REV A uncapped?

[rtzouves]

Just a quick thread to either prove or disprove my theory on how this would sell...

How many would even be prepared to pay a little more for this service.

Personally I think I would be prepared to foot R 1 500.00 incl vat if they could guarantee a min speed of say 1mbps (down) 300kbps (up) with perfect signal and 200ms maximum latency to local servers. I think thats being realistic considering the tests show far better than this.

What do you think?

 

[porchrat]

Just a quick thread to either prove or disprove my theory on how this would sell...

How many would even be prepared to pay a little more for this service.

Personally i think i would be prepared to foot R 1 500.00 incl vat if they could gaurentee a min speed of say 1mbps (down) 300kbps (up) with perfect signal and 200ms maximum latency to local servers. I think thats being realistic considering the tests show far better than this.

What do you think?

I think you and all the unicorns in fairyland must be extremely happy.

You can get uncapped ADSL at 1024kbps for R1699 (granted there are conditions on this, but outside of work hours you can download all you want...not for businesses for sure)...why would I want a shakey CDMA connection, with a crappy device for R1500? All from a company that refuses to give concrete answers on a whole lot of topics.

 

[mancombseepgood]

Just a quick thread to either prove or disprove my theory on how this would sell...

How many would even be prepared to pay a little more for this service.

Personally i think i would be prepared to foot R 1 500.00 incl vat if they could gaurentee a min speed of say 1mbps (down) 300kbps (up) with perfect signal and 200ms maximum latency to local servers. I think thats being realistic considering the tests show far better than this.

What do you think?

Perfect signal - no such thing... No contention ration on wireless - no such thing...
For your money you will get nothing dedicated and guaranteed... maybe closer to the tens of thousands...

 

[rtzouves]

I think you and all the unicorns in fairyland must be extremely happy.

You can get uncapped ADSL at 1024kbps for R1699 (granted there are conditions on this, but outside of work hours you can download all you want...not for businesses for sure)...why would I want a shakey CDMA connection, with a crappy device for R1500? All from a company that refuses to give concrete answers on a whole lot of topics.

Please can you send me the link to this so called uncapped service @1024 for R1699? The cheapest i can find if you take into account all other costs such as line rental and vat is about R2200 and even then their is some heavy threshholding (neotel does not do this). As for the rest of what you said... fair enough.

 

[rtzouves]

Perfect signal - no such thing... No contention ration on wireless - no such thing...
For your money you will get nothing dedicated and guaranteed... maybe closer to the tens of thousands...

Ok... I should have said excellent signal with reference to their coverage maps.

You are right about the guaranteed bit though, but i would settle for an "average" of 1mbps. so if they gave us some kind of contention ratio figure for us to base our speed estimates and we could estimate a minimum speed of say 700kbps (4:1 on a 3.1mbps line with a bit of leeway) based on that contention ratio then i would be happy with that.

 

[mythos4sl]

look i think R1500 for uncapped is still very expensive! For a buisness i can understand i really can but for home use this is rediculous! they should make it afordable for every1 so my personal oppinion is like R800 a month for uncapped is freaking fair and besides i guess if they advertise it properly and every1 gets to know the brand they will change in a heart beat at that price and at those speeds! and then neotel can conquere SA!

 

[rtzouves]

look i think R1500 for uncapped is still very expensive! For a buisness i can understand i really can but for home use this is rediculous! they should make it afordable for every1 so my personal oppinion is like R800 a month for uncapped is freaking fair and besides i guess if they advertise it properly and every1 gets to know the brand they will change in a heart beat at that price and at those speeds! and then neotel can conquere SA!

I understand where you are coming from, but you need to know that R1500 really is not bad compared to other similar services in the market, assuming it is a good quality service (no point in comparing to international markets).

Don't get me wrong I think it is extremely expensive as well in terms of the average user, but lets face facts, a service like this is not going to be targeted at the average user. This type of service is targeted at the very high end of the consumer market. The guys/gals who are willing to pay a premium for a premium service.

I am not bashing your post or anything I am simply stating that, while unfortunate, the truth is that in South Africa uncapped internet is a luxury and expecting it at R800, especially with the above speeds, may not be realistic at present (this of course may change in mid 2009 when international internet becomes more competitively priced).

 

[LabAnimal]

Just a quick thread to either prove or disprove my theory on how this would sell...

How many would even be prepared to pay a little more for this service.

Personally I think I would be prepared to foot R 1 500.00 incl vat if they could guarantee a min speed of say 1mbps (down) 300kbps (up) with perfect signal and 200ms maximum latency to local servers. I think thats being realistic considering the tests show far better than this.

What do you think?

I'm not even going to read the rest of what's been said...

but you're mad if you think paying more for the uncapped service is called for! R999 or cheaper otherwise no deal!. Otherwise I'll gladly wait till all the under sea cables have landed - because i doubt Neotel will be on the frontline considering how the other players are fighting to get a cut of the pie!.

