V3G, Your input on this idea?

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wheunis

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I just finished talking to a customer of mine in the US (we became decent friends after i worked a few jobs for him), and he actually said something very interesting.

With his HSDPA, his ISP is launching a new service.
Cant remember the exact name they whacked on it, but it basically amounts to a file-server.

Users can upload files to this server, each user into his own folder.
Requirements to qualify for a folder is to open a "user account" on the new file-server's website. For external customers, a credit-card-charged fee applies per MB.
For their internal customers, it's free and just requires that you "link" your account to their HSDPA cell number. (Something about a confirmation SMS with a verification code).

Anyway, my focus is on the internal users part, so let's imagine externals dont exist...
Each user gets free, unlimited upload, to their "box". Downloads are free, with some sort of restriction.
From what I understood, if you purchased a 2GB bundle, you get 2GB free download from the file-server, and after that runs out, downloads are rated from your "main quota".

A nice service imho, and after a bit of poking around, doesnt seem it would be hard to set up at all.
What makes it even more attractive, is that users' boxes are split into 2 "folders", public & private.
You can give direct links to other users to these files, but no browsing is allowed in other users' folders.
This seems especially usefull for, as an example, 4 friends play WoW, and they take turns to download the patches. One guy downloads the patch, uploads to his folder, and email's the link to the 3 other friends, who get to download it faster (becoz its home-networked to the ISP).


Would this ever be a viable idea for Vodacom to implement?
Even if not in that pure form as described, it would be nice to store some valuable docs on there that i commonly use on-the-move, rather than lug around this darned USB stick (ive become VERY good at losing those stupid things).


Heh? HEH?
Cmon man, make this happen for us. (stupid emotiocons dont have begging puppy-eyes...)
 
wheunis said:
I just finished talking to a customer of mine in the US (we became decent friends after i worked a few jobs for him), and he actually said something very interesting.

With his HSDPA, his ISP is launching a new service.
Cant remember the exact name they whacked on it, but it basically amounts to a file-server.

Users can upload files to this server, each user into his own folder.
Requirements to qualify for a folder is to open a "user account" on the new file-server's website. For external customers, a credit-card-charged fee applies per MB.
For their internal customers, it's free and just requires that you "link" your account to their HSDPA cell number. (Something about a confirmation SMS with a verification code).

Anyway, my focus is on the internal users part, so let's imagine externals dont exist...
Each user gets free, unlimited upload, to their "box". Downloads are free, with some sort of restriction.
From what I understood, if you purchased a 2GB bundle, you get 2GB free download from the file-server, and after that runs out, downloads are rated from your "main quota".

A nice service imho, and after a bit of poking around, doesnt seem it would be hard to set up at all.
What makes it even more attractive, is that users' boxes are split into 2 "folders", public & private.
You can give direct links to other users to these files, but no browsing is allowed in other users' folders.
This seems especially usefull for, as an example, 4 friends play WoW, and they take turns to download the patches. One guy downloads the patch, uploads to his folder, and email's the link to the 3 other friends, who get to download it faster (becoz its home-networked to the ISP).


Would this ever be a viable idea for Vodacom to implement?
Even if not in that pure form as described, it would be nice to store some valuable docs on there that i commonly use on-the-move, rather than lug around this darned USB stick (ive become VERY good at losing those stupid things).


Heh? HEH?
Cmon man, make this happen for us. (stupid emotiocons dont have begging puppy-eyes...)
Click to expand...

Let's develop the idea a bit further here and see what other forumites says.

But the one thing you'll learn about this forum is that for every idea that someone comes up with, hundreds of others will slate it as the most stupid idea ever to surface in the history of mankind.

Or they'll all say it's a great idea and when we go to all the effort to launch it, suddenly the feedback is that no-one will use it.

Now I know that this forum has been invaded by school kids who believe they know better than everyone else and that internet anonymity allows them to act (and write) like d!ckheads, but I'm pretty much at the point where I feel not to bother with product ideas anymore from this group.

Having said that, I'm a glutton for punishment, so tell me more. :)
 
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I like it. will certainly look appealing from the other side of the fence.
 
I like to run through an idea in action to see how it works:

1 - You actually have a file / photo / little movie / recorded meeting sound for minutes that you need to store because your phone memory is getting full, and, the existing websites where you can store files online are too expensive for your liking, or you simply don't like their policies, or your phone has MMS but not internet facilities.

2 - You spend at least R0.80 "creating" your online space with the SMS.

3 - You receive the notification SMS back, containing a phone number, and probably get charged for that as well.

4 - You now have a phone number which you add to your contacts and this phone number is key in accessing the storage area.

5 - Send your Data to the Area:

5.1 - MMS : You send the data to your storage area using MMS and get charged MMS charges.

