Telkom meeting

Positives:
Always on
Great local speeds

Negatives:
*** SLOW INTERNATIONAL SPEEDS ***
Cap (but I don't hit it too often)

My main gripe is the international speeds. While on a lucky day the international downloads go at 40KB/s on others they go at 5KB/s or less! And I have trouble with internet gaming too!
 
Major concerns:

1. The cap should only be measured from international bandwidth.
2. After the cap the service should still be usable (>=64k) or a decent cap like 10gb.
3. Telkom should not decide what we want to use our bandwidth on i.e. no port prioritisation.
4. Bandwidth should be available to purchase at a reasonable price.
5. More packages (different speeds, different caps, different contention ratios).
6. After hours, spare bandwidth should be divided amongst capped users.
 
If Telkom intends to enforce a 3Gigabyte cap then I insist that they explain to me which measures they are taking to stop uneccesary traffic from reaching my modem.

I do NOT want to be portscanned, trojan'ed by MSBlast, or codered, and have to foot the bandwidth hit for unwanted traffic myself.

Thus, my view is that a 3Gb cap is unusable. Especially if it's measured on bytes IN, and bytes OUT. I can control the out. I can't control the IN, so unless they find some solution for controlling INbound traffic to my machine, I say the cap has to go.

Positives: The 24/7 connection is a godsend. And when the service works, it works extremely well. I also think it's reasonably priced.
 
One of my biggest concerns is capping of bandwidth based on all traffic and not just interantional usage.

I use my connection for email (local) and playing games and I find that whenever I try to use international bandwidth, its all used up.

ie: My mostly local bandwith has caused me to be capped.

This is not really fair in any respect of the term and it would be good if we where metered on our international usage for capping purpouses.

Regards.
 
Please ask them to open up ports like Netmeeting's video, audio, audio streaming etc and to at least offer something like a 'pay per use' option to people exceeding 3Gb. I for one have never even come close to that limit but as the monopoly in provider of so called ADSL, one would expect something more than what we are getting at this stage.

In Canada I can get cable internet (1Mbit over copper) at $28 CAD or roughly R140 pm with no download limit or port prioritisation. Again a indication that a second supplier to the local market will do lots for the end user.
 
My concerns are mostly covered by the previous posts in this thread, but I thought I might as well post them here to provide some more weight to the argument.

The cap...
I do not have a problem with a cap, in principle - however 3 gigs on inbound and outbound traffic, both local and international, is FAR too low. As a frequent gamer I agree with Adder - game patches are becoming quite large and are released frequently (there are also a lot of games out there requiring patches), meaning that a substantial amount of the 3 gig cap is used up by this. As a number of patches are mirrored locally (on SAIX games, MWEB games, etc) it seems unfair that a large amount of local bandwidth used to retrieve these patches (500+ megs per month, as well as a lot more to actually PLAY the games locally) should negatively influence my ability to browse international sites. I would suggest either increasing the cap to some reasonable level (say, 10 gigs) or stop counting local traffic altogether.

I also strongly agree with TheRoDent - what measures, if any, are there to prevent unwanted traffic counting towards the cap? If Telkom cannot implement a solution to this problem then either the cap has to go or be substantially increased, as it is preposterous that we should be held accountable for all the "junk" bandwidth being consumed on our links without our knowledge and/or consent.

Port shaping HAS to go. Who the hell do Telkom think they are, dictating to us how we are to use the bandwidth that we pay for? I can understand their concern around the "P2P users consuming all the bandwidth", but then what is the cap for? I can't see how Telkom can in any way justify deprioritising the numerous valid uses of alternate services (VPNs, Distance Learning, Commercial in-house applications, Games, etc) just because they perceive P2P (ONE application) as a "bandwidth hog". You also cannot have both port shaping and a cap implemented simultaneously - they are two independant solutions to one problem, which together more than double the problems caused to the users. As the cap is a viable option and port shaping is totally out of the question, it is clear which one should remain, if any.

Finally, when the cap is reached - currently I wonder why on earth I pay R1000+ per month for an essentially useless connection. Local is fine, however as has been mentioned there is not a whole lot of interesting local content. After the cap is reached it is practically impossible to browse international sites - I'm paying for a service, so why am I not receiving it? As I've said before, either increase the cap or do away with it entirely.

