The 9c per MB scam

[threegee]

No matter which company I phone for anything ranging from ADSL, 3G, Hosting, Server Co-location etc, the bandwidth charge is always 9c per Mb and not one company seems bold enough to go against this grain.

Is this some type of industry collusion? I still cannot fathom the fact that this "a developing country" charges its citizens such a ludicrous thieving rate for data usage. In other countries the bandwidth charges as as low as 0.0004 c per MB.

The only thing that seems to be "developing" in SA is huge sums of cash in ISP's bank accounts

 

[Budza]

TIA.

 

[RedhotNeo]

Welcome to South Africa! Land of the Extortionists

 

[nic777]

No matter which company I phone for anything ranging from ADSL, 3G, Hosting, Server Co-location etc, the bandwidth charge is always 9c per Mb and not one company seems bold enough to go against this grain.

Is this some type of industry collusion? I still cannot fathom the fact that this "a developing country" charges its citizens such a ludicrous thieving rate for data usage. In other countries the bandwidth charges as as low as 0.0004 c per MB.

The only thing that seems to be "developing" in SA is huge sums of cash in ISP's bank accounts

Do you know of a company called "Telkom"?

 

[Gatecrasher]

It is a disgrace.

 

[RSkeens]

Do you know of a company called "Telkom"?

+1, this is not a pricing scheme of the service providers. With regards to hosting, your only choice would be international or wait for the new undersea cable if you want things any cheaper.

 

[threegee]

Whose pricing scheme is is then? Telkom's? A number of ISP's have links outside of Telkom's network yet stick hard and firm to the 9c per MB rule. Hosting my stuff outside SA, why? 99% of my sites are local and applicable to SA only, why would I put my web visitors through a slow browsing experience? When is the expected date for the completion of the undersea cable and what will bandwidth cost then? 8c per mb?

--- Evil flourishes when good men do nothing.

 

[RSkeens]

Whose pricing scheme is is then? Telkom's? A number of ISP's have links outside of Telkom's network yet stick hard and firm to the 9c per MB rule. Hosting my stuff outside SA, why? 99% of my sites are local and applicable to SA only, why would I put my web visitors through a slow browsing experience? When is the expected date for the completion of the undersea cable and what will bandwidth cost then? 8c per mb?

--- Evil flourishes when good men do nothing.

Could you please name the data centres which have these elusive links that are completely separate from Telkom / that do not adhere to Telkom's pricing?

Trust me, if someone could bypass these obstacles, then there would definitely be lower pricing.

 

[nic777]

--- Evil flourishes when good men do nothing.

And this is why we are all here at myadsl. To do something about it. Sorry that you feel its the ISP's that are screwing us but Telkom is the start and end of these problems.

If you search back on these forums the past 4 years, you will see that we have been doing something about and winning a couple of fights as well. Welcome

 

[threegee]

Yeah I know you ALL have been fighting tooth and nail on various issues relating to internet connectivity and my hats off to those battles that have already been won. This pricing issue irks me non stop as imho it is crippling this country. It is crazy to pay what we are paying for bandwidth and instead of US having to always fight these issues why do all the other major ISP's not do something about it instead of just bowing to Telkom and Icasa???? Raven, what I meant about those with links external to Telkom is those ISP's with their own Satelite links which, to the best of my knowledge, do not go through Telkom's network. What I was also saying is that despite these ISP's having their own satelite links, they still charge the 9c per MB so it is not a matter of them NOT adhering to Telkom's pricing, more a matter of them buying bandwidth internationally and charging the same Telkom price for it. I've been in this industry for 18 years so I do kind of know my way around who has what, but feel free to correct me with more detail.

What does Telkom pay for the international bandwidth and how much are they marking up? That should be public knowledge no?

If you search back on these forums the past 4 years

Yip I have been watching these forums for about that long.

 

[RSkeens]

I am not an ISP, so I cannot speak for ISPs, but you are aware that the datacentres would need Telkom infrastructure to connect to the satellite uplinks?

Assuming they do go that route, you are also aware that such links prove both unstable for proper hosting as well as a real drag on latency? Data centres primarily use fibre links due to the large volumes of data and required stability. Notice how many complaints IS users have concerning their international user experience?

It is frightening to see that some consumers can actually believe we are at fault for Telkom's iron grip on pricing and that all service providers (the thousands of ISPs and web hosts) are all price fixing and out to get the consumer with pricing that we all agreed on to be 8c per megabyte, when clearly the culprit is Telkom.

 

[threegee]

Thanks Raven for the more detailed explanation, I guess nothing gets past Telkom and we will be eternally screwed. So much for all the years of competition board rulings etc ..... seems to be that nothing has or ever will change. Perhaps only after 2010 we "might" get slightly cheaper bandwidth but somehow I just won't believe it until I see it. How much are sites like MyBroadband having to fork out for bandwidth each month??? I know of one local site I frequent that recently moved their site to Germany as it was costing them R30,000+ per month for bandwidth. Now costing them under R1500 per month including hosting charges, ludicrous when you look at it this way. By the way I am just in a really foul mood today

 

[savage]

I dont buy the per MB costing model at all... It's all based on fixed price uplinks.... Where does the justification of per MB come from?

From International PLC circuits right through to diginet going to the company on the street, it's all based on fixed rate pricing. You have the x amount of bandwidth at y amount of money, charging per MB for traffic through that pipe, is just plain ripping people off... You charge hundred times for the same thing over and over with zero expenses in terms of upgrading....

I hate people charging based on usage models like that... Especially at the high rand rate, and low volume rate as is the case in SA

 

[Tweak]

Sad that MTN and Vodacon both offer exactly the same prices on data bundles too. To the cent 389 rands per 2 gig data bundles(which they even eat up early sometimes)

Finally now Cellular customers have Virgin mobile who offered data at less(70% less) then these two extortionists.

I'm sure it could happen for adsl too. But not until people stop signing contracts. Prepaid is the only thing that can force companies to be competative.