5.2 - Web : You connect to the internet and open up a web page and then if your phone's browser allows it, you can browse the phone file-system, find the data on the phone that you want to send that is called 1353563435.dat and send it off paying data-rates for the transaction.

5.3 - External : You login to vodacom's website, and you can access the storage area through that, but you will be charged data-rates for accessing the data.

6 - Accessing your content:

6.1 - Send an SMS to your storage number from your phone, and the data gets MMS'd to you at MMS rates.

6.2. Login to your vodacom website and get charged data-rates to access your data.

7 - Publish, your content is marked as potentially available to the world by:
7.1 - Send an SMS to indicate that this thing is available to the public at R0.80 an SMS.
7.2 - Login to the vodacom website and mark it as published and get charged some airtime for your hassle.

8 - Accessing Public Content :

8.1 - If people want to access your public content, they must send an SMS to your storage phone number, which also contains the "name" of the thing that they want, and they will get an MMS back in return at MMS rates.

8.2 - They must login to their vodacom account on the website, and there is a facility there to "copy" the content to their vodacom storage area, and once it's there, they can access it with the usual charges as if it was their own content, the transfer to their storage space is the same as MMS costs.

9 - An index of publicly available content can be browsed.

10 - Somebody needs to inspect all the public content to avoid nasty content.

Done.

I think this could be a nice money-spinner for vodacom.
I don't think I will ever have any data that matches step 1 though.
The way that these files can be sent around may create a useful social network.
I don't know the size limit on MMS transfers.

I would say: If it costs under R50 000 to setup, and an employee will volunteer to inspect the public data for free, then do it, otherwise no.

:D

[Yes, there was nothing good on the news websites this morning]
 
that sounds bladdy complicated dave...

IMO the point of this is for everyone to have their own little folder, and be free to access it as they please with uploads and downloads.

nobody is going to upload a 1.5 GB WoW Patch if he has to pay.

Limit of Upload / Download is proportionate to the users bundle. you buy 500MB, you get 500MB on your folder. you buy a 5GB, you get 5GB on the folder as well.


Now, where does Vodacom get money from this?
well, since this is an internal network no money needs to go out of Vodacom for Internet bandwidth, except for the initial setup, and basic maintenance of the servers.
I am willing to bet my left leg that if Vodacom have a service like this, they will have something no other ISP has, and it will send a lot of users flocking to Vodacom. a lot.

a lot of new users = a lot more chingy for VC, and less for competitors. I think this might make VC 3G a good alternative to ADSL even, because if you buy a 5GB Bundle, and are able to Download 10GB in the end, it sounds freaken awesome.

but i'm not too sure this could happen....it just sounds to cool to be true.
 
vodacom3g said:
Let's develop the idea a bit further here and see what other forumites says.

But the one thing you'll learn about this forum is that for every idea that someone comes up with, hundreds of others will slate it as the most stupid idea ever to surface in the history of mankind.

Or they'll all say it's a great idea and when we go to all the effort to launch it, suddenly the feedback is that no-one will use it.

Now I know that this forum has been invaded by school kids who believe they know better than everyone else and that internet anonymity allows them to act (and write) like d!ckheads, but I'm pretty much at the point where I feel not to bother with product ideas anymore from this group.

Having said that, I'm a glutton for punishment, so tell me more. :)
Click to expand...
Harsh post V3G ;)

I know you're hurting, but remember guys like me who've given you flack in the past. I've seen the effort and actual plain fact that you get things done. You've turned me from a real pessimist to someone that appreciates your effort.

Yeah, I'm preaching, but don't let the nasty dudes steal your vibe, they're not worth it man,

Ciao ;) :D :p
 
teraside said:
Harsh post V3G ;)

I know you're hurting, but remember guys like me who've given you flack in the past. I've seen the effort and actual plain fact that you get things done. You've turned me from a real pessimist to someone that appreciates your effort.

Yeah, I'm preaching, but don't let the nasty dudes steal your vibe, they're not worth it man,

Ciao ;) :D :p
Click to expand...

While we're on an emo moment.... :)

What really p1sses me off is that when we launch a new product it's as if we're FORCING everyone to use it. BB-A being a case in point.

It was designed (mostly from requests from this forum, BTW.), for a specific target market, all those complaining about OOB being so high and all about avoiding bill-shock. The 'standard' product was left in place and even given a few extra tweaks (3.6 and roll-over) for everyone who do not need BB-A.

And yet this forum went ballistic on how stupid a product BB-A is. As if everyone is being forced to switch to it. :rolleyes: But they all conveniently forgot they're the ones who asked for it. It seems people come to this forum to basically just complain, irrespective of the subject. I'm sure if we do an audit, the vast majority of posts are negative, irrespective of the actual topic.

So, you end up wondering if it's actually worth it. Maybe Telkom, MTN and everyone else who don't have formal representation here are onto something.....