 

[porchrat]

Please can you send me the link to this so called uncapped service @1024 for R1699? The cheapest i can find if you take into account all other costs such as line rental and vat is about R2200 and even then their is some heavy threshholding (neotel does not do this). As for the rest of what you said... fair enough.

Fair enough the offer didn't include line rental so lets add another R152 for that. I agree at that point the offer doesn't sound nearly as appealing especially with the weird rolling thresholds they put in place (I think it was 10GB over 10 days then they throttle you to 256Kb...argh), but you should check it out regardless. For the person who uses evenings and weekends to downloads massive amounts it looked like a good option as I recall those times don't count towards thresholds.

I can't seem to find the site at the moment, but I found it yesterday afternoon linked off www.hellkom.co.za and although I didn't take a long look at it it seemed like a really good deal. I'll post the link later on today when I'm at work as it will be in the history of the office machine.

EDIT: Nevermind all that I found the page

As i thought it does have the 10Gb threshold which is not exactly fantastic, but during evenings (20:00 to 8:00) and weekends no rate limits (i.e. the 256kb throttle resulting from exceeding thresholds) will be enforced (so they claim)

 

[rtzouves]

I'm not even going to read the rest of what's been said...

but you're mad if you think paying more for the uncapped service is called for! R999 or cheaper otherwise no deal!. Otherwise I'll gladly wait till all the under sea cables have landed - because i doubt Neotel will be on the frontline considering how the other players are fighting to get a cut of the pie!.

Hmmm, but surely an increase in price would be justified considering the massive increase in upload speed, better latency and increased download speed that is promised with REV A as apposed to the current offering. Why not an increase in the price, maybe not as high an increase as 50% but thats a matter of just how high you are willing to go on a personal level. I mean when you go get a big mac, don't they charge you extra for the supersize?

 

[rtzouves]

Fair enough the offer didn't include line rental so lets add another R152 for that. I agree at that point the offer doesn't sound nearly as appealing especially with the weird rolling thresholds they put in place (I think it was 10GB over 10 days then they throttle you to 256Kb...argh), but you should check it out regardless. For the person who uses evenings and weekends to downloads massive amounts it looked like a good option as I recall those times don't count towards thresholds.

I can't seem to find the site at the moment, but I found it yesterday afternoon linked off www.hellkom.co.za and although I didn't take a long look at it it seemed like a really good deal. I'll post the link later on today when I'm at work as it will be in the history of the office machine.

EDIT: Nevermind all that I found the page

As i thought it does have the 10Gb threshold which is not exactly fantastic, but during evenings (20:00 to 8:00) and weekends no rate limits (i.e. the 256kb throttle resulting from exceeding thresholds) will be enforced (so they claim)

Actually you are right, it is a good package (best in its class that i have seen to date) considering the rate limits don't count during offpeak times.

The Line rental is not R152 per month as you stated above, thats the 384k line rental which would make getting this uncapped service pointless. The line rental you would need is the 1024k one which according to telkom is R413 incl vat. Take that into account and the service is now R2112 and this is a special.

So in my opinion the service i described above would not be that badly priced at R1500.

-No Cap
-1meg download/min 300kbps upload
-no threshholding
-slightly higher local latency
-on par international latency (the uncapped adsl service we are comparing to is express which uses satellite for international traffic)

so all in all a fair price if you ask me.

 

[porchrat]

Actually you are right, it is a good package (best in its class that i have seen to date) considering the rate limits don't count during offpeak times.

I thought it was a pretty good offer, I'm glad others agree. It is of course WAY out of my price range, but still I can dream, and if I could afford an internet connection like that that is probably the one I would go for.

The line rental you would need is the 1024k one which according to telkom is R413 incl vat. Take that into account and the service is now R2112 and this is a special.

I hadn't thought of that (currently on the 384k line and never even looked at the other lines...expensive!). That does kind of make it even less appealing Well I suppose in that case your argument does have merit, I sill wouldn't be able to afford R1500 anyway, maybe if I gave up eating...hmmmmm i wonder. However it would at least bring me close to being able to afford it. Now I just have to leave a R10 note under my pillow and hope the pay-rise fairy pays me a visit. Not that it would matter though as I STILL don't have coverage. Grrrrr

-on par international latency (the uncapped adsl service we are comparing to is express which uses satellite for international traffic)

Yes I did notice that when I was looking at the offer earlier this morning, but I suppose unless you play games on international servers it shouldn't be that bad. Sort of like using Neotel on local servers

Anyway at least it is something to think about. Did you see the prices of their usual offerings (outside of the special)...yikes!!

 

[porchrat]

I mean when you go get a big mac, don't they charge you extra for the supersize?

They should pay YOU to eat that stuff

 

[chubster]

You are forgetting about the device. Now you are stuck with the vendor to provide updates, where as if you had your own firewall, you could simply plug in the device. USB would be fine, data only and higher upload speeds with lower latencies.

