eltherza
Expert Member
Most of this conversation is going over my head... "tax"? what does that refer too?
Ps. I think ibb is Bubbles...
Ps. I think ibb is Bubbles...
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What does the future hold for iBurst?
- Thread starter Durandal
- Start date
The 'tax' referred to by RG is the ADSL and analogue line rentals you pay Telkom. It's R130 for a voice line + R152 for a 384kb/s ADSL line, R326 for a 512kb/s line or R413 for a 4/10 Mb/s line.
You need to add these numbers to whatever you're paying for data to get your real 'data bill'.
But even if you add these numbers in (like I did in the posts above), ADSL is still substantially cheaper than iBurst, unless you use less than 3GB per month.
But who would want to pay for 3GB capped, if you can have uncapped for the same money?
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Mercury
Well-Known Member
If I were in charge at iBurst and that's all the product and marketing people were worrying about I'd be worried. That means they are working in the dark without knowing what the issues are and what negative perceptions exist that they have to manage.
Yeah, that is nice, for some, but I can't afford to download steam update or windows updates, even between 12am - 8am, cause you still loose data and with only 2gigs a month, every 100mb counts.
I want to get this, but "uncapped" @ 128kbps at R249 is ridiculous.
+1
1Gig is just not enough anymore for normal use!
Durandal
Expert Member
+1 There may be a lot of tech guff going on here, but there's a ****e load of stuff that the marketers et al should be looking at, else they're just going to run around like headless chickens wondering why people are still leaving...
I know that Iburst has made lots of effort to sort out their Billing issues and Customer service. When Iburst rolled out it was as you guys said, a Technology above the rest. That was the same point in time when they competed with Sentech and Uninet and to an extent with Telkom ADSL Direct (As the alternative)
1mbit was all good & Fine ....... untill 4-5years ago, when ADSL Started going the 1mbit/4mbit Route and now recently 8mbit / 10mbit (Depending on your line Quality)
I really wish Iburst can bring it to the Table, i do think they can. Sort out the speed issue, get the spectrum (even if you have to beat it out of ICASA with a rusty Broom)
Napalm
1mbit was all good & Fine ....... untill 4-5years ago, when ADSL Started going the 1mbit/4mbit Route and now recently 8mbit / 10mbit (Depending on your line Quality)
I really wish Iburst can bring it to the Table, i do think they can. Sort out the speed issue, get the spectrum (even if you have to beat it out of ICASA with a rusty Broom)
Napalm
Jagtiger
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Having 2+ year old modem + bad coverage area = FAIL. At first, I was happy with it, as it had 600kbps on day and up to 900kbps on night. Now, look at that! Bad technology.
http://www.pingtest.net/result/24544276.png
http://www.speedtest.net/result/961975262.png
I'm not mentioning international!
eltherza
Expert Member
iBurst only started about 5 years go. So you are saying 1mBit was fine for a year?
iBurst is still faster than 2 of the 3 telkom DSL options you have, that is really a testament on how BAD telkom is.
eltherza
Expert Member
Marketers have no reason to be here, I'll say that perhaps the product team should be paying attention to the reactions of cellcs offer. But marketing? More than likely iBurst outsources the marketing anyway. (Also note in my previous post I only mentioned marketing, not the product team)
Durandal
Expert Member
How can you market effectively if you don't know some of the core complaints with the business?
eltherza
Expert Member
Marketing is not about revealing your weaknesses and how you'll improve on them, they highlight your strengths.
When last did you see this:
"Steers, we've heard your complaints about cooks spitting in your food, and we're doing something about it!"
Of course not. It's the product team to create a product that are to the needs of the target market, the marketing teams job is to design the campaign. Marketing research is more about the people, and more along the lines of the type of people they are selling (young, old, techie etc) and not what their complaints are.
Renault had the adverts "so you thought you'd never buy a renault". It actually reminded me that I would never buy a renault, the rest of the message was lost on me. Highlighted a negative memory. Cellc's "can a cellphone company change it's spots" is also bad, reminds me of the legal issues I had to deal with Cellc with... and the poor quality.... and the disappointment of their edge...
All this comes down to the simple truth of marketing:
Marketing is here to BS you to buy something. Why would they ever base anything (specifically negative issues) on fact?
