SEACOM Uncapped Pricings for new ISP

nihilist said:
Agreed, but a 1:1 ratio and guaranteed line speed will obviously carry a premium price.
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I meant for every home user there should be a business user thus maximising the usage of the available bandwidth 24/7.
 
nihilist said:
I think ISPs should have more flexible accounts, perhaps an order page where you tick/choose features you want for your account and pay accordingly.
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I like that idea. Say a point system, where you can select x amount of features, each worth y amount of points. 1Mbps during office hours may be worth a large amount of points, while the business can drop their speeds to 384k or less after office hours, as few, if any, people will be there then anyway.
Guys at home can then select say 384k guaranteed connection speed, 24/7, but with shaping, etc.

I think saying you'd offer an uncapped solution right now, isn't being realistic.
Beat the competition senseless by offering 15gb(Or ideally less) for R500, with carry-over, say, which will fit into your budget, and wait for the rest's prices to drop in order to keep clients from migrating to you. That's the point of it all, isn't it? To force prices down because the rest won't?

Again, don't underestimate the value of caching. Squid shows that 23% of what I view comes from my local proxy. That's a vast amount of bandwidth being saved if you're looking at ISP level. I'm not sure how feasible such a solution would be on ISP level or what input costs would be, but maybe it's something to look into?
 
i think if it's cached, it's free. that would bring in a large customer base quickly (It would be an excellent dangling carrot IMO, to lock users)

So if Messugga downloads a popular youtube video, I watch it for free (cause its cached)

unless there are extra costs involved?
 
Keeper said:
So if Messugga downloads a popular youtube video, I watch it for free (cause its cached)
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Only if you also download it, not if you watch the streaming video.
 
Keeper said:
i think if it's cached, it's free. that would bring in a large customer base quickly (It would be an excellent dangling carrot IMO, to lock users)

So if Messugga downloads a popular youtube video, I watch it for free (cause its cached)

unless there are extra costs involved?
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Well, I don't see anything about local bandwidth? Or does the connection already include those costs?

Keeper, also, it'd be difficult to track that sort of usage, I would think. Not so much from a technical point of view as from the amount of processing power required.

Besides, a cache server would be your buffer. It is intended to lighten the load on your connection, thus increasing overall client-satisfaction levels (Higher perceivable connection speeds due to downloading from a connection that's not clogged up).

Think of it like this: You have 100Mbps of bandwidth available. ~20% of what people view is cached. In effect, you now have a 120Mbps connection while still paying for the 100Mbps connection.
 
Messugga said:
Well, I don't see anything about local bandwidth? Or does the connection already include those costs?
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I think the time has come to stop differentiating. This was a ridiculous concept imposed by Telkom in the first place :)

I'm pretty sure that by now most people would initially be happy with an affordable 30-50GB account (which doesn't differentiate between local and international), moving towards the ultimate goal of uncapped when competition and economy of scale kicks in.
 
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Ok, let me get this straight...

Neotels pricing for a 155mbit ST-1 is R1.5m.... Does this include the necessary infrastructure to get that bandwidth to a distribution point of your choosing or is that just the ST-1 on the Seacom cable?

I won't mention the fact that this is SIGNIFICANTLY more than the released pricing from Seacom as mentioned in this article - http://mybroadband.co.za/news/Telecoms/2911.html.

If I use those pricings as a base to work from I'm getting a ST-1 link costing R105000 (as at exchange rates in Feb 2008), so you're looking at maybe R110k now. Granted this excludes ALL the infrastructure to make that bandwidth available to you, but I don't see that infrastructure costing R1.4mpm.

Your pricings also exclude all your overheads, your local infrastructure, the systems you will have to put in place to do local peering etc etc etc...
 
Smooth Criminal said:
I think the time has come to stop differentiating. This was a ridiculous concept imposed by Telkom in the first place :)
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No, I get that completely, but I meant: This ST-1 connection...that's only your international connection, right? If so, how do you get the data to the clients? There are costs involved with that as well.
 
Messugga said:
No, I get that completely, but I meant: This ST-1 connection...that's only your international connection, right? If so, how do you get the data to the clients? There are costs involved with that as well.
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Unfortunately you'd have to buy IPConnect capacity from Telkom. Unbundling the local loop would have solved that problem, but right now it's the only way to hook into the DSL network.
 
Smooth Criminal said:
Unfortunately you'd have to buy IPConnect capacity from Telkom. Unbundling the local loop would have solved that problem, but right now it's the only way to hook into the DSL network.
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And that's notoriously expensive! A factor not brought into calculation yet.
 
Just a question, if there was such a great value proposition don't you think ISPs with literally years of experience would be thinking along the same lines? What makes you different? This is not clear in this thread. What access are you going to use? IPConnect ADSL?

Great idea though I'm just confused as to why you seem to think Openweb etc have not considered this. They (the ISPs) have the numbers, so you're gonna struggle to compete with them.

I also think it's better to target the 30GB account. Remember back in the day with the WebAfrica 30GB account for R199.. those were the days. I'd take 30GB international for R299 without thinking twice.

What is your aim? To be viable or to give the home user uncapped.. quite important, otherwise you should be targeting the SMMEs in the R1500pm range for your uncapped solution. On an STM-1 you can be really flexible with your contention ratios, I'm not sure you are bringing this into the equation. Even for uncapped, I think you can still target something in the region of 16:1 given the size of the pipe.
 
ToxicBunny said:
Neotels pricing for a 155mbit ST-1 is R1.5m.... Does this include the necessary infrastructure to get that bandwidth to a distribution point of your choosing or is that just the ST-1 on the Seacom cable?

I won't mention the fact that this is SIGNIFICANTLY more than the released pricing from Seacom as mentioned in this article - http://mybroadband.co.za/news/Telecoms/2911.html.
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Hi, this article says something else.
http://mybroadband.co.za/news/Telecoms/9030.html

I think there are a lot of prices getting thrown around, and besides, the 1.5 million was "negotiable" too... so I'm going to double-check that in my follow-up meeting...
 
How consumers are going to connect? I was looking at Neotel offerings. Other connections are still unclear - I"ve only had one meeting thusfar - I will clarify during my next meeting, as well as a few other questions in this thread.

Regarding local bandwidth, I've always had only international in mind. Telkom still owns the local loop remember, and unbundling is in 2012 (I think?). I will also clarify how Neotel gives consumers local bandwidth in their offerings.

Regarding competition - remember Openweb etc. are fairly new. If there is something I've learnt about business - there is ALWAYS room for one more. I'm going to hit with a competitive edge... taking greed out of the equation, keeping things open and honest, and giving the consumer what he has been shouting for. I'm being open about everything right from now, at conception - maybe this will make at least one ISP wake up and provide this. If they do, it's merely competition. If they don't, it's their loss. At the very least - change WILL come in this country, it's only a matter of time. I've been one of the people screaming out for change, and I thought to myself - why not BE the change?
 
How about this (just a random thought at this unearthly hour):

R200 for 20G capped
R300 for 30G capped
R400 for 40G capped
R500 for UNcapped

I'll have to work that out for financial viability, but does that sound fair?

To all those people who commented on youtube - of course this would be tested but I'm not sure about unshaped or whether that would be possible.

And of COURSE the contracts would be fair and open - but a 2 year contract for example would naturally have a discount as well as a cancellation fee. I'm more inclined towards offering monthly debit order with cancellation at any time.
 
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