Telkom blasts MWEB’s transit cut decision

[Shayd]

Yeah, I hadn't thought of that (I wonder if Telkom has?). Obviously, however, the incentive is still there for Telkom to try and keep the majority of this traffic on their own network, as it costs them less because they don't have to maintain infrastructure to other networks.


No, I disagree. Telkom need the infrastructure at JINX/CINX, but also further down the line as that increase in traffic from Mweb moves deeper into their network. i.e. if you were downloading something off my ADSL line, and I were on a SAIX account, the traffic would move over my copper line (Telkom), into the exchange (Telkom), into the MetroEthernet backbone (Telkom), and across all the infrastructure that connects that to JINX/CINX. There is a lot more infrastructure that gets utilised that would be at the cost of Telkom.

I still think Telkom should bite the bullet and peer openly. I just don't see them doing so from a profit point of view.

These other portions are paid for separately already. So they must be be counted separately.
- ADSL Line is paid for directly by you and your ISP via IPC
- MetroEthernet is paid for directly by you and you ISP via IPC
- Your ISP bills you for traffic from them to the destination

So you cannot include those costs as you are already paying for them directly, what peering is charging for is purely the capital cost of connecting to the INX and the traffic from router to router in the INX. You cannot include the servers etc that go along with hosting the site either as these are paid by the company that is hosted, eg MyBB pays Hetzner.

Each portion of each network is charged separately so you cannot say that peering should pay for those as well, it's not like ADSL line rental is cheap and you damn sure cannot say IPC capacity is cheap so there is no way charging for peering is justifiable.

At the end of the day some very big sites are hosted at MWEB and with the pricing they are charging for dedicated servers I have a feeling that they will have massive quantities of content on their own network soon enough.

For those that don't know, Naspers owns MWEB, go and take a look and see who else they own. I cannot believe the other networks would be dumb enough not to peer.

 

[Nickste]

...
At the end of the day some very big sites are hosted at MWEB and with the pricing they are charging for dedicated servers I have a feeling that they will have massive quantities of content on their own network soon enough.

For those that don't know, Naspers owns MWEB, go and take a look and see who else they own. I cannot believe the other networks would be dumb enough not to peer.

Yup, I think you're right. Mweb's hosting prices are very competitive! Hopefully this will get some content providers to jump ship. MyBB?!

 

[Darthloop]

This nearly gave me a stroke.

Telscum has been taking unilateral decisions since forever. Who decided to slice the internet up into 3Gb chunks? Who decided to remove local uncapped? Who decided to triple charge me for internet access? What frakken spirit was this done in?

Frak you Telkom. You on your own cost this country's economy billions because you are frakken stupid. But one day you will become obsolete.

Please explain how it is possible for M-Web to provide uncapped access to its users whilst you (who basically owns and controls everything) cannot provide the same access to your users. Greed is an ugly thing, just below corruption.

Telkom concerned about "spirit" of the Internet community and for subscribers taking the brunt -- haha what a @%$# JOKE!! Telkom doesnt know s h ! T about community spirit or caring about its subscribers, nor real innovation for that matter.

Watch them change their tune quick quick once m-web gathers momentum on this and starts hurting their bottom line

Whatever happend to local loop unbundling again...?

 

[Ant_Brooks]

You'll also notice that SAIX/Telkom is glaringly absent from both CINX and JINX, because you have to be an ISPA member to peer there, and SAIX/Telkom has historically always refused to become an ISPA member.

This is no longer true. ISPA revised its policies in February 2009 to allow non-ISPA members to connect to JINX/CINX. As an example, Google peers at CINX but isn't a member of ISPA. Telkom would be very welcome to make use of the INXes to interconnect to other ISPs and they would not need to become a member of ISPA to do so.

 

[johnelis]

This is no longer true. ISPA revised its policies in February 2009 to allow non-ISPA members to connect to JINX/CINX. As an example, Google peers at CINX but isn't a member of ISPA. Telkom would be very welcome to make use of the INXes to interconnect to other ISPs and they would not need to become a member of ISPA to do so.

Telkom joining CINX/JINX, Now that would make for a positive story ! But that may put pressure on them to exchange voice there too and they would loose the interconnect lines. Not likely !

 

[johnelis]

Was wondering, have any of the other majors started handing off voice traffic at JINX/CINX

 

[Ant_Brooks]

Was wondering, have any of the other majors started handing off voice traffic at JINX/CINX

The INXes are certainly being used for voice traffic exchange by some of the networks connected to them.