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Durandal
Expert Member
We'll have to agree to disagree.
I stand by my opinion that unless a marketing division understands where a company's problems lie, and what their nature is, the chance of them creating a successful campaign is unlikely, because the same problems will ultimately still be there, and will drive away new customers. I never said anywhere that the negatives should be highlighted in a campaign, so not certain where you got that notion from. I'm saying that they need to understand where the faults are.
eltherza
Expert Member
I'd place the understanding in the product teams responsibility. I still think market people on the whole are more interested in where the logo should go over understanding the product, but I can live with agreeing to disagree.
r00igev@@r
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Nope, Bubbles has balls!
OK then, back to the topic.
Have any of you seen Akamai's State of the Internet Report? (Requires Flash)
Click on the 'Historical' button and have a look at the average broadband speeds for the end of 2007 through end of 2009. There just hasn't been a huge increase in speed for most people. Sure, some people in the U.S. have 25Mbps fibre (or "fiber" as they write it) to their houses, but there are many, many people still on dial-up.
"Uncapped" is the new buzz word in South Africa, but many ISPs around the world are now going back to capped models. As speeds increase and contention increases it becomes more and more difficult for ISPs to offer uncapped.
Cell C's new 21Mbps offering is very exciting, but I wonder how many people are actually going to see those kinds of speeds. Vodacom have had 7.2Mbps for more than a year now, go and read through their forum and see how few people get close to that. Also, notice how MTN and Vodacom haven't rushed to match Cell C's pricing, I think they're waiting to see how it works out first.
Someone posted previously that ADSL's minimum speed is still 384kbps and that iBurst are still in the running until ADSL reaches 1Mbps, I agree and even then there's the possibility of instant upgrade to 2Mbps, although with a very expensive modem. There are also limits to ADSL, you can't just drop in a new DSLAM and expect to get ten times the speed. Remember Telkom's 4Mbps service has always been advertised as "up to 4Mbps", I know people whose speeds decreased when they were upgraded from "up to 1Mbps" to "up to 4Mbps".
iBurst need to come up with some innovative products to keep customers and attract new ones. I really thought they were on to something with the "uncapped after hours", but then they turned it into a "proportional discount (for certain packages only) after hours". In my opinion an overly-complicated, tax consultant's wet dream.
Oh, and stop the double-dipping as well.
Have any of you seen Akamai's State of the Internet Report? (Requires Flash)
Click on the 'Historical' button and have a look at the average broadband speeds for the end of 2007 through end of 2009. There just hasn't been a huge increase in speed for most people. Sure, some people in the U.S. have 25Mbps fibre (or "fiber" as they write it) to their houses, but there are many, many people still on dial-up.
"Uncapped" is the new buzz word in South Africa, but many ISPs around the world are now going back to capped models. As speeds increase and contention increases it becomes more and more difficult for ISPs to offer uncapped.
Cell C's new 21Mbps offering is very exciting, but I wonder how many people are actually going to see those kinds of speeds. Vodacom have had 7.2Mbps for more than a year now, go and read through their forum and see how few people get close to that. Also, notice how MTN and Vodacom haven't rushed to match Cell C's pricing, I think they're waiting to see how it works out first.
Someone posted previously that ADSL's minimum speed is still 384kbps and that iBurst are still in the running until ADSL reaches 1Mbps, I agree and even then there's the possibility of instant upgrade to 2Mbps, although with a very expensive modem. There are also limits to ADSL, you can't just drop in a new DSLAM and expect to get ten times the speed. Remember Telkom's 4Mbps service has always been advertised as "up to 4Mbps", I know people whose speeds decreased when they were upgraded from "up to 1Mbps" to "up to 4Mbps".
iBurst need to come up with some innovative products to keep customers and attract new ones. I really thought they were on to something with the "uncapped after hours", but then they turned it into a "proportional discount (for certain packages only) after hours". In my opinion an overly-complicated, tax consultant's wet dream.
Oh, and stop the double-dipping as well.
Agreed, when they removed "Uncapped after hours" they made a big mistake.
Just by advertising "Free internet between midnight to 08h00" would be a big plus for iBurst.
Instead, we get "discounts" at midnight. I don't even bother waiting until midnight to download anymore.
