Uncapped ADSL: is Telkom wrong?

Do you think Telkom is wrong in not launching uncapped ADSL products?

  • Yes

    Votes: 243 92.0%

  • No

    Votes: 21 8.0%
  • Total voters
    264
RJMadCat said:
It is not like we are people that make THE decisions no, but it is nice to see what people think in general. This one tiny poll might not make world changing decisions, but the combination of years of polls and years of people's opinions does eventually change how things are run. Companies value our opinions and allows them to develop what the people needs. Without the people no one makes money, and no company exist, its how it works.

Take the people away and companies fail, take companies away and people will create new ones ;)
Click to expand...

Have you been smoking your socks? What daydream do you live in?
"Companies value our opinions and allows them to develop what the people needs." - Really? You must be talking about a completely different company to the one being discussed in this article. Telkom don't give a ****...
What you are describing is true in a democratic and competitive market place, but Telkom have NO competition. Besides that, Telkom are HEAVILY funded by the gauvenment (which is our tax money anyhow). Trust me, they do not care what you/we think, or what our needs/wants are. They say they do, but it's a farce - it's all "lipservice", so they can pretend to be operating competitively.
Wake up and smell the coffee...
 
****... i didn't read the poll q correctly. and answered wrong... can change my vote to a YES PLEASE. :D
 
firewall said:
Telkom said that they don't see enough demand for uncapped because only 3% of their user base exceeds their monthly bandwidth. By the same definition, companies don't need to give raises because only 3% of their employees spend more than they earn? WTF kind of logic is that??
Click to expand...

You just gotta laugh. I have 3 9GB accounts and run each of them to just below the cap before changing over - total usage about 22GB each month. All I ask is for either a single 25-30GB capped or a speedy uncapped account, neither available from Telkom, yet I am part of the 97% that supposedly don't want uncapped.
 
This armstrong dude, or the whole of telkom rather, are a bunch of fruit cakes. I have never heard such an idiotic method of determining the demand for an uncapped offering. Its just...urgh!

Redsbaron said:
I am on a 4mb line.

Was wondering how slow a 384kb connection actually is? Can I change my adsl router (modem settings) to force 384 to simulate the slower speed to determine if this will work for me? (i.e Mweb uncapped384)
Click to expand...

You don't want to do that...I had to downgrade from 4mb to 384. And there is no words to describe what I have to put up with everyday.
 
Last edited:
mmmig said:
I think the only people on the 9gig package are people who don't know much about the interweb and other better ISPs
Click to expand...

not true I use it cause I get fast download speeds and good gaming latency and no downtime like the seacom accounts plus R15 per gig is cheap per gig compared to other ISP's
 
Has anyone in the SA I.T. industry heard of usability testing or focus groups? I could be wrong but I have never heard an ISP in the UK or USA saying anything that was said in the article.

The reality is that when you look at usage, give someone a 1MB/sec line, no cap and no fair usage policy and bandwidth consumption will increase exponentially. However, there is an element of diminishing returns to the user. For example, I torrent TV shows, but not movies. Initially, I went crazy downloading all manner of content, but guess what? There comes a point where you run out of stuff to download because you have watched everything, after which usage falls off dramatically.

I would suggest that the "lack of interest" in certain areas of the market and in certain products is not really a lack of interest in the product, more that the product is either badly implemented, badly priced, or local infrastructure doesn't allow it to be used in the same manner as it is used internationally.

The idea that someone would say "no" to a reliable, high speed uncapped internet service is ridiculous. The only people who would turn it down are people like my parents and that is because they have little/no interest in most of what is on the net
 
Last edited:
Telkom is not stupid. Doesn't matter who you pay for your fixed-line ADSL, government ensures their cash-cow is still making more money than your non-telkom ADSL ISP. So, it makes perfectly diabolical sense for Telkom to ignore the market, offer anti-market products and make laughably absurd global comparisons all the time in order to divert the public's attention from the multi-billion rand profits Telkom/government makes from the enforced monthly line rentals implemented against the SA public. How they continue to get away with it is beyond belief.
 
Maybe Telkom should poll their own staff on this question?

Many of my buddies that work there have jumped ship to the uncapped products of their competitors but retain their 1Gb or 3Gb cap that goes with their ADSL packages, which then goes unused and helps to support Armstrong's Theory of Non-Usage™ !!
 
kidnotorious said:
Has anyone in the SA I.T. industry heard of usability testing or focus groups? I could be wrong but I have never heard an ISP in the UK or USA saying anything that was said in the article.

