When ISPs will get smarter???

[swordfish1]

The entire point of moving to per GB billing from this month was (according to telkom) to make people pay exactly for what they use, right?

Yet, I see no ISP that offers that! All ISPs offer packages from 1GB to XGB, you can choose more or less any number, but you must chose it upfront, at the begining of the month! Well you can buy additional account obviously. But what if your monthly usage is ~3GB, but it happened that your 3GB finished on 29th of the month, and you need extra 100MB to do your business for the last day of the month? Do you buy an additional account (1GB minimum) at a price of R100 or more, just so you can use 100MB from that account? What a bullsiht!

How many of you knows exactly how much traffic they will do for the month ahead??? I don't!

All ISPs must offer per MB billing! You can give them an idea of what your usage for the month is expected to be, but once you reach that number they should just start charging your account @ say 10 cents per MB (R100 per GB) for any extra traffic.

Imagine you had to buy your electricity the same way we pay for the ADSL!

ISPs please wakeup!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Telkom sucks but you are not far better than them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[pope24]

The ISPs are wide awake.

They are making a killing off the new billing system. The fact that only one ISP has taken Telkom to court should tell you something.
Every GB or part thereof that their customers don't use is pure profit to them so if they are charging R80/GB on a 3GB package and you don't use that GB that is R80 in their back pockets. They have to make money too.

The reason this is unfair is that Telkom make the full profit no matter how much you use because either that profit is in SAIX or in TelkomInternet, I doubt they care.

 

[Glipsie]

There are offers like this already. For one, Imaginets Freestyle offerings.

 

[Donovan-O]

If we didn't have the ISP's, we'd only have Telkom?! The majority, if not all, ISP's aren't trying to make a killing, they're just running a business. Telkom are the real culprits and pointing fingers at "the ISP's" just causes division and distraction from where our efforts at improving the situation should be directed.

 

[swordfish1]

There are offers like this already. For one, Imaginets Freestyle offerings.

I saw it now, but the point is that every ISP should offer this! This was the entire point of the per GB billing!

 

[Donovan-O]

No, the entire point of the per GB billing was to put ISP's out of business!

 

[warichard]

Just to clarify, Web Africa also offers prepaid services that allow unused usage to roll over to the next month.

The reason why "only one" ISP took Telkom to court is because each ISP has a different contract, and DotCo felt that their contract gave them the greatest potential to win a case against Telkom based on it. We on the other hand would not have as great a case because our contract (being one of the later ones issued), is more difficult to dispute. It's very easy to jump to some incredibly wrong conclusions.

Also, any additional money we make of peoples usage does not automatically equate to "pure profit" there are overheads above and beyond what needs to be paid to Telkom. The support staff needs to be paid, there's the time spent supporting the product, there's the money that has to go into advertising the product, there's the ongoing development of the product which in turn takes time and money to do. The profitability per GB, especially for the smaller players, is incredibly small. Again, don't go jumping to unfounded conclusions.

 

[swordfish1]

Just to clarify, Web Africa also offers prepaid services that allow unused usage to roll over to the next month.

The reason why "only one" ISP took Telkom to court is because each ISP has a different contract, and DotCo felt that their contract gave them the greatest potential to win a case against Telkom based on it. We on the other hand would not have as great a case because our contract (being one of the later ones issued), is more difficult to dispute. It's very easy to jump to some incredibly wrong conclusions.

Also, any additional money we make of peoples usage does not automatically equate to "pure profit" there are overheads above and beyond what needs to be paid to Telkom. The support staff needs to be paid, there's the time spent supporting the product, there's the money that has to go into advertising the product, there's the ongoing development of the product which in turn takes time and money to do. The profitability per GB, especially for the smaller players, is incredibly small. Again, don't go jumping to unfounded conclusions.

warichard, first of all thanks for the reply

second, I am not so much questioning how much money the ISPs make, my point is that the offers (from most ISP) are not flexible at all! The option for transfering the unused GB to the next month is very cool but doesn't solve my main problem: what do I do when it is 29th of the month and I get capped and I need extra 100 or 200MB for the next 1-2 days.

Given the extreme cost of 1GB, most people will tend to underestimate how many GB they need for the month, thereby they will be left without internet for the last few days of the month and no cheap and easy option to buy additional few hundred MB to solve the issue. Well, Imaginet seems to have done well in this area and as far as I can see they are offering a solution to this. Why not all ISPs take their example?

 

[HaZrD]

Personally, I think we should blame Cell C for starting the whole Per-Second billing scheme that Vodacom/MTN/Telkom/ISP/et al are adopting...