Three factors contribute to sales success in wireless broadband; download speed/latency, coverage and pricing. Consumers want to see as many of these improve and each of us will have his own specific combination of the three factors that makes sense to us.
Clearly there are limitations, even though we all would like to get 125Mb/s (as Vodacom showed today with their 125Mb/s LTE) with 100% national coverage and at a cost of R1/GB. But it's not so simple from a network perspective if you want to stay profitable. You have to balance these.
To stay in the game you have to increase these metrics to some extent and we do see all the networks doing it. They are all increasing speed, increasing footprint and/or dropping pricing in some ratio.
Except Neotel and iBurst, both showing the same problems; lower speeds and smaller footprint than the competitors with no improvement in either. So they go in cheap, hoping to lure customers while running at a loss with the hope that some future (and unknown) event will make them profitable. What this 'event' will be, no-one knows. Maybe the second coming.
Unfortunately for both the strategy failed as the technology stagnated, leading to fewer sales, in turn leading to no money to increase footprint. And they cannot drop pricing any further. So they're stuck, watching the rest of the industry passing them.
On uncapped, I agree. Uncapped it is not a sustainable model, even though I love my MWEB ADSL uncapped service and use it 'extensively'. Today's caps are too small and the typical 1, 3, 5GB caps should become 10, 30, 50, 150GB, etc.
BB users should not just look at the outright speed of a link (although it is sexy), but rather how many concurrent users a tower can service. To deliver 1Mb/s, iBurst use 5MHz. Cell-Ct use the same amount (5MHz) o achieve 21MB/s in their HSPA+ networks, basically 21 times more effective in using the spectrum.
The newer technology can service many more customers at the same of better service levels. This is important as it drives costs down that eventually reflect in reduced retail pricing.
r001gev@@r can maybe explain the rationale behind this model, it's his [-]wet dream[/-] brain-child. As are most new product ideas.
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Next Thing
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For me there have been a few "kick him in the nuts" occasions with Iburst.
I was allready involved in the Beta days and signed up for the service back then.
I paid CASH for that modem , and then it was not a small amount, struggled with service and paid CASH again an external antennae.
Then the service went belly up in my area for a long time so I passed on my unit & antennae to a friend who has also had ups and downs.
I moved on to ADSl and suffered the ignomy of having all the lines in my area being stolen a few times and telskum saying bad luck we are not replacing.
During this time I had issues like most other people with the billing department.
When the lines were stolen Neotel was not arround so I had a relook at Iburst again and went and bought a 2nd modem cash with antennae. This was working well untill that fatefull day when the allday 64k uncapped was removed off the month to month accounts, that had been there since the company was started. This was a massive kick in the nuts. Some of us who paid CASH and UPFRONT for modems were being told to F... O.. and the people who rather signed contracts were being kept on. SO I cancelled again and AGAIN had issues with billing.
I was allready involved in the Beta days and signed up for the service back then.
I paid CASH for that modem , and then it was not a small amount, struggled with service and paid CASH again an external antennae.
Then the service went belly up in my area for a long time so I passed on my unit & antennae to a friend who has also had ups and downs.
I moved on to ADSl and suffered the ignomy of having all the lines in my area being stolen a few times and telskum saying bad luck we are not replacing.
During this time I had issues like most other people with the billing department.
When the lines were stolen Neotel was not arround so I had a relook at Iburst again and went and bought a 2nd modem cash with antennae. This was working well untill that fatefull day when the allday 64k uncapped was removed off the month to month accounts, that had been there since the company was started. This was a massive kick in the nuts. Some of us who paid CASH and UPFRONT for modems were being told to F... O.. and the people who rather signed contracts were being kept on. SO I cancelled again and AGAIN had issues with billing.
Durandal
Expert Member
Only if Bubbles has breasts.
r00igev@@r
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Some notes from the Global Mobile Broadband Forum. Although the advertised peak rate on HSDPA is up to 28 Mb/s, the measured average is 3.4 Mb/s with an aggregate of 4.7 Mb/s.
The normal usage of cap on a laptop is 1.5 GB and on a Smartphone it is 250MB.
and the view from the analysts on unlimited is that subscribers are looking at cost control and not necessarily being uncapped.
Taking this into account if we consider the Telkom tax line as the bread line then most subscribers in ZA want to be below this.
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