Why don't they provide us with uncap? Oh ja, because they don't want us to bypass their voice service, by going Skype/VoIP/Webcam services. JUST LIKE TELKOM. Eish, back to the stone ages. This is BS, trying to create something out of nothing.

What I find funny about this "capping", is that it costs them something to implement it. But then charge you less for something that costs nothing to implement. I might as well bang my head against the wall.

R800 sounds reasonable to me. The current Prime minus the Voice service. And if they want to use international as an excuse, they should give us local uncapped and then 30GB international capped. And they might get a facial muscle movement out of me.

 

[Chevron]

I say considering there's no voice they should charge around R999-R1200 and add R100 for voice if you want it with the free minutes and all that jazz.

 

[porchrat]

I say considering there's no voice they should charge around R999-R1200 and add R100 for voice if you want it with the free minutes and all that jazz.

noooooo way

 

[rtzouves]

I say considering there's no voice they should charge around R999-R1200 and add R100 for voice if you want it with the free minutes and all that jazz.

That is actually a valid point, I didn't even take into consideration the voice capabilities. Perhaps its because I don't use the device as a phone, in fact i would glue the handset down if I felt it would ensure i didn't get disconnected.

Ok... So then R1200, thats not too shabby then. Don't think R100 extra for the voice service with all the free mins and stuff, perhaps an extra hundred just for the voice service and say an answering service or something then maybe an extra R300 if you want all the free mins, etc, because they do give you alot of those on the prime uncapped. Maybe as an extra incentive they could add an external arial to the package as freebie as I am sure this would make the price a bit more attractive.

I think that would be a fair price so long as the contention ratio was not too high. I would however be extremely ticked if it was and I didn't see much with regards to performance benefits over their current uncapped package. A maximum ratio of about 4:1 would be acceptable to me. On a service like this I would want to see a minimum of 700kbps down.

 

[rtzouves]

You are forgetting about the device. Now you are stuck with the vendor to provide updates, where as if you had your own firewall, you could simply plug in the device. USB would be fine, data only and higher upload speeds with lower latencies.

Why don't they provide us with uncap? Oh ja, because they don't want us to bypass their voice service, by going Skype/VoIP/Webcam services. JUST LIKE TELKOM. Eish, back to the stone ages. This is BS, trying to create something out of nothing.

What I find funny about this "capping", is that it costs them something to implement it. But then charge you less for something that costs nothing to implement. I might as well bang my head against the wall.

R800 sounds reasonable to me. The current Prime minus the Voice service. And if they want to use international as an excuse, they should give us local uncapped and then 30GB international capped. And they might get a facial muscle movement out of me.

For the most part i would agree with you on the price if it was just taking the current prime REV 0 and removing the voice capabilities, but remember that the service i am talking about would be REV A and with that comes a number of improvements over the REV 0 device. The biggest of which would be the higher upload and download speeds and of course the big latency improvements.

The cap part of what you said is what i am hoping to avoid... not because i am assuming i am going to reach that cap, but because i would hate to get an additional bill at the end of the month because i accidentaly went a few gigs over their cap. The whole idea is to have a service that you don't need to monitor all the time. I for one don't want to have to check my cap everytime I stream content to my tv or have a high res video call over skype with one of my mates overseas.

I suppose a threashhold (say a 50% speed cut) for international and local with no restrictions would be acceptable but definately not a hard cap and of course most definately no restriction on local as this should be more than cheap enough for them to provide.

 

[Chevron]

noooooo way

Why? What's wrong with that?

You need to use the R999 Rev0 device as a starting point.

You sound like the type person that wants uncapped internet at R5 a month. Get realistic. If you can't afford to bad. Neither can I. It doesn't mean they must make the service cheaper just for you and I and run in at a loss.

 

[porchrat]

For the most part i would agree with you on the price if it was just taking the current prime REV 0 and removing the voice capabilities, but remember that the service i am talking about would be REV A and with that comes a number of improvements over the REV 0 device. The biggest of which would be the higher upload and download speeds and of course the big latency improvements.

The cap part of what you said is what i am hoping to avoid... not because i am assuming i am going to reach that cap, but because i would hate to get an additional bill at the end of the month because i accidentaly went a few gigs over their cap. The whole idea is to have a service that you don't need to monitor all the time. I for one don't want to have to check my cap everytime I stream content to my tv or have a high res video call over skype with one of my mates overseas.

I suppose a threashhold (say a 50% speed cut) for international and local with no restrictions would be acceptable but definately not a hard cap and of course most definately no restriction on local as this should be more than cheap enough for them to provide.

Surely you're missing the point here. Surely RevA doesn't cost them any more to provide than Rev0 did, therefore why should you pay more?

I don't believe that saying the customer should pay more because the transfer rates are higher and the latency is lower is really logical. I realise they need to recover their input costs resulting from upgrading the base stations etc., but realistically it has cost them a lot more to put up base stations in the first place, than it ever could to upgrade them.