SEACOM construction finished!

Looks like many of the Big Boys have posted on this thread. I'd like to know what you guys think of this idea.

I think that the greedy little bloodsucking business ticks at MWeb have realised that in July their R99 per GB Booster revenue will plummet when Seacom goes live and international bandwidth prices drop. Now they need to find a different place to bite us to suck their blood and they chose to sink their teeth into the 'local only' stream.

Now the question is 'How do we avoid being beaten like rented ponies by these gluttonous little blood suckers?'

Well I'm glad you asked. The answer is Collective Bargaining.

Let's say we spread the word widely and we get 500 people to join our 'Collective Bargaining Club'. Then we put out a tender for a 384k and a 4Meg product and see which ISP can give us the best deal for our club members. One sealed and final bid from each interested ISP, no rounds of endless negotiations. Every 3 months we can re-tender as our member numbers grow.

If they can divide us they can conquer us, otherwise we rule.

Let me know what you think.
 
Noruk said:
The contention ratios mean that some of the time you'll get excellent speeds, and then some of the time you'll get very bad speeds. But most of the time you'll get acceptable speeds. You see during normal surfing you're only using the pipe for a few seconds every now and then, humans are slow to read content. So nobody is using their whole pipe all of the time, except when downloading content, constant stream of data and all that.

The big problem comes in when everyone is downloading content (YouTube etc.) all of the time. So to be fair the ISPs and the routers can kick someone off for a short time to release capacity. Or throttle speed according to demand. The idea is that everyone gets a fair chance. Kicking is bad :mad:, use a download manager :D.

That is why it is not possible to let everyone download at full speed 24/7, 30 days a month. The power users do break the system, but then they should be allowed to pay. Unfortunately we're all paying too much for very little. :sick: :sick: :sick:
Click to expand...

remember the reason why telkom is capping our internet usage at the moment is to keep everyone from downloading the whole time and at the same time. with the seacom cable we have 10 times the bandwith capacity which means there will be no need to cap us anymore becuase there will be enough bandwith to go along. and don't forget that the sat3 cable will still stay in effect
 
boanergesza1 said:
grandpa said if it is too good to be true, it usually is....
Click to expand...

Yeah well, grandpa has lots of experience and he knows a load of bull when he sees it.

Now it is not all gloom and doom - there is something positive that will come from all this. That being that we will no longer have false hope.

The last bastion for cheaper internet has always been a submarine cable that is not owned by telkom. But blind as we are we made it personal and thought it was just telkom being evil. Thats the mistakes one makes when you take it to the personal level. The trusth is that any telecoms company, given enough power and control over the consumer, will milk them for as much as they will pay.

So what we are left with is higher prices - which is sad - but on the bright side we have no more false hope of them coming down.

Its like knowing when you are going to die - you can (sort of) better plan things then.
 
surely there will be something more positive than the end of our false hope!

I'm certain that we'll get at least caps that will float above 10GB and tbh for continuous surfing, most business stuff and the odd download..it is certainly enough! Between 10-50GB should be sufficient for the hungriest of surfers with media usage like youtube etc. However looking at axxesses statistics for uncapped its pretty obvious the "distro" downloaders will not be happy!
 
Regarding contention ratios:

DSL 512 at 20:1 is 25.6 kbps per subscriber (most DSL customers are 512k).

500 000 DSL subscribers x 25.6 kbps = 12.8 Gbps

Can you see now how a 1.28 Tbps cable can make a HUUUUUUGE difference to the internet bandwidth available to broadband subscribers? Even 80Gbps is more than 6 times more bandwidth than we currently have.

I can also suggest that no where near 25.6 kbps is dimensioned on an international pipe per DSL subscriber, because that's nearly 8GB per month at 100% utilisation. So it's probably closer to 5 kbps per DSL subscriber.

So it's probably less than 3 Gbps interntional bandwidth for all DSL subscribers.
 
technofool said:
Looks like many of the Big Boys have posted on this thread. I'd like to know what you guys think of this idea.

I think that the greedy little bloodsucking business ticks at MWeb have realised that in July their R99 per GB Booster revenue will plummet when Seacom goes live and international bandwidth prices drop. Now they need to find a different place to bite us to suck their blood and they chose to sink their teeth into the 'local only' stream.

Now the question is 'How do we avoid being beaten like rented ponies by these gluttonous little blood suckers?'

Well I'm glad you asked. The answer is Collective Bargaining.

Let's say we spread the word widely and we get 500 people to join our 'Collective Bargaining Club'. Then we put out a tender for a 384k and a 4Meg product and see which ISP can give us the best deal for our club members. One sealed and final bid from each interested ISP, no rounds of endless negotiations. Every 3 months we can re-tender as our member numbers grow.

If they can divide us they can conquer us, otherwise we rule.

Let me know what you think.
Click to expand...
Egzakkery!
And, we have probably a ADSL user base of 2000 right here.

This is the kind of stuff that MyBroadband is made for.

How do you want to progress?
Step 1 would be getting people to sign up for the deal, by, say, switching to a reseller's account instead of their existing accounts.

I'm definitely in.
 
technofool said:
Looks like many of the Big Boys have posted on this thread. I'd like to know what you guys think of this idea.

I think that the greedy little bloodsucking business ticks at MWeb have realised that in July their R99 per GB Booster revenue will plummet when Seacom goes live and international bandwidth prices drop. Now they need to find a different place to bite us to suck their blood and they chose to sink their teeth into the 'local only' stream.

Now the question is 'How do we avoid being beaten like rented ponies by these gluttonous little blood suckers?'

Well I'm glad you asked. The answer is Collective Bargaining.