Another solution would be to limit the bandwidth in order to ensure that it is impossible for a user to exceed a certain limit in a single month (say 64/128/256kpbs, etc) - why advertise the fact that you buy a 512kbps connection (with a theoretical limit of 150+ gigs of bandwidth per month, downstream only) when you can only use around 1/50th of that potential (i.e. 3 gigs)? Yet another example that 3 gigs is horrendously low - if you were to apply this solution of bandwidth throttling to ensure you physically cannot go over 3 gigs in a month, assuming you were transfering 24/7 (extreme, yes, but possible considering ADSL is supposed to be an effectively permanent connection), your average connection speed would be roughly <b>1.2 Kbytes per second</b> (3 gigs / 2592000 seconds in a month [30 * 24 * 60 * 60]).

As a more reasonable example, and one that should make you think "Why did I buy ADSL???", take an enthusiastic modem downloader. Suppose this person downloads from 7pm to 7am, Mon to Fri, i.e. Callmore time during the week, totally excluding weekends. In four weeks, this works out to be 240 hours of usage. Assuming an average rate of 5KB/s, this works out to 4.12 gigs of data transferred per month. If this person were on the R7 plan, and if you assumed 3 disconnects per evening, this would still work out to around R500 per month.

What a tossup...
4 gigs for R500pm @ 5KB/s, or 3 gigs for R1000pm @ 50KB/s.

Why did I buy ADSL again? So that I can see 2x my money dissapearing 10x faster? [:(!]
 
I think the cap should be address as ADSL has been targeted at the home user and small business. As a relatively small business we use roughly 5-7 Gb per month. Most of this is email and serving ( yes serving not surfing ) web pages, majority of it is local. Telkom needs to address this.
 
From the Telkom SA website it seems as if they are providing service to Bill Gates only:

You will also need:
An ADSL upgraded exchange equipped to supply the ADSL service and situated within a 3km to 5km radius from your exchange
An existing ISDN or analogue phone line
A PC with the following minimum requirements:
Pentium I, 166MHZ with 32 MB RAM, <b>Windows 95,98,2000 or ME</b>, 100 MB storage and an Ethernet 802.3 (UTP) network adapter
Pentium II, 128MHZ with 32 MB RAM, <b>Windows NT4,2000 or XP</b>, 100 MB storage and an Ethernet 802.3 (UTP) network adapter

Please educate them to the existance of other OS's as well eg Linux and that they will be required to support that as well.
 
Another issue that was hidden in the discussions:

Guarantees about line quality and suitability BEFORE they start installation

And similar guarantees that they will maintain such line quality

And guarantees that if one purchaes their equipment, they won't be rediculous and threaten to charge for the call out - they must then accept responsibility for the delivery of bits and bytes right up to the output socket of the modem/router
 
Hi there everybody,

A few points that I submit for possible discussion with Telkom.


"NO GUARANTEE" CLAUSE TO BE REMOVED
By saying "No Guarantee", Telkom is also saying "No Service". In effect, it gives them the right to charge you R800.00 per month and they don't have to connect the line on the other side. This is completely un-businesslike and contradictory to the time that Telkom has been given for so many years to get "use to competition". If it wasn't for the fact that the client agreed to this contract, it would be blunt stealing, money for nothing.

ADSL QUALITY OF SERVICE
The developers of the ADSL standards and technology have spent a lot of time to define Quality Of Service (QoS) standards and to implement them. That is to give the Service Providers the opportunity to negotiate a set of parameters with their customers. In many cases, such as with GSM, the Service provider sells a package to the customer and they have a few packages available. Underlying to these packages are QoS parameters, which dictate what they should look like. Telkom has to come up with several packages or with a way to sell a dictated Qos parameter based package to their customer.

ADSL CHARGING
ADSL was designed to be a technology that should bill the customer for data consumed due to the fact that the user only uses the Network when he actually sends and receives data. A Qos of Service package that have a basic charge for the service and then charges for data used would make much more sense. Telkom already suggested that very few of their customers actually reaches the 3GByte cap. Data throughput should be part of the basic charge and there must be packages with some kind of guaranteed throughput, i.e., in a point to point scenario where no additional bottlenecks are introduced the throughput should be maintained. Although webservers and data pipes introduces bottlenecks, internet users are capable with their multi-threaded PC's to access more than one site at a time, locally and internationally. What I am saying, Telkom must manage their own Network to guarantee such throughput, even if it is on the low side. By not guaranteeing they distantiate from providing any service at all.

