Vodacom will charge you to roll over mobile data

[Geoff.D]

Vodacom appears to have adopted the attitude of entitlement that Telkom was forced to abandon after many years of competition slowly and relentlessly chipping away at Telkom's legislated monopoly.

Telkom was forced to become competitive along with the old guard management team leaving and the eventual formation of 8ta which was a game changer for Telkom.

Vodacom needs a new CEO that recognises the importance of being competitive and doesn't have "SCREW THE CUSTOMERS" at the top of their TODO list.

Once again, your gross ignorance of the history of all of this is unbelievable! If you had any idea of the history around the privatisation of Telkom, and why Telkom could not start its own Mobile network sooner than it did, you would NOT be making these incredibly stupid and ill-informed statements.

 

[j4ck455]

Once again, your gross ignorance of the history of all of this is unbelievable! If you had any idea of the history around the privatisation of Telkom, and why Telkom could not start its own Mobile network sooner than it did, you would NOT be making these incredibly stupid and ill-informed statements.

Instead of posting any factual historical information, you instead chose to go the personal attack route with a bunch of overly emotive words that make you sound a bit hysterical.

Are you denying that Telkom ever had a monopolistic attitude?

Cherry picking the formation of 8ta in my post only shows that you failed to comprehend that my post was about Telkom's monopolistic attitude and how Vodacom appears to have adopted the same attitude that Telkom used to have towards competition.

Please do create a new thread to post a comprehensive Telkom history lesson, I'm sure your superior insider knowledge of Telkom will change everyone's lives.

 

[supersunbird]

Yeah Geoff.D, please do.

 

[Geoff.D]

The facts are you made a proposition and then assumed that that proposition explained why Telkom did not have a mobile network before the 8ta networks, and then stated that the lack of competitiveness in Telkom had to be Chipped away and that this is the same attitude now pervading Vodacom.

All of the above is what is known as argumentum ad absurdum.

It is based on the Principle of Explosion, which means that after an absurd or inaccurate statement is made anything goes and is by inference automatically true.
Now 2j4ck455, were you working in Telkom when Telkom separated from the Post Office and was "Privatised with the largest shareholder still being the Government?
Were you there when the three Strategies were developed as to how to tackle the task of preparing Telkom for Privatisation, and how the concept of competitiveness would be introduced into Telkom? Were you part of the team which selected the most suitable Strategy to ensure the quickest path to privatisation? Do you know which of the three strategies was selected when the SEP moved into Telkom? Were you there when the Mobile Network Business Unit was separated from Telkom to form what is today part of Vodaphone called Vodacom? Do you know what the TOR was for this process, and why Telkom had to first divest its share of Vodacom and what the reason was why that took so long?

If yes then you should know better.
If no, then don't make wildly inaccurate statements to base your rather ludicrous statements about chipping away at the legislated Monopoly.

If we were to unpack everything for all to see, you would realise just how close we came to, to have the ONLY SOE that is almost totally free of corruption slide into the same pit that Eskom is in!

Telkom was granted a 5-year period of grace, mainly to avoid the disaster that happened in the UK and in quite a few other countries. If you really knew what happened you would know why that grace period ended up being extended and extended and extended, until finally the SNO was formed. And where is that SNO today? It does not exist!. It was sucked into an off shore entity! You would also see what happened when the TNO was formed. And where is that today?

The Mobile market in SA is fully competitive with 4 operators now. Do you know that it took a personal appeal by that very "old guard management team" to Mandela to ensure that Vodacom remained outside of Telkom?
Do you know how close we came to being stuck with the old mobile technology used in the USA (analogue) instead of being allowed to continue with the deployment of GSM?

So rather take on ALL the Mobile operators (except telkom) about how they have tried to manipulate ICASA into preventing the new rules coming into force this month?

And check out the original report and see what IT said about MTNs attitude towards the roll over of data and the lowering of tariffs.

