgin's rates for it. After getting edge speeds I no longer see it worth paying R2 over 50c for what is only negligibly faster browsing on 3G and I have the time to wait for any downloads to complete. Price is far more important so any equation should have an exponential multiplication factor for price.

The formula is correct, and in any empirical testing you should remove 'personal' preferences, otherwise the results will be skewed.

But, every user will add his/her own weight to each of the variables and this will pop out a different 'relevance' factor.

Just like price is important to you, speed might be to another user or bearer type to another.

The different networks / bearers / bundles / etc. all influence the result and everyone should find their own sweet spot.

 

[rekall]

At the end of the day I think you will find that vodacom,MTN,CellC and Virgin all have more satisfied customers than dissatisfied ones.

Vodacom are the biggest Mobile company in SA and provide the most 3G,EDGE,GPRS and GSM coverage in SA. this information is available from the respective provider's webpage. Comparing coverage maps shows this fact quite clearly.(the info is quite accurate as the opposing providers are very quick to point out 'accidental' errors)

I'm sure that there are places where there is MTN/Cell C coverage and no Vodacom coverage but that is to be expected since no provider claims to have 100% coverage. If there is crap Voda coverage and great virgin where u live then go Virgin. Take the best option for you(like you would with any retailer). I can't even get Virgin EDGE where i live but I've got voda HSDPA so I'm happy.

That speaks volumes that they don't care about what we want, but only about their bottom line.

The customer's satisfaction IS the bottom line. People don't pay R2/Mb for fun. I imagine that the majority of people on vodacom and MTN are happy/content with their service or do not have an equal service to defect to.Companies know that they can't just live off the fat of the land once they become successful. All the Cell companies are going to have to constantly adapt to stay above water and they will.

If voda doesn't work for you then find an alternative.

I do not believe that there is one provider for everyone. It all depends on your situation. I happen to have HSDPA coverage where i am and I get great data speeds so I don't have a reason to change. But If I was in an EDGE only zone and I had to choose between 50c and R2 I don't need to tell you which one I'd choose.

All of this irritation and unrest in the cellular world is a great thing in my opinion. Cellular tech in SA has boomed compared to the rest of the world and I believe it will remain to do so. Vodacom and MTN will drop their data rates in order to survive.

Once Virgin sorts their teething problems out they will really shake things up.

All I'm trying to say is to take the package that offers the most to you and understand that those criteria differ between users

 

[Prometheus]

The formula is correct, and in any empirical testing you should remove 'personal' preferences, otherwise the results will be skewed.

But, every user will add his/her own weight to each of the variables and this will pop out a different 'relevance' factor.

Just like price is important to you, speed might be to another user or bearer type to another.

The different networks / bearers / bundles / etc. all influence the result and everyone should find their own sweet spot.

Yes the formula is correct from a scientific point of view. But you won't find any market where value is directly related to speed if you pay according to your usage. Just because something is twice as fast does not make it twice as valueable for the majority of customers. Countries where you get adsl of between 1 and 40mbps are a prime example of this as you don't pay 40x the price of a 1mbps line for a 40mbps one and that is not even usage based. The price usually increases by a factor of less than one every time the speed doubles. So value wise with a factor of 50% if a 1mbps line costs R200 (obviously not here) then a 2mbps line would cost something like R300 and a 4mbps line R450.

At the end of the day I think you will find that vodacom,MTN,CellC and Virgin all have more satisfied customers than dissatisfied ones.

Obviously they do or customers are just unsure how the other networks' services are. But from the posts on this forum a lot of people are locked in by coctracts and their number so when MNP is introduced I would like to see how fast that margin of "satisfied" customers drops.

Vodacom are the biggest Mobile company in SA and provide the most 3G,EDGE,GPRS and GSM coverage in SA. this information is available from the respective provider's webpage. Comparing coverage maps shows this fact quite clearly.(the info is quite accurate as the opposing providers are very quick to point out 'accidental' errors)

I'm sure that there are places where there is MTN/Cell C coverage and no Vodacom coverage but that is to be expected since no provider claims to have 100% coverage. If there is crap Voda coverage and great virgin where u live then go Virgin. Take the best option for you(like you would with any retailer). I can't even get Virgin EDGE where i live but I've got voda HSDPA so I'm happy.

True, but that only shows the total coverage under laboratory conditions. You either get 3G or gprs access and it seems you are more than likely to be on gprs even if within range of 3G (hey GT?) and from the crawling speeds on Vodacom's gprs network there doesn't seem to be much edge. Virgin/Cell-C seems to have the most edge coverage so you are more than likely to get decent speeds as opposed to a connection that is either fast or very slow and for some people the faster speed is not really worth having to put up with the crawling slow speeds sometimes. Your situation might be different and you might be stationary and have a great speed all of the time and if this is the case then by all means continue to pay the inflated R2/mb it really doesn't bother me. It really doesn't, we are enough people who don't mind putting up with a slower connection which really isn't slower than Vodacom's gprs/edge? offering to show them that the extra expense really isn't worth it for most of us and in the end it could only benefit everyone including you.

The customer's satisfaction IS the bottom line. People don't pay R2/Mb for fun. I imagine that the majority of people on vodacom and MTN are happy/content with their service or do not have an equal service to defect to.Companies know that they can't just live off the fat of the land once they become successful. All the Cell companies are going to have to constantly adapt to stay above water and they will.

If voda doesn't work for you then find an alternative.

I do not believe that there is one provider for everyone. It all depends on your situation. I happen to have HSDPA coverage where i am and I get great data speeds so I don't have a reason to change. But If I was in an EDGE only zone and I had to choose between 50c and R2 I don't need to tell you which one I'd choose.

All of this irritation and unrest in the cellular world is a great thing in my opinion. Cellular tech in SA has boomed compared to the rest of the world and I believe it will remain to do so. Vodacom and MTN will drop their data rates in order to survive.

Once Virgin sorts their teething problems out they will really shake things up.

Can't wait for the 10th of November. It will either shake things up quite a bit or mean a resignation. I am hoping for the latter as I and a lot of other people have already made our decision with the data prices.

All I'm trying to say is to take the package that offers the most to you and understand that those criteria differ between users

I know circumstances differ, but it still amazes me that consumers complain about prices being too high and then don't take cheaper options when it is offered to them. I am only saying that the 50c over R2 price difference is a fair comparison even if the technology is different in some cases. Remember that Vodacom also has the option to charge a different rate for gprs/edge? but chooses not to do so and thereby makes a comparison with 3G as to value.