I always thought the idea for VC being here is for mutual interaction. And it used to work this way in the beginning. But not anymore. Wonder if it's the invasion of the teenagers?


[/emo moment]
 
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In response to V3G's post:

I agree about the complaining and whining on not only this forum, but from South African's in general. I'm not saying that I don't ever complain, but we always find something to nag about.

As for the idea:

I doubt MMS would work, as I recall MMS's maxing out at 300kb - not exactly a practical size. As for having 5gb storage in your folder - that's quite a bit of time worth of downloading for the folks without HSDPA. Given that might not be the target market of this venture. Anyway, would access to such a system work in a similar way as Vodafone Live! works?
 
vodacom3g said:
While we're on an emo moment.... :)

What really p1sses me off is that when we launch a new product it's as if we're FORCING everyone to use it. BB-A being a case in point.

It was designed (mostly from requests from this forum, BTW.), for a specific target market, all those complaining about OOB being so high and all about avoiding bill-shock. The 'standard' product was left in place and even given a few extra tweaks (3.6 and roll-over) for everyone who do not need BB-A.

And yet this forum went ballistic on how stupid a product BB-A is. As if everyone is being forced to switch to it. :rolleyes: But they all conveniently forgot they're the ones who asked for it. It seems people come to this forum to basically just complain, irrespective of the subject. I'm sure if we do an audit, the vast majority of posts are negative, irrespective of the actual topic.

So, you end up wondering if it's actually worth it. Maybe Telkom, MTN and everyone else who don't have formal representation here are onto something.....

I always thought the idea for VC being here is for mutual interaction. And it used to work this way in the beginning. But not anymore. Wonder if it's the invasion of the teenagers?


[/emo moment]
Click to expand...

Hi there,

I'd just like to say that I'm sure the majority of people on this forum including myself most certainly appreciate your efforts v3g. I certainly hope that you stay on here and contribute as you have been. It's much appreciated, truly.

I like the idea of the OP, sort of like an internal P2P service? Sound good.
 
Velenoso said:
Hi there,

I'd just like to say that I'm sure the majority of people on this forum including myself most certainly appreciate your efforts v3g. I certainly hope that you stay on here and contribute as you have been. It's much appreciated, truly.

I like the idea of the OP, sort of like an internal P2P service? Sound good.
Click to expand...

Let's develop the idea further. Who would use it, for what, what's the value, etc?
 
I'm thinking a good percentage of the users would fall under the very same teenage demographic you were going off at earlier :D For exactly that - P2P service.

Apart from that, the best thing I can think of is using it as a convenience tool for corporates across the country - in order to share business documents. Not every organisation has a countrywide intra/extra-net and email isn't exactly the safest medium for private information.

Speaking of which, how secure would these things be?
 
Velenoso said:
Hi there,

I'd just like to say that I'm sure the majority of people on this forum including myself most certainly appreciate your efforts v3g. I certainly hope that you stay on here and contribute as you have been. It's much appreciated, truly.

I like the idea of the OP, sort of like an internal P2P service? Sound good.
Click to expand...

I second that Velenoso , I have a MTN pre-paid (DATA) package and can truly say that I have learnt a lot from the posts made BY Vodacom3G , keep up the good work 3G .
 
vodacom3g said:
Let's develop the idea further. Who would use it, for what, what's the value, etc?
Click to expand...

Who and for what?
A few loose examples i can quickly think of:

As the example i mentioned, 4 friends play WoW. One patch is friend #1's turn to download patch. He does so. His data bundle is debited the 500MB it took. He uploads it to his "public" folder, and emails the link to his 3 friends. The 3 friends get to download it zero-rated. Next patch is friend #2's turn.

Another one; A guy buys a netbook with the new solid-state drive. Those things arent huge on space... He downloads a couple of programs he wants to use, totalling 200MB. He installs them, and then uploads them to his private folder. Nobody but him can access it there. A few weeks later, he needs to reinstall 2 of these programs. He gets to download them from his folder, zero rated.

More; A very charitable person on the MyBB forums downloads and uses the new Vista Service Pack 3. He feels bad for the people who "cant afford" to get this update so easily. He uploads the service pack to his public folder and posts the link on the forum. User #1 has a 3GB bundle loaded. He gets to download the service pack zero rated from that folder, because he still has 2GB left of his "free server downloads". User #2 only has a 150MB bundle. He gets to download the service pack PARTIALLY zero rated, as he only has 100MB left in his "free server downloads" allocation. The rest of the 50MB, he is debited for against his bundle. User #3 has a 1GB bundle, but he has already spent all of his "free server download". He gets to download the service pack, fully rated against his bundle, but at least at higher speed than from microsoft's site.