ADSL STRATEGICALLY IMPORTANT TO ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Telkom holds the economy of this country to ransom. This is my strongest point and one I feel very passionate about. Telkom has the responsibility as the only party that can provide this technology to do as good as possible. In the end, it should be possible for all houses and all businesses to have an "ALWAYS ON" connection to the Internet, whether at lower throughputs doesn't matter. It allows for new technology to be introduced in line with "Home Automation", "Home Security", making the Internet a reading room etc. The Internet is not only intended as a browsing farm but it should provide all the hooks to get the country connected. Webservers are not only big PC's that sits in cold rooms somewhere, they also are small devices with which other technology can be managed. ("Switch on your house lights from an Internet cafe", is a good example but not the only one).

ADSL SHOULD BE "ALWAYS ON"
There should not be any resetting of ADSL services, except due to technical failure and IP address allocation should be maintained and respected, except when the customer himself demands otherwise. This is to enable the above-mentioned technologies to become feasible. There should not be any issues with anybody trying to run a webserver, provided the Qos package is respected. Telkom should not claim "security" as reason on behalf of the customer as it is not Telkom's responsibility to provide this service if not required. They can inform the customer about issues and introduce measures should the customer require it.


TELKOM HAS TO EXPLAIN WHY ADSL IS MORE EXPENSIVE HERE THAN IN OTHER COUNTRIES
Self Explanatory. In the light of our income in this country it is ridiculous.

CAPPING TO BE INCLUDED IN QOS PACKAGE
Capping should also be discussed with customers as there are obviously different requirements here and it doesn't seem on average that 3GByte is consumed per customer. There is therefore no threat to the Network and flexibility can be introduced. I , for example, won't mind being capped lower but I want the service to excel more on speed and I want it "ALWAYS ON".

TELKOM SHOULD MAKE AN EFFORT TO RUN THEIR SERVICES PROFESSIONALLY.
Telkom refrains from complexities and of using their equipment to the best of their ability. A service as "non-service" oriented as Telkom's ADSL suggests that they don't want to bother setting things up, maybe because they don't have skilled personnel (who knows?). It also suggests that they don't mind taking money from people without exchanging a similar value. "No guarantee" equates to "No-Service", as simple as that.


TELKOM SHOULD FACE COMPETITION
This is a political point but a very relevant one. Telkom has deceived the government time and again by claiming they needed time to get used to competition. They build fat into their prices, which they intend to use to squash competition in the future. We all wait anxiously for a Second Operator but Telkom will make it very difficult for them to venture into the fields of ADSL, Leased Lines etc. These services are relatively easy to provide by a second operator whom may have a network in place already. But Telkom's price is likely to fall so low that the second operator may rather focus on other areas. It reminds one of the tortoise/hare race and guess who has the headstart but is not a tortoise.


Best Regards and good luck with the meeting


Chris


-----------------------
| Christiaan |
------------------------
 
Suggestions:
-&gt; No port shaping
-&gt; After cap, your speed should at least be equal to 64k ISDN
-&gt; Give ISP's more control in regards to what kind of packages they can offer to their ADSL clients
-&gt; A guaranteed minimum international and local speed, ex. 64k
-&gt; Approval of a larger number of modems
 
The only reason telkom is maintaining this 3GB cap nonsense is to protect their 64k Diginet offering which is also overpriced. The international bandwidth story is nonsense. Lets just say there was suddenly a large number of ISDN subscriptions.. would there be less speed for all. I bet you NOT. All ISDN users get 7-8KB/sec most of the time.

Telkom knows that any business using the R5000 Diginet will jump to the R1500 ADSL if there were no cap. The cap is purely to extend their greed and not to 'prevent the majority of users from suffering'. We all know why one gets xDSL.. for downloading and for gaming. Yes, also the ability to do these things 24-7. Bur mostly we want speed and lots of it. The idea being to get rid of years of modem frustration.. not quite yet it seems..

I propose to Telkom that they should reduce the diginet cost down to say, R2000. I mean, yes it is still expensive and you will be paying for a dedicated guranteed throughput. By all means, R2000 will still be affordable for these businesses. Now Telkom can remove the cap and place a R1250 tag on business ADSL. Thats reasonable since ADSL is a residential type service.