And if you have any doubt, I still have my copy of the three strategies developed, as well as what SouthWestern Bell did with the choice made by the "Old Guard", dropped the correct strategy that would have seen full competition within the 5-year period, replacing it with a strategy that deliberately delayed every single move towards that goal over and over again with a team of lawyers employed soley for the purpose of delaying competition. So go and blame someone else other than the "Old Guard". Blame the " New Guard" intoduced because the impression was there that the "Old Guard would not implement the plan". Instead we were landed with a team of has-been managers South Western Bell were only too glad to be able to dispatch to Africa and get them out of their hair. We NEVER failed to implement plans in my day! we did what we were told to do! And we did it above board almost to a default! We were all totally commited to making the Privatisation work!

 

[j4ck455]

The facts are you made a proposition and then assumed that that proposition explained why Telkom did not have a mobile network before the 8ta networks, and then stated that the lack of competitiveness in Telkom had to be Chipped away and that this is the same attitude now pervading Vodacom.

Incorrect: my post was never about why Telkom did not have its own cellular network (years ago) to compete with Vodacom and MTN.

Again you cherry picked 8ta in my post, I mentioned 8ta because the formation of 8ta sparked a lot of innovation and competitiveness that Telkom did not previously have with its legislated monopoly (on fixed lines). I did not mention 8ta because this thread is about Vodacom.

Telkom's monopoly (on fixed lines) has been chipped away by competition despite legislation that has protected Telkom for far too long, and it is that protection that created an attitude of entitlement within Telkom.

My point was that Vodacom appears to have adopted a similar attitude of entitlement where Vodacom believes it can do whatever it wants.

 

[Geoff.D]

Then in future, say what you mean. And you STILL can't see that fundamentally, your assertion that Telkom was/is protected by legislation is just total rubbish! That "protection" expired years ago! Right now, it is their share of the market that keeps many potential competitors at bay, which is simply the Capitalist system at work. That is all.
All the mechanisms are there to challenge this situation, regardless of whether it is Telkom Vodacom or any other player. We have The Laws, The Competition Commission, ICASA, the Consumer Protection Commission and social media to put pressure on all large corporates. Just use it!

And keep vague generalisations out of it!

Good luck with your chipping hammer. See you in the next century if you last that long!.

What we need to do as consumers is to use our buying power to show our displeasure when things go against the regulations. In this case that happened very quickly. Vodacom reversed their stance on charging for rollovers. Now we need to challenge the next move which is to insist that you buy another package, and BTW, they still have failed to implement FIFO as well.

 

[j4ck455]

Then in future, say what you mean.

It is common knowledge that Telkom had a legislated monopoly (on fixed lines), and I never claimed that Telkom had a cellular monopoly (even though there was legislation in place that would allow it), you cherry picked 8ta in my initial post and went off on a vitriolic tangent because you failed to comprehend my initial post and my subsequent post.

If you want to continue your Telkom and legislation history discussion, create a new thread somewhere, it's off topic in this thread.

 

[Geoff.D]

It is common knowledge that Telkom had a legislated monopoly (on fixed lines), and I never claimed that Telkom had a cellular monopoly (even though there was legislation in place that would allow it), you cherry picked 8ta in my initial post and went off on a vitriolic tangent because you failed to comprehend my initial post and my subsequent post.

If you want to continue your Telkom and legislation history discussion, create a new thread somewhere, it's off topic in this thread.

The operative word is "had".

So to get back to the subject shall we?

The title of this thread is "Vodacom will charge you to roll over mobile data" as a reminder.

The article proceeded to quote what Vodacom tried to do on the 1st of this month as a result of the new regulations coming into force. It then quoted what other operators were doing giving us an opportunity presumably to compare.

Vodacom almost immediately saw the error of its ways, presumably because they realised that they would be in trouble with many existing customers, and, more importantly, because they were, in fact, going against the "spirit" of the new regulations, and almost "thumbing their nose" at ICASA.

Has anyone done a proper comparison between the operators? Such a comparison should start with the regulations, line-fo- line, to check how the operators have changed their charging systems and rules about data costs and data expiry?

 

[jannievanzyl]

I assume that Vodacom still doesn't have Realtime Data Usage Monitoring for Contract Data Bundles (data usage updates delayed from 3 hours to several days), and if that is still the case (since circa 2005), this new and overly complicated screw the customer brain fart has to be far beyond Vodacom's coding capabilities and will result in numerous unintended side effects even if the new system was coded from scratch.