Another; a starting out graphics designer only has a desktop pc. He just finished working on a massive project and needs to take it to his client at a final meeting. He is affraid of using flash drives, as they have failed him in the past. He uploads the file to his private folder, puts his usb modem in his pocket, and goes to meet his client. When he gets there, he gets permission to use the secretary's computer, and plugs in his modem. He downloads the 50MB file from his folder to his customer's network storage, zero rated, and secure.



I can still think of a thousand examples, but my head will likely explode first.
Dont think of it as P2P.
Think of it almost as each user having his own little private FTP server.
The service would be secured to your SIM card.
Any user other than yourself has ZERO access to your private folder.
Other users have limited access to your public folder, ie: no browsing, only directly linked downloads allowed.
Copyrighted material etc would obviously not be allowed (sorry kids, no "warez sharing").

The value of the service:
Firstly, Vodacom's value. Vodacom would be able to market the shizz off this. Customer magnet. It might make that final kick of the decision from the user that touch easier.
Also, they get to enroll PaYG customers with their details. I know some time ago there was a drive of some sorts to get something free if you gave them your details. Yes there are reason for them to want your details.

For the customer. Its mostly a Value added service. Its not the main reason to get the product, but with careful advertising, it could very well become a large reason for someone to get the product over MTN/Telkom/whoever.
Some people will tap into this service like a madman who just got his own lab. Others will use it occasionally. Others not at all.
Pretty much like MMS in that respect lol.

The method of transfer into the server can be done via webpage, like rapidshare etc. Click the upload button, browse to your file, click upload, done.
The downloading also like rapidshare come to think of it. You have a direct link to another person's file? Good, here it is. You just want to "check around" at what another user has? Sorry son get lost.


If i have to guess, the most avid uses for this would probably be the sharing of updates for games, windows, etc between friends.
Could also be nice to finally send my dad those darn wedding photos... He doesnt want me to email them, he doesnt "have enough bundle to waste like that"...
 
vodacom3g said:
Let's develop the idea further. Who would use it, for what, what's the value, etc?
Click to expand...

I wouldn't mind using it as a 'mobile office' for instance. i.e. I keep my business files on there and I can access them from any computer with a 3G connection for free. That would be great. I'm sure other corporates would be interested in it as well, they basically get a fully fledged intra-net operating across the country. All they gotta do is give their employees a 3G modem.

Also, it could be used in communities such as mybroadband, for example, say 100 of us want the latest Ubuntu release, only one of us would have to download and the rest would be able to grab it free from his 'folder'. It would save people a lot of bandwidth and time (as I assume it would run at full 3.6/7.2 capacity from Vodacom's servers.)

Maybe it could be added to the *111# bundle purchase menu?

It would most certainly be innovative as well as efficient due to the already widely established 3G coverage.
 
VC can even charge for this "Online little Folder" per Gig, like Bundles, but at a much reduced rate, if it HAS to be done.

Instead of going to your friends house who lives 20km away, with a 5GB Flash drive to get a new WoW Patch or whatever it may be, rather pay R20 per gig or whatever and download the update straight through the Vodacom Local Network, at blazing speeds (It would be over 3.2mb/s, right, as there is no external links)

Links would be great, if possible - no browsing around other's folders, but available if the person gives you the correct link.

like i said, this could be a pay service, but much cheaper than internet Bundles of course, or it could be a free service.

Pay service would bring in money, Free service would bring in users. plenty If I understand this right.

It's a brilliant idea, that's what it is.
 
I pitched this idea to some people couple years ago.
Cant remember what was the reasons for not going ahead with it though.

But ive noticed handsets already have this option, Sony Ericsson has it on their website as well and then theres Flicker and also BB and other phones can upload straight to Facebook.

Cant be that hard to implement, I think. if you can have a 5GB executive mailbox you can have your own file to upload your junk right?

Maybe use a compression tool to zip some files, a 5MP phone will take 5MB pictures, thats to much.

Maybe I should follow it up!:)
 
On a rands and sense basis , would the capacity now (if every is downloading from a sub's shared directory) and so on be overloaded and ifso , how is this supported from a Vodacom perspective.

Also who will hold Vodacom liable if for whatever reason all the traffic causes the fileserver to fallover and ifso what is the expected time to get the service up and running again.

If Vodacom charges R20 a month for this service would you expect a turn-around time of 2 to 4 hours to fix the service or how ?

What do you as consumers expect from the carrier (Vodacom)
 
vodacom3g said:
Let's develop the idea further. Who would use it, for what, what's the value, etc?
Click to expand...

If I understand the OP correctly, the idea would be very similar to the current set of Windows Live services such as SkyDrive, Office Live Workspace etc, except that the service would be part of the bundle purchase and then zero rated or at a lower cost than the data bundle rate?

If this is the case then I for one would definitely support the concept. I use Office Live workspace every day to upload quotes, save documents etc but can't use its full functionality because of the cost in Data.

In my opinion this would be a great service and would definitely provide an Edge over the competition (Pun intended) ;)
 
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