The reality is that when you look at usage, give someone a 1MB/sec line, no cap and no fair usage policy and bandwidth consumption will increase exponentially. However, there is an element of diminishing returns to the user. For example, I torrent TV shows, but not movies. Initially, I went crazy downloading all manner of content, but guess what? There comes a point where you run out of stuff to download because you have watched everything, after which usage falls off dramatically.

I would suggest that the "lack of interest" in certain areas of the market and in certain products is not really a lack of interest in the product, more that the product is either badly implemented, badly priced, or local infrastructure doesn't allow it to be used in the same manner as it is used internationally.

The idea that someone would say "no" to a reliable, high speed uncapped internet service is ridiculous. The only people who would turn it down are people like my parents and that is because they have little/no interest in most of what is on the net
Click to expand...

Another problem is, speeds are not so fast to download entire internets within months, and too far behind in terms of content, so it will actually take years to do so.
 
To compare Telkom's idiotic justification to other scenarios:

People do not exceed the speed limit, because they're afraid of being fined. Obviously, the speed limit is fine and doesn't need to be increased because there isn't sufficient demand for it.
People will not get a filling meal of sushi, because they are afraid of making their wallets invert. Obviously, there is no need for increasing the amount of sushi you get for your money, as there isn't sufficient demand for it.
People do not just go out and buy materials to build onto their houses with, as they face increases in taxes as well as significant costs for increasing the size of their home. Obviously, there is no need for making it more financially viable for people to upgrade from a shoebox to a dubbel****, as there isn't sufficient demand for it.


Whoever it is at Telkom that came to the brilliant conclusion that there isn't sufficient demand for uncapped services for them to even consider launching an uncapped service is among the top ranks of idiocy. A few factors here are important that essentially render the 'service' as 'non existent' until a customer actually uses it.


1. They would run it over their SAT3 capacity, in all likelyhood
2. Because of the above, taking into consideration that Telkom/SAIX owns a massive portion of the SAT3 cable's bandwidth, if it doesn't get used, it doesn't need to be paid anyway
3. Assuming nobody ever signs up for the uncapped service, it isn't as though they have had to go out of their way to provision data that ends up being unused
4. Taking the above three points into account, there should be little to no financial risk for them to offer an uncapped service

The crux here? 4. means that they risk more people using more than 3gb than people that use less than 3gb, and subsequently, the load on the SAT3 cable increases, contention becomes more commonplace and they begin getting more complaints from customers about poorer than 'normal' speeds. Telkom has enough hatred pointing their way without them being hated for having slow(er) ADSL accounts than they provide now, and they stand to suffer a significantly smaller profit margin than what they're used to when their users figure out that there's that much more on the internet than just email and downloading photos of your cousin's kittens/puppies.
 
MickeyD said:
Maybe Telkom should poll their own staff on this question?

Many of my buddies that work there have jumped ship to the uncapped products of their competitors but retain their 1Gb or 3Gb cap that goes with their ADSL packages, which then goes unused and helps to support Armstrong's Theory of Non-Usage™ !!
Click to expand...

:D

this made my day :D
 
Merenwenrago said:
not true I use it cause I get fast download speeds and good gaming latency and no downtime like the seacom accounts plus R15 per gig is cheap per gig compared to other ISP's
Click to expand...

True that. Most of the gamers in the Do Gaming League are using Telkom accounts to game on because of the latency. From a speed point of view, Uncapped is definetly better, soemthing hilighted in the article as well.

Uncapped is great for volume, but the experience can get annoying some times.
 
The guy that did the study for Telkom might be the same person who did the study about HIV not causing AIDS or created the report that crime is not rife in SA etc...
 
All visitors from overseas cannot believe how slow our ADSL is in South Africa, and they do not understand a capped ADSL line, Telkom needs to wake up and smell the roses. They do need to offer uncapped packages and they do need to increase the speeds of broadband at reasonable price's. Their 384 ADSL Broadband is a farce and does not deserve to be called Broadband
 
Judge-ZN said:
The guy that did the study for Telkom might be the same person who did the study about HIV not causing AIDS or created the report that crime is not rife in SA etc...
Click to expand...

or giving rifles to the crooks dont kill innocent people.

put telkom's management on a ship and invite parliament and the anc along for the cruise and sink the bloody thing!

telkom missed the boat many years ago.

384 should be free to all. they cannot offer decent 4/10meg lines to work, now they want to test 20meg? its a joke.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X