Pretty sure it's been real-time for a couple of years already.

 

[Spliffcat]

Still a bunch of fekkin thieves. Eh! Jannie???

 

[supersunbird]

Pretty sure it's been real-time for a couple of years already.

Realtime data billing for normal contracts or only "billing when the data session ended"?

 

[marine1]

Real time but couldnt tell you when you were out of bundle well until icasa changed the regs.

 

[jannievanzyl]

Realtime data billing for normal contracts or only "billing when the data session ended"?

Depends what you mean by session. I speak under correction on the exact number, but records are updated every few KBs, 5 or 10, I think.

 

[Geoff.D]

Depends what you mean by session. I speak under correction on the exact number, but records are updated every few KBs, 5 or 10, I think.

Pretty much as you say. I have never had an issue on any of my contracts with respect to how often the updates are done. And I check my data use regularly before I run an app or a "session" and the afterwards. So the facility has been available for a very long time.
It is precisely because of this that I know VC STILL HAS NOT sorted out the FIFO principle!
It is still counting down the new month's data instead of first counting down the previous month's carryover.

 

[Asgard85]

If nothing else this little show serves as a reminder that large corporations will operate on the very edge of the rules to maximize their own benefit. Some more than others.

Many years ago I was not happy with the way that Vodacom was conducting their business, particularly with respect to OOB rates and them simply pulling up their shoulders. I didn't like the way the operated their business so I took mine elsewhere. I see little has changed since then.

 

[4ftersh0ck]

If nothing else this little show serves as a reminder that large corporations will operate on the very edge of the rules to maximize their own benefit. Some more than others.

Many years ago I was not happy with the way that Vodacom was conducting their business, particularly with respect to OOB rates and them simply pulling up their shoulders. I didn't like the way the operated their business so I took mine elsewhere. I see little has changed since then.

I think you made a wise move. I stupidly signed up with Vodacom in December 2017. I will be moving over to FNB Connect in December this year.

Until more people vote with their wallets Vodacom will continue doing exactly what they want.

 

[Asgard85]

I think you made a wise move. I stupidly signed up with Vodacom in December 2017. I will be moving over to FNB Connect in December this year.

Until more people vote with their wallets Vodacom will continue doing exactly what they want.

I suppose there are many others who jumped from where they were TO Vodacom and would say the same that I do
I found much better value at Cell C at the time and then at MTN after that. Viva Black Friday specials! Can't beat the value.

I hope FNB works out for you.

 

[Geoff.D]

I think you made a wise move. I stupidly signed up with Vodacom in December 2017. I will be moving over to FNB Connect in December this year.

Until more people vote with their wallets Vodacom will continue doing exactly what they want.

You have checked which network operator FNB buys its network capacity from before making that decision of course?
FNB is not a mobile service provider but a reseller of someone else's services, which it then packages based on its business plan.

That is the nature of competition. The user has a choice. If he does not like the service he is getting from the one he has a choice to move to another. Your choice, however, does not mean that the first operator is generally bad, it just means its services are not acceptable to you.

 

[4ftersh0ck]

You have checked which network operator FNB buys its network capacity from before making that decision of course?
FNB is not a mobile service provider but a reseller of someone else's services, which it then packages based on its business plan.

All I know is they roam on MTN. I will be getting eBucks points and eBucks. My mate who lives in the same area as me has been testing for a couple weeks and it is working fine.

 

[Geoff.D]

."Roaming" is not the correct way of describing their relationship with MTN. Mobile operators who allow other network operator customers to use their infrastructure when the customers home operator does not have an infrastructure in place in that specific area to directly serve its customers is said to allow roaming. That roaming is based on a contractual agreement between the two operators.

What I deduce from what you have said is that FNB is a reseller of MTN is a Virtual Mobile Network Operator (VMNO) operating over Cell C infrastructure which in turn has a roaming agreement with MTN. services based on a contractual agreement between it and MTN. Subtle but there is a difference. In effect, you are moving from VC to MTN from a technical point of view.

edited based on info provided in post 142.