 

[BeVonk!]

Telkom purchased all the assets from the Government when they split from the Post Office in 1991 and also took over some of the PO's debt. They did not get it for free. Besides, all the assets relevant to this issue (peering) were definitely built post '91.

Up to the day that Government opened up the telecoms industry for others to participate everything Telkom gained was gained "for free" relative to those who had to build up their infrastructure from scratch (with no Gov handouts) in a competitive environment (like MWEB). Telkom gained a hell of a lot in a protected environment where they did not have to compete for income ... it just walked in (what I mean by free). That to me was free gain ... a gain that I believe gave them momentum that still affects business in the local telecoms environment.

 

[cobuss]

I don't think you guys truly understand why the big ISP don't want to peer with the likes of MWEB, sure they charge for interconnect rates, but its simple, in the industry there would most likely be a standard rate for that (you cant sell for more than you buy unless you have all the chips), Telkom uses MTN's network and pays for its use. Then vice- verse, so at the end of the day companies only gain any "profit" if their own network gets used more than what it uses other companies networks.

Now with the majority of internet users in SA using mobile phones to access the internet and the rest using telkom, that's where most of the traffic is. Now along comes MWEB with their little user base in comparison to the big ISP's and demands open peering. Firstly MWEB doesn't have as much traffic as the big ISPs and as such telkom, MTN and Vodacom would have to "subsidize" MWEB to use of their respective networks. Then who would end up paying for MWEB consumers, the big ISPs users, so MTN Telkom or Vodacom would charge you more.

Yes the big ISP's milk us dry, yet we the consumer keeps on supporting them. MWEBs trying to score some extra customers, lower their own costs at the expense of other companies and you all fell for it. Sure good will come of freeing the local loop, but MWEBs looking to score and they bias in myBB articles is not helping anyone.... The only one that could really make a difference is the government, or more competition, so either move to MWEB or Cell C, otherwise you have no right complaining. Better yet stop supporting anyone, but making the sacrifice of not trolling myBB is to much.

I think the vast majority of us already knows this. I say its a good play. If this turns out to be a WIN for MWEB then everyone will see that the mighty Telkom is not untouchable. One step coloser to an even playing field.

Why don't we have a big ass petition and make a lot noise. Not just over this but what about the double line rental? Line rental is more expensive than bandwidth now. We still pay it because we allow it...
Say no!

From now, at every Telkom media meeting/interview/whatever, someone needs to say "not in the spirit of the internet community" in regards to what Telkom is doing at that time. I'm pretty sure at any given point it will apply to telkom, cause they never do anything "in the spirit of the internet community".

I don't know which is better. "You touch me on my studio...", or "not in the spirit of the internet community"
I can't wait to see a parody of this on youtube.

Quadruple posting. Sorry guys

 

[MickeyD]

Quadruple posting. Sorry guys

QUAD Damage!!!!

 

[shogun]

QUAD Damage!!!!

Reading that, I can almost hear it...

/logs onto quakelive for an evening adrenaline rush

 

[justing]

Telkom must dry their eyes and get over it. They should also stop paying all their executives such high salaries for actually doing nothing. Their last BIG fiasco of upgrading all their 4 Mbps to 10 Mbps has not worked. Yes I was 1 of the lucky few that was 1st to be upgraded, But they should rather have upgraded the 384 & 512 uses 1st. Hats off to MWEB. It is companies MWEB them that are actually going to bring the price of the internet down. TELKOM are the laughing stock of the telecommunications industry here in SA.

 

[joy_Energiser]

Oink Oink!

 

[hammell]

"The spirit of the internet community"... Telkom - everyone hates you - how about that for spirit?

 

[bekdik]

It's going to be interesting when capped telkom users suddenly find that they cannot access mweb hosted sites once they are capped and only have local bandwidth. Especially if they are dstv online addicts who used their local for this purpose!

 

[Shayd]

It's going to be interesting when capped telkom users suddenly find that they cannot access mweb hosted sites once they are capped and only have local bandwidth. Especially if they are dstv online addicts who used their local for this purpose!

LOL, didn't think of this. Been on uncapped so long forgot local only even existed. Only been thinking of the fallout in terms of latency.

 

[Gathu]

Let me start by saying that I'm 100% behind Mweb and open peering.

