R700 384kbps uncapped yah or nah???

sand_man

sand_man

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So it appears all the major players offering a 384uncapped package are buckling under the demands of the bandwidth starved public.

DC and Screamer are really battling with a terribly degraded product and SAOL and Cybersmart are about to pull their 384uncapped packages.

Clearly the ISP's have come in with very aggressive pricing for these uncapped accounts and the losses cannot be sustained.

My question to you guys is if they were asking R700 (all in) for a 384kbps uncapped, unshaped account that works 24/7 would you bite???
 
nope here too, unless they offer 2 or 3 concurrent connections, you know what, i just stick to DC for a while
 
R700 is simply too expensive for me. R500 fits my budget and that's why I went with them. If they ditch the service I'll have to look at Screamer, (and hope they get that NAT issue sorted) or DC if they get their issues under control. And who knows when that may happen.
 
lol, if they raise their prices they are gonna miss the boat.
 
aminfri said:
nope here too, unless they offer 2 or 3 concurrent connections, you know what, i just stick to DC for a while
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DC I admire for the tenacity and the balls to come out with their uncapped offering but there is so much shaping and throttling going on there that it's becoming embarrassing...

What I'm talking about is 40kBps 24/7, p2p, torrents, news servers the works...

You not going to get that from Screamer and DC at R500 per month.
 
D.B.Cooper said:
R700 is simply too expensive for me. R500 fits my budget and that's why I went with them. If they ditch the service I'll have to look at Screamer, (and hope they get that NAT issue sorted) or DC if they get their issues under control. And who knows when that may happen.
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I'm not convinced there are any problems there (DC and Screamer) other than shaping and throttling intensionally done to keep the average consumption within profitable parameters...
 
jak3 said:
lol, if they raise their prices they are gonna miss the boat.
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If they don't they might just go out of business, unless of course the novelty of uncapped wears off and the average monthly consumption drops below 40gigs.

Anything above 40gigs and these guys are running at a loss...
 
They need to just innovate the problems away. Use an incentive program to modify user usage.

The only reason they might back out from uncapped, is because they see digichilli and screamer are battling to get their offerings off the ground, and so they realize they can keep their high profit per gig offerings for a bit longer. Within the next 18 months uncapped is gonna happen if they are on the boat or off it.

This is all the more reason to support digichilli through the growing pains.

I just hope this thinking doesn't spread to webafrica... although, im sure a few phone calls have already been made.
 
jak3 said:
They need to just innovate the problems away. Use an incentive program to modify user usage.
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Agreed...

The only reason they might back out from uncapped, is because they see digichilli and screamer are battling to get their offerings off the ground, and so they realize they can keep their high profit per gig offerings for a bit longer. Within the next 18 months uncapped is gonna happen if they are on the boat or off it.
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I think it's a profitability issue. Currently there isn't any. If established ISP's can't afford it how can DC and Screamer afford it? (other than by degrading the network to unusable levels)?

This is all the more reason to support digichilli through the growing pains.
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I'm inclined to do so but I cannot see them surviving with the current setup.
 
sandmanm34 said:
My question to you guys is if they were asking R700 (all in) for a 384kbps uncapped, unshaped account that works 24/7 would you bite???
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No ways. R499 is a good deal, but still pretty expensive for what I can afford per month. 384K uncapped should be sold closer to R299, and 512K uncapped for R499, and 1mbps uncapped at R999, all inclusive.

I think SAOL should rather advertise and sell this package even MORE. Right now most people subscribing are myBB readers / forumites, who tend to max their lines out 24/7 to extract maximum value. They need to get more casual users, more non-geek types, who don't download too much, but mostly just don't want to worry about caps, topping up, running out, etc.

I've got this SAOL 384K uncapped package, but I only max my line out from about 7pm to 7am. The rest of the day it sits idle, mostly. I only have a laptop, which i take to work each day. No desktop at home. So I bet my 50% line usage is subsidising the price for the other users who use 100%. What SAOL needs is more users like me...

I did 14GB so far, since 6th Jan (11 down, 3 up).

This gives me a per GB cost of (R499 - R151)/14 = R348/14 = R24 per GB. So not even halfway through the month, and I am getting more value already than if I had capped Afrihost bandwidth. By the end of the month I should be hitting about R10 per GB. I can imagine that other users maxing their lines out 24/7 should be getting closer to R5 per GB.
 
sandmanm34 said:
Agreed...

I think it's a profitability issue. Currently there isn't any. If established ISP's can't afford it how can DC and Screamer afford it? (other than by degrading the network to unusable levels)?

I'm inclined to do so but I cannot see them surviving with the current setup.
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The solution is going to be found in the masses. The isp's all know the average usage by the masses will be far lower than 40 gigs. = profit

The only reason they will pull this is because they make alot more money selling through the per gig model. Why should they give you 40 gigs, when they can give you a quarter of that for the same money.

If digichilli had their product stable and sorted, cybersmart would not be making the noise they are currently making.

...on a side note, we seriously need to campaign to get the telkom ipc costs down.
 
I hear you Toxic and agree 100%. It's all about average consumption and the ISP's need to be more patient, advertise and target "normal" users and run with the pricing structures currently on offer.

How long they can afford to sustain these losses for? There doesn't seem to be any motivation to. Perhaps too risky IE the bottom end users don't show up...
 
sandmanm34 said:
I hear you Toxic and agree 100%. It's all about average consumption and the ISP's need to be more patient, advertise and target "normal" users and run with the pricing structures currently on offer.

How long they can afford to sustain these losses for? There doesn't seem to be any motivation to. Perhaps too risky IE the bottom end users don't show up...
Click to expand...

If it's that dire the answer is simple - introduce a softcap, but they won't do that because they want to milk their per gig customers for the next few years.
 
jak3 said:
The solution is going to be found in the masses. The isp's all know the average usage by the masses will be far lower than 40 gigs. = profit
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Agree 100%
If digichilli had their product stable and sorted, cybersmart would not be making the noise they are currently making.
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If chilli had their product stable they would be out of business:D

...on a side note, we seriously need to campaign to get the telkom ipc costs down.
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You can add line rental charges to the list!!!
 
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