Let's say we spread the word widely and we get 500 people to join our 'Collective Bargaining Club'. Then we put out a tender for a 384k and a 4Meg product and see which ISP can give us the best deal for our club members. One sealed and final bid from each interested ISP, no rounds of endless negotiations. Every 3 months we can re-tender as our member numbers grow.

If they can divide us they can conquer us, otherwise we rule.

Let me know what you think.
Click to expand...

Why don't you just drop Mweb for a cheaper ISP??? :confused:
 
davemc said:
You don't get it.
If you get 1000 people into your club, you can go to MWeb and say:
We want you to offer us a better deal or we'll change our accounts to AXXESS / Webafrica / TelkomWholesale.
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but arent all the ADSL users in South Africa already in some form of a club... and don't we already use consumer action to vote for our favourite ISPs?

Don't get me wrong, I am all for consumer action... but I already left M-web because of their prices... and I assumer that thousands of others will follow.

What is the point of staying with an ISP when their prices are inflated and they treat their customers like the underside of a shoe? See my signature... I already told Mweb what I think of them.

Instead of bothering with all the admin and forming a club, etc. Those thousand users should have already made their move and their intentions felt. There is no reason to stay with Mweb or to try and convince them to drop their prices... just move already and they WILL have to drop their prices.

Edit: If people have not already moved away from Mweb because of their prices, then we must assume that there is something else keeping them at Mweb. Their customer service, or their web portal or their loyalty to the brand, etc. Forming a club is not going to help fighting those loyalties. The only thing that talks is money/price.... and if Mweb has to die like a dinosaur... so be it.
 
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I wonder if we will see speed increases during the testing phase?
 
Garyvdh said:
Why don't you just drop Mweb for a cheaper ISP??? :confused:
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The R199 deal from MWEb for 384k line + 1GB International + 10GB Local + free locked modem + 300 wifi minutes is still on a par with the other ISPs out there.

Axxess R198 No free local, no free modem, no free wifi minutes
Telkom R199 1,5GB International, 15GB Local, no free modem without 2 year contract, no free wifi minutes
WebAfrica R199 no free local, no free wifi, free dial-up

We can see a little pattern emerging here.
 
Garyvdh said:
Instead of bothering with all the admin and forming a club, etc. Those thousand users should have already made their move and their intentions felt. There is no reason to stay with Mweb or to try and convince them to drop their prices... just move already and they WILL have to drop their prices.

Edit: If people have not already moved away from Mweb because of their prices, then we must assume that there is something else keeping them at Mweb. Their customer service, or their web portal or their loyalty to the brand, etc. Forming a club is not going to help fighting those loyalties. The only thing that talks is money/price.... and if Mweb has to die like a dinosaur... so be it.
Click to expand...

Then you get people like my parents, who despite being advised not to go with mweb, didn't want to lose their email address. They've also used Mweb since Mweb bought out PIX way back when.

At the moment, people move ISPs on an "as necessary" basis, i.e. "Ooh, there's a special at ISP X, let's move there from ISP A" so 30 or 100 users move that month, but at the same time, a group of other users are pissed at ISP Y so they move to ISP B, and it all just rotates amongst the providers, there's no mass action at any one time where the ISPs actually feel the burn.
It's all part of normal user churn that ISPs account for and expect. Getting a conglomeration of users together and moving ISPs is a brilliant idea to force them to pay attention and make it worthwhile to the end user.

Unfortunately, until LLU, none of the above affects the actual line rental cost, which is still ridiculously out of proportion and needs to come down.

On topic for the article though, this is brilliant news SEACOM, cannot wait to get access to our 10Gb slice of the cable so our institutions can benefit!
 
To be realistic, expect international prices the same as local atm. And 384>512, 512>1024. Maybe September . . .
 
There is still the matter of the local loop, so we're stuck with Telkom for ADSL lines until that happens. But there are still the wireless providers for now, and in terms of data usage this will definitely help :)
 
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tjunyat said:
Then you get people like my parents, who despite being advised not to go with mweb, didn't want to lose their email address. They've also used Mweb since Mweb bought out PIX way back when.

At the moment, people move ISPs on an "as necessary" basis, i.e. "Ooh, there's a special at ISP X, let's move there from ISP A" so 30 or 100 users move that month, but at the same time, a group of other users are pissed at ISP Y so they move to ISP B, and it all just rotates amongst the providers, there's no mass action at any one time where the ISPs actually feel the burn.
It's all part of normal user churn that ISPs account for and expect. Getting a conglomeration of users together and moving ISPs is a brilliant idea to force them to pay attention and make it worthwhile to the end user.

Unfortunately, until LLU, none of the above affects the actual line rental cost, which is still ridiculously out of proportion and needs to come down.

On topic for the article though, this is brilliant news SEACOM, cannot wait to get access to our 10Gb slice of the cable so our institutions can benefit!
Click to expand...

Ja, not many people know that you can pay for just the e-mail address alone with Mweb. It costs around R40 a month. It's a nice temporary solution while you move them to Gmail! :D

But the Mweb deal mentioned above is not bad. I just balk at going with Mweb after the way they treated their customers over the whole local saga.
 
It's a good thing

Let's see if the government can keep their hands off...

I think it's going to be interesting to see how this filters through to lower LSM's and what products will arise for consumers who can suddenly afford bandwidth. I wonder whether there's more growth potential in the upper or lower end of the market?

Does this mean that mobile data plans will also be lowered? And maybe one day I could actually sit down at a Coffee Shop and merrily download without an affiliate ISP login.

Have you seen the ambitious plans the Aussies have for their local infrastructure? Interesting...

BTW @Veroland - your signature nearly killed me.
 
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