Bandwidth should not be charged per GB - it should be a flat rate for the SPEED at which you can receive your link - NOT the amount of data...

OK, for those who are slow... let me explain:

Instead of charging someone for 3GB or 30GB (hello DotCo or on a PER GB basis - the charge should be a flat (thumbsuck figure here) R800.00 per month for 512k ADSL, REGARDLESS of the amount of warez you kiddies like downloading...

Think of Martis (previously DigiNet) - it's charged at a fixed rate for a fixed speed, regardless of the amount of data you send through it. Telkom would then have to enable Simultaneous Checking (set it to 1 so it doesn't get abused), and potentially offer this at the low end (192k) products....

I really don't get Pay Per GB or Pay per Second or any of those models - they're designed to shaft the end user.... And if I recall correctly (please correct me if i'm wrong) - Cell C started this!!!!

 

[swordfish1]

Personally, I think we should blame Cell C for starting the whole Per-Second billing scheme that Vodacom/MTN/Telkom/ISP/et al are adopting...

Bandwidth should not be charged per GB - it should be a flat rate for the SPEED at which you can receive your link - NOT the amount of data...

OK, for those who are slow... let me explain:

Instead of charging someone for 3GB or 30GB (hello DotCo or on a PER GB basis - the charge should be a flat (thumbsuck figure here) R800.00 per month for 512k ADSL, REGARDLESS of the amount of warez you kiddies like downloading...

Think of Martis (previously DigiNet) - it's charged at a fixed rate for a fixed speed, regardless of the amount of data you send through it. Telkom would then have to enable Simultaneous Checking (set it to 1 so it doesn't get abused), and potentially offer this at the low end (192k) products....

I really don't get Pay Per GB or Pay per Second or any of those models - they're designed to shaft the end user.... And if I recall correctly (please correct me if i'm wrong) - Cell C started this!!!!

I couldn't agree more with you, but there is nothing you and I can do about it, except move to another country of course!

 

[.geek]

When ISPs will get smarter???

That doesn't make much sense.

 

[Pedantic]

The entire point of moving to per GB billing from this month was (according to telkom) to make people pay exactly for what they use, right?

That is correct sword, however would you rather pay R690 for 10 Gig (R69 per gig) or R349 for 10 Gig ??
SAOL is offering 10 gig for R349 - we would not be able to offer this package on pay per gig, as it is below our cost !

We offer pay per gig solutions too - but believe me, at the price we are forced to charge, our 10 Gig accounts are outselling at a ratio of 500:1

In conclusion, IMO SAOL as an ISP are smarter - we're trying to make the best of a bad situation and specifically making it easier for SME's and power users.

---
Pedantic
www.saol.com

 

[HaZrD]

I couldn't agree more with you, but there is nothing you and I can do about it, except move to another country of course!

We can stop supporting their products until they decrease the price... I still like the idea of a "don't use a single phone/modem/fax for two days (companies and private)" idea - the revenue that Telkom would loose just in two days should make them sit up and take note...

 

[Gangrel]

I really don't get Pay Per GB or Pay per Second or any of those models - they're designed to shaft the end user.... And if I recall correctly (please correct me if i'm wrong) - Cell C started this!!!!

Please explain to me (I am obviously a bit ignorant) how being charged per second instead of per minute or part thereof (as it was previously) is designed to shaft the end user.... on the previous billing method if I used 1minute and 1 second I would have been charged to 2 minutes, now I am charged for 1 minute and 1 second.

 

[HaZrD]

Usage based billing is designed to screw end users since it doesn't have a ceiling - which means that YOU the customer has to guage how much you will be using - what happens if your call doesn't get cut off correctly, and stays online for another 40 seconds - you get billed for it!

Let's take ADSL for example: I buy 3GB (on a per GB basis) - some clown in finland writes a DoS attack worm, which replicates and lands on my system - before the antivirus company that I subscribe to can get a patch released, this little worm has chomped up 3GB of my bandwidth - I never used that, but will still get billed for it.

Having worked for various ISP's in this country, I have dealt with numerous such complaints. (the one that will always stick, is a dial on demand system that used ISDN to dial up, collect mail, and disconnect. The M$ techie who set it up, misconfigured the damn thing, and it kept on dialing up every 2 seconds. At the end of the month, the client owed Telkom R8000.00 - which is wrong - they got the techie to fix the problem, but still owed R8k to Telkom for ISDN usage.) (You'd swear Telkom would have a system to notify people of odd behaviour like this.... but hey)

If the system is based on a flat rate for the speed you receive, you don't have this problem, and can budget for Rx.xx per month for services without having to worry about : oh crap! it's the 26th of the month, I've used 3GB, I need 400MB more, but they only sell per GB....