Now for the home user. I guess Telkom can and should introduce levels of service. Ok ok this is a 4th world country so lets start slowly. What about R200 a month for 64 down/32 up ADSL? Then R450 for 256 down/128 up and then finally R650 for 512/256. Note that these are final prices including ISP and everything. I think these prices will be reasonable and competitive. I mean we have many thousands of modem users who will be willing to upgrade if it is affordable. I have not mentioned any caps because that is a stupid idea. Can you mention one other country with a cap (even a cap as low as 3GB)? And dont get me started on the issue of a static IP...

If they are so worried about their bandwidth (take note that there are fibres installed carrying our international bandwidth and each fibre can handle gigabytes / second) then by all means offer a cheaper and lower bandwidth solution. Many users dont mind a throttle (note: not CAP) as they will only browse and send email etc.

Please let us know what you think.
 
Just a few quick thoughts that hopefully I will have time to expand on
tomorrow.
Let's step back and analyse the issues, whether it is un-acceptable
throughput during business hours or users hitting the 3Gig Cap very quickly
or grooming issues, it all comes down to one thing.
Availability of International bandwidth!!
We also tend, quite understandably to compare our "sorry state of affairs"
with US or even UK users. And we quite naturally blame Telkom who we believe
is monopolistic, inefficient and suffers from low productivity and therefore
hoists us with high tariff structures.
All true, but is that the whole story?
Let's step back and look at the Telecommunications industry during the late
90's, the Internet bubble era, when in the US and other countries money was
so cheap (investors threw money at start-ups and lost it all, it don't come
cheaper than that) the new telcos put so much fibre in the ground and under
the North Atlantic that there was a glut, and to this day only about 10% is
in use (or less).
What is the result, today in those parts of the world distance costs have
dropped effectively to zero. So it costs no more to send a packet of data or
a voice call around the neighbourhood in LA or to London.
Therefore the cost to provision US/UK broadband services is really in the
new local exchange gear and not long distance costs that have effectively
drop to zero.
Now are we in the same situation here in SA?
No we are not.
International bandwidth, in comparison to our Northern hemisphere countries,
is relatively limited and the cost of our new fibre route to Europe has to
be paid for and maintained whether we like it or not.
However even with all the above there is no doubt in my mind that Telkom
should be addressing the adsl service with a greater degree of market savvy
rather than the take it or leave it attitude that we have had to endure.
Because I believe that like myself,the larger majority of users find the
service quite acceptable,and it is only the high demand users or specialised
services users such as syntaX that hit up against this issue of the cost of
our international bandwidth.
Telkom's attitude has been to knock these users on the head with the dreaded
Cap to protect the average user.
Now as an average user I don't want to be degraded by a highbandwidth users,
but there should be a tailored services to meet their needs as has been
suggested in this thread.
But the caveat has to be that our Broadband service tariffs are for the
foreseeable future going to compare poorly with the US/UK.
If I have any more thought I will try and post tomorrow
gb
 
Ah ah GrahamBell,

So you think that Telkom is interested in you ?
and protecting your bandwidth by capping the highbandwidth
users ?

Oh no.

Telkom will happily sell a zillion multiple accounts and
degrade (if your assumption is correct), your connection
to zippo even before you reach your cap.


The highbandwidth users are your friends and will negotiate
a better deal for you.


I rate myself as a highbandwidth user and ....
I nearly took a second logon, but I cancelled my request
to reserve some scarce capacity for you - Telkom were quite
keen to get my money, but I realised that I was falling into
an extortion trap - I have my morals and would never steal from my friends.

You are amongst friends here
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by cwayjone</i>
<br />Major concerns:

1. The cap should only be measured from international bandwidth.
2. After the cap the service should still be usable (&gt;=64k) or a decent cap like 10gb.
3. Telkom should not decide what we want to use our bandwidth on i.e. no port prioritisation.
4. Bandwidth should be available to purchase at a reasonable price.
5. More packages (different speeds, different caps, different contention ratios).
6. After hours, spare bandwidth should be divided amongst capped users.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote"> When I had made my list, I realised it was a duplicate, except that cwayjone had a better presentation [:)]
 
I believe though the average users can be protected without having to slam on a limit, a limit which from my knowledge did not involve customer input on deciding whats a practical limit. The port prioritisation already protects the average users by making the ports the high volume applications use low priority, and thus degraded by high HTTP/FTP and e-mail use which is during business hours. It is possible to please all <b>users</b> concerned by defining a period of time when the port prioritisation is in effect say from 7am till 7pm during the week and being more generous regarding the 3 gig cap. This however does not protect Telkoms other business concerns, specifically ISDN and Diginet. In my opinion ADSL is being crippled to protect those other markets and to introduce the new ISDN 128k as a option for high bandwidth users, possibly Telkom possibly even used the ADSL offer as a means to gauge how much users would pay for a faster connection.

