VOTE for better DATA RATES

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Mams

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See the article:
http://www.mybroadband.co.za/nephp/?m=show&id=1480

HSDPA launch has been delayed but that doesnt matter as CARDS not yet in our hands.

But see the good news:

Another piece of good news for Vodacom customers is that the operator has clear intentions to reduce data rates in 2006.

To compete effectively in a broadband arena a significantly reduced price for data is necessary.

At a cost of R 2-00 per Megabyte it will be possible to notch up a bill of around R 1000-00 within an hour with the new HSDPA offering.

Even at the current prepaid rate of R 499-00 per Gigabyte the higher speeds will serve little purpose since the restricting factor of this broadband service will be price.

SO LOOKS LIKE we can see some reductions soon!
V3G, any idea of what type of reductions we can see.
Maybe we should all start posting our ideas of reduced tarrifs to help Vodacom decide?

I say :

1) Out of bundle rate should be same as your specific bundle rate. example: if you are paying 60c a mb, your out of bundle should be 60c per mb and not R2 per mb

2) A reduction on the basic rate of R2 per mb to R1 per mb

3) Reductions across the board on all the different bundles to fall in line with the maximum of R1 per mb and example bundles of:
1gb at R199 and so forth..... and a 10 gb at R 699

It may seem I am being unrealistic, but we really need to get SA into the real world!
Lets see what data over GPRS/EDGE costs in India:

AIRTEL ( INDIA ) offers an EDGE/GPRS datacard :
The card once off cost is: R1837 or you can rent the card ( 24 month contract ) with one of 3 tarriffs:

The data packages they offer with the card are:

100mb incl with free card for : R56.34 per month and 70c per mb exceeding 100mb.

1GB : R84.60 ( 8c per mb ! ) and 42c per additional mb

1.5GB : R112.85 ( 7c per mb!!!! ) and 42c per additional mb.

LETS SEE if we can all post our recommendations here and if they are taken into account..
 
Mams, thanks for a constructive response. I like your idea of getting a feel for what people would find acceptable.

As always, all good ideas are culled from the forum and sent through for comment.

Here's a question for the forum:

What would make you use the data network in the dead hours, say 1am to 6am and what applications would you see being used in this timeslot?
 
What would make you use the data network in the dead hours, say 1am to 6am and what applications would you see being used in this timeslot?
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I would imagine people would use the dead period to download via P2P, torrent etc. Most people are sleeping at that time and its only really the techies and fanatics like us that are online then.

Personally, I wanted a decent, always on connection because in the old days when I oly had dial-up I had to do all my work online at night and sleep in the day. I want a 'normal' life so I want realistic data/bandwidth/transfer rates across the board.
 
any large downloads... I would leave them overnight. That is of course if bandwidth prices were reasonable.

I wouldn't mind seeing prices as low at 9c or 10c a MB. If hetzner can sell co-location bandwidth at that price; then I don't see why we can't see those prices on 3G or edge etc.
 
What would make you use the data network in the dead hours, say 1am to 6am and what applications would you see being used in this timeslot?
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This is my primary timeslot - the best time of day - for workng and surfing. :rolleyes:

because in the old days when I oly had dial-up I had to do all my work online at night and sleep in the day. I want a 'normal' life so I want realistic data/bandwidth/transfer rates across the board.
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This was why I got dsl - but dsl still far faster late at night - so dsl no solution - solution actually makes problem worse. :eek:
 
What would make you use the data network in the dead hours, say 1am to 6am and what applications would you see being used in this timeslot?
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Id only use it for scheduled downloads. Now if we can get some sort of TiVo or "recording streamed tv shows" then i'll probably do that too (and then watching it offline). Primarily i'd probably re-arrange my pc to do the following at those hours:

1. Update all software [virus/windows]
2. Download MP3s/movies/software (this is not really P2P in my case, primarily http/ftp downloads that i can schedule with a download manager). Always a sad case when you buy your MP3s and notice it costs more to download than the actual pricetag on the song. [PRobably useing something like Getright or ITunes dependin where i buy/download from, alot of vendors have their own apps these days capable of scheduling etc ]
3. Emails with large attachments. [Thunderbird most probably]

P2P stuff is usually just too heavy, unless internet is real cheap [most of the time i upload 3MB for every 1MB i download if not more, if you calculate the "cost of sharing" to "buying" it sometimes work out the same]. Imagine what happens if you share for a whole night , just a bit risky if you are paying for every MB going in AND out.


The regular things like browsing,gaming,skyping/chatting wouldn't help me at those hours unless it's weekends [or unless i happen to work with americans/australians with their 8 hour timeshift].

We have such a system at our university [8-5 you pay R0.50 p/MB, 5-1am R0.30 p/MB and then graveyard hours it's like R0.10 p/MB ] and i exploited it to the max by scheduling all the heavy duty stuff during those hours. Even had a webcrawler set to "crawl" certain websites [downloading webpages] to save a buck here and there.
 
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Vodacom 3G, can you tell is if Vodacom is even considering lowering their rates
 
backups... however, I would think that DSL would be a more logical medium. If 3G was the primary connectivity then, I suppose update services and that kind of thing...

again it's all about the price of the bandwidth.

edit: My clients backup to our servers at Hetzner, which costs us R0.09 per MB...
 
How about business applications, software distribution, backups, telemetry, etc?
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Well last database backup we did of a client it was 4GB compressed. That "fly to hong kong, pick up cd, fly back" scenario comes to mind here.

Business apps bit tricky, again a work-hours thing. Although i heard of companies having a business in say US, Europe/Africa and Australia/Asia. They would say do CAD design, first 8 hours aussies work on it, when its 5pm they pass it on to the Eur/Africa guys who continue with it, and finally americans...and you have a 24 hour workday. Now from that angle it would make perfect sense to have all the data upload/download between 6pm - 6am [outside working hours].Basically you clock in at 8am and you have your new data to work on.
 
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We backup about 20GB a month from our clients (collectively) to our co-located servers. The clients are mostly on uncapped ADSL... so at least the BW needn't be paid for twice!
 
thats my point, its crazy how you pay twice for bandwidth if you sending stuff to friends etc... Pay a 3G fee and then from ADSL Cap fee...

You should work they way it works overseas, if its capped its mostly only counting the downloads... like webhosting (only counting uploads, not what is sent to you for requesting the data) or uploading data to server, you dont pay for that
 
IS is good that way... they measure your traffic (hosting & co-location) and only charge you for bandwidth in 1 direction... depending on which one is more... really nice if it works out your badwidth is 51/49.
 
Sounds familiar. I Have raised this with v3g. re: paying twice. We have an application running 3G cards in various locations, cause easier to move when we need to than relying on TELKOM to install lines. But we currently pay twice for the bandwidth as we sending the data from one 3G card to another.... infact, technically we not even leaving the Vodacom network, so we paying exorbatant fees for "internet" access twice.
 
Can guys please give trheir recommendtions as to what rates we would like to see during normal hours...the off peak - dead hour rates can be a bonus thing..Lets talk about normal working hour rates
 
I say the market standard BW (co-located / dedicated) wise is between 9c and 43c a MB... ADSL bandwidth on the other hand is +/-7c a MB... Maybe 10c - 15c a MB sounds good.
 
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