.....So Telkom/MTN make money off the balance of traffic requested from within their network by Mweb, i.e. if Telkom customers request 1TB of data from Mweb servers and Mweb customers request 2TB of data from Telkom servers, then Mweb has to pay Telkom for 1TB of excess data. The question that we need answered is how much more data does Mweb request, and what does this cost Mweb (i.e. what do Telkom profit out of it)........

Next, one has to identify the actual cost to Telkom of having to carry this balance of Mweb data. If infrastructure was infinitely scalable at no additional cost, it wouldn't cost Telkom anything. Unfortunately this isn't the case. The following example may be helpful:

Imagine you operate a wifi network from your house and this wifi network in turn connects to your neighbour's wifi network via a wireless link. Your neighbour happens to be a massive apartment block, with 100 people living in it. You operate a server on your wifi network, which distributes hi-definition movies (legally of course) to anyone on the network. If all of the 100 neighbours decide to watch movies on your server at the same time, this would place a heavy load on the wifi network and it would very quickly become so saturated that you wouldn't even be able to watch movies yourself, sitting at home on your own wifi network access point.

Edit: Just found MTN's view backing this up from here: http://mybroadband.co.za/news/telecoms/16213-MWEBs-transit-cuts-storm-teacup-MTN-Business.html

I'm a non-IT professional, so please explain to me why it is cheaper to go through international bandwidth to get to the hosted sites than through local bandwidth? Or am I reading it wrong?
Another question I would like to ask - a Non-gaming site in South Africa where latency is less of an issue will still see the same amount of traffic, but just coming in through the international link instead of the local link as before - so who is paying for that network capability? Same for a locally hosted site with an large international following - who is paying for that?
Unless this whole 'local peering is more expensive than international bandwidth' is just a bunch of ***ka, it sound to a IT-noob like me that somebody is indeed profiteering somewhere, using my money to pad their shareholders pockets. From my perspective it seems like MWEB is going the right route, unless somebody can tell me in babyspeak why I'm wrong.

 

[Gordon_R]

I'm a non-IT professional, so please explain to me why it is cheaper to go through international bandwidth to get to the hosted sites than through local bandwidth? Or am I reading it wrong?
Another question I would like to ask - a Non-gaming site in South Africa where latency is less of an issue will still see the same amount of traffic, but just coming in through the international link instead of the local link as before - so who is paying for that network capability? Same for a locally hosted site with an large international following - who is paying for that?
Unless this whole 'local peering is more expensive than international bandwidth' is just a bunch of ***ka, it sound to a IT-noob like me that somebody is indeed profiteering somewhere, using my money to pad their shareholders pockets. From my perspective it seems like MWEB is going the right route, unless somebody can tell me in babyspeak why I'm wrong.

I can't give you the full explanation (in the space available), but my analogy might be as follows:
Imagine buying some item through an international online retailer, and finding that it is cheaper (including shipping costs) than the local store, who charge a significant price markup (for whatever real or imagined reasons...)

Which would you, as the consumer, choose? Unless the local store can offer something of value (or enforce import restrictions), they will soon begin to lose out...

 

[TrueSeeker]

Vomitous..

Aww... Can't you do better than: "Boohoo! Dey don't wanna play with me anymore mommy!"?

Wise up Telkom!

We don't like your policies.
We don't like your prices.
We don't even like yo' momma! ('Cause she's butt ugly.. :/ )

And I hope you die :>

In fact... I would like it if MWeb stopped paying for peering with you even if it cost exactly the same.

It's because you could not compete even if you wanted.
Your salaries are too high.
Your bonuses are too big. (Jus' like yo momma :/ )
You make shady deals left and right.
And you invest hundreds of millions if not billions into literally nothing yearly.

You could not compete if you wanted to

And I hope you die :>

Primarily because I do not like to pay R1500 a year for the ****ty bit of cable that connects me to my local exchange -_- Can you wrap your **** for brains collective head around that bit of information? Maybe you think copper wire is magical, but trust me it's not -_-

 

[Jab]

I can't give you the full explanation (in the space available), but my analogy might be as follows:
Imagine buying some item through an international online retailer, and finding that it is cheaper (including shipping costs) than the local store, who charge a significant price markup (for whatever real or imagined reasons...)

Which would you, as the consumer, choose? Unless the local store can offer something of value (or enforce import restrictions), they will soon begin to lose out...

Also the item is manufactured locally, thus the international online retailer first import the item from your locality and then ship it back.