The current ADSL implementation is carefully calculated to be sufficient for a particular market but still allow enough of a market for ISDN and Diginet markets, and even introduce another ISDN market , 128k. Currently Dial-up and 64k ISDN caters for small internet usage users who will not or cannot pay for the other options, ADSL for moderate use users but not special application user, ISDN 128k is aimed at high volume and specialised use users and Diginet for the large corperations who require a garenteed and stable connection. Note the option for the high volume and specialised use option is a pay per use and requires 2 lines thus two bills.

One of my gripes is that this particular package is offered to residential users (defined as those users that utilise thier connection for other than business) and not just business users, but the majority of residential users that would pay for ADSL are either high volume or specialised application users...both of which are being discriminated by either the limit or port prioritisation or both. The residential user that merely requires internet to surf and collect e-mail is not going to invest the amount of money required to obtain an ADSL connection, only those who get a large telephone bill and the difference in the monthly cost is small enough to justify the initial expense. Telkoms failure is lack of information regarding the lack of connection (or so slow it makes no difference) for capped users or information regarding the port prioritisation for those special applications (defined as applications that use ports other than 25 ,80 and 21)users.

Regarding the fact the availability of bandwidth between the UK/US means it cheaper...true however in the UK/US there is a competitive market and these companies must fight for a share of the market, in SA Telkom has all the market, surely this makes up for the price of international bandwidth ?

The above is my personal opinion and thoughts...my 2 cents :P
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by ckleynhans</i>

TELKOM SHOULD FACE COMPETITION

<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote"> Telkom is actually offering a workable, if very overpriced, ADSL service. ADSL per se goes only as far as the dslam in the exchange. From there, we are talking about an Internet service, which is provided by an ISP.

Telkom are confusing us by bundling these two services together, calling the whole thing ADSL, and refusing to allow other ISPs to compete for the ISP part. The caps, port prioritisation, etc, etc, etc, are ISP functions, related to the provision of bandwidth, both local and international, and totally unrelated to ADSL. The other ISPs are effectively only allowed to resell the Telkom bundle, with small concessions to differentiate their product.

Telkom has a legislated advantage. By law, only they may supply the 'last mile' - the connection from an exchange to your home. In return for this advantage, they should be required by law to rent dslams to ISPs or allow ISPs to site their own dslams in exchanges. This disconnects the ADSL part of the service from the ISP part, and allows other ISPs to compete more equally with the Telkom ISP. The ISPs can then wheel and deal for international bandwidth, and resell it to their users, in a variety of packages, regardless of whether those users connect to them via dialup, ISDN, ADSL, diginet, or whatever. The terms of that service - caps, guarantees, special offers, etc - are a matter between the ISP and their client, and not the business of the carrier.

So Telkom, the carrier, then gets the rent for the copper pair, i.e. a standard line rental, plus a fair price for ISP access to exchange space or a dslam. They also get to sell international bandwidth to ISPs for resale, as they do now.

Telkom can then, if they wish, compete fairly as an ISP and offer connection to their own dslam and other ISP services, on a reasonably even footing with the other ISPs.

Similar things have happened in Europe, where the incumbent PTT wanted to be the common carrier AND an ISP, allowing them to overprice the connection and then cross-subsidise traffic costs and so keep competition from even starting in business. Separation of the carrier business from the service business is vital. If they are bundled, you get an overpriced carrier and poor internet service - which pretty much sums up the status quo.
 
there is a difference between ADSL and DIGINET.
ADSL has no static IP address.
You get different IP per connection.
Which means ADSL cannot replace DIGINET.
Because, most businessruns a server on DIGINET which has a permanent IP.
 
I dont mind the cap,I just cant handel being told to what I cant and can download,thats just plain OPPRESSION.
I cant even watch streaming video from oversees and Telkom calls this broadband ,its like bloody censorship in the old days.[V]
 
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