That way, even Telkom is safe in the sense that 64kbps can only send/receive x amount of data per month - regardless of 24hour bit-torrent downloads.... This also takes away the excuse "you only want more bandwidth because you're a software/movie/music pirate"

Usage based billing makes sense if you can COMPLETELY secure the service from the "occasional" mishap...

 

[Gangrel]

To be honest, the "occasional" mishap is not the service providers fault and you being charged for it although it seems unfair is still justifiable.

From what you are saying, the times that I still had ISDN and the software that was supposed to disconnect my PC from the internet at 7am was not running (for some reason I had either stopped it as it was causing hassles with system resources or something) and I forgot to disconnect the computer in the morning, it was not my fault and I should not have paid for the couple of hundred Rand phone calls (I do personally believe that local calls should be free or as close to it as possible. If this was the case ADSL usage based billing would have to fall away as everyone would simply go back to dialup because it would work out much cheaper. Maybe we should be pushing for free local calls, what we are really wanting will have to follow).

 

[swordfish1]

That is correct sword, however would you rather pay R690 for 10 Gig (R69 per gig) or R349 for 10 Gig ??
SAOL is offering 10 gig for R349 - we would not be able to offer this package on pay per gig, as it is below our cost !

We offer pay per gig solutions too - but believe me, at the price we are forced to charge, our 10 Gig accounts are outselling at a ratio of 500:1

In conclusion, IMO SAOL as an ISP are smarter - we're trying to make the best of a bad situation and specifically making it easier for SME's and power users.

---
Pedantic
www.saol.com

thanks Pedantic,

obviously I prefer the 10GB account in that particular case, hence the reason I am moving to OpenWeb from tomorrow. R35 per GB and 10GB per month is far better than trying to make the month with say 5GB, so I hope not to run into the situation I am ATM with a 10GB account, although it is not impossible.

the point is, the begining of the month there were no 10GB @ R350 offers, so I had choosen one of the popular packages, which although expensive, didn't offer any flexibility. The end result is huge inconvenience for me, the end user, I not only received this month 6 times less for the same price, but I was left without an ADSL service for 2 days!

 

[swordfish1]

To be honest, the "occasional" mishap is not the service providers fault and you being charged for it although it seems unfair is still justifiable.

From what you are saying, the times that I still had ISDN and the software that was supposed to disconnect my PC from the internet at 7am was not running (for some reason I had either stopped it as it was causing hassles with system resources or something) and I forgot to disconnect the computer in the morning, it was not my fault and I should not have paid for the couple of hundred Rand phone calls (I do personally believe that local calls should be free or as close to it as possible. If this was the case ADSL usage based billing would have to fall away as everyone would simply go back to dialup because it would work out much cheaper. Maybe we should be pushing for free local calls, what we are really wanting will have to follow).

I disagree with you!

Pay per usage is an option, but there should be unlimited usage offers as well, priced reasonably! Pay per usage are for people that are literaly counting every cent and don't use the service much or used is rarely (like now I am using GPRS because my ADSL is dead, but this happens for the first time in 5 months). I will much rather pay fixed monthly fee (as long as it is reasonable), and not bother counting how many seconds I talk on the phone and how many bytes I transfer and other idiotic things that just make my life miserable!

 

[HellTel]

Personally, I think we should blame Cell C for starting the whole Per-Second billing scheme that Vodacom/MTN/Telkom/ISP/et al are adopting..

.



LMAO ... what a comparison ... the per second billing makes a lot of sense to me .... if I talk for 33 seconds I get charged 33 seconds, not 60 seconds (1minute)

_____________________-

Things that make you go hmmmmmm ....

 

[HaZrD]

I'm not saying the misconfig of the system is the responsibility of the Telco... what I am however saying is that because of the pricing models that are employed, the end user is never 100% sure of what the bill at the end of the month will be - unless they decide ok, i'll buy 2GB and when its used up, tuff, my business on the electronic frontier can stand still.

Usage based billing is evil and gives the user a flase sense of "i'm getting a bargain here" - take www.cellc.co.za - why is it, that they show you prices PER MINUTE on a PER SECOND pricing model!?

--- begin excerp ---

peak call p/m
-------------------
Cell C to Cell C R 3.25
-------------------

--- end excerp ---

The above example (taken from www.cellc.co.za) shows that the PER SECOND option works out to R0.66 more than the standard Pay per minute system (based at R2.60 p/m)... (again - pay per (n) - usage based)

Think carefully - how often do you make calls that last under 60 seconds!?

Yes, I agree, the system CAN work in your favour - but very seldom does. It gives people a false sense of gain!