When will iBurst drop prices...?

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And again, to repeat myself, I'm not saying Iburst's prices are correct, I'm not proposing new prices, I am proposing a different construct which I believe is more transparent and is a win-win.
 
JustinB said:
Modem costs can be a seperate item that gets added on at the end. I do not think it is crazy to charge more for m2m vs. contract, it is perfectly justifiable. Otherwise everybody would be on m2m. And then when Neotel becomes a viable alternative, everyone cancels at the drop of a hat. It makes business sense to prefer contracts to m2m, and it makes sense to offer a discount for contract vs. m2m to incent the customer to take out a contract.
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Yes to me month-to-month is a perfect model because that forces an ISP to stay competitive or lose customers.
The 24 Month contract is nothing more than a vendor lock in allowing the provider to sit back and reap the benefits without having to worry about the competition.
Your earlier post comparing the contracts to the Cell phone industry illustrates the point.
Why do you think there is basically 0 competition in the Cell industry?

JustinB said:
I'm a customer too, I am on m2m, but the benefit of m2m is it is more flexible, and flexibility costs! I also want everything for free, and I want my cake and I want to eat it, but one has to appreciate that we, as customers, always think we pay too much for something, we are always looking for a better deal.
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I don't see flexibility in month-to-month : I do see the option to cancel more easily. But if I am getting a good deal why would I?

JustinB said:
To get back to my point, ISPs have done themselves a disservice, they are not "service" providers, they are bandwidth resellers, which is why the comparison is made purely on who's giving the best rate per gb. They have commoditised their products, and the only way to then compete is on price. If this is the case, then they must strip out costs to ensure their price is competitive on their core offering (i.e. price per gb of bandwidth), and charge for other services which add on to the costs.
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I'm with you on charging for 'other' services but what would those be?
 
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JustinB said:
And again, to repeat myself, I'm not saying Iburst's prices are correct, I'm not proposing new prices, I am proposing a different construct which I believe is more transparent and is a win-win.
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There are many ADSL providers which offer prepaid or m2m boosters of R70 per GB or even less. There is no reason, as I see it, why iBurst cannot go the same route. They already collect a large fee as part of the standard cap, they can offer cheap boosters. R499 for 3GB is crazy.
 
Gekco said:
Yes to me month-to-month is a perfect model because that forces an ISP to stay competitive or lose customers.
The 24 Month contract is nothing more than a vendor lock in allowing the provider to sit back and reap the benefits without having to worry about the competition.
Your earlier post comparing the contracts to the Cell phone industry illustrates the point.
Why do you think there is basically 0 competition in the Cell industry?

I don't see flexibility in month-to-month : I do see the option to cancel more easily. But if I am getting a good deal why would I?

I'm with you on charging for 'other' services but what would those be?
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i'm refering to the ability to cancel easily as flexibility. not to dwell on the this too much, all i'm saying is that any business, given the option of a contract that promises cashflow for an extended period compared to a m2m which could be gone tomorrow is obviously going to prefer the former, and in an ideal world, they should be rewarding the customer suitably with a discount for signing the contract. looking at the diff in prices between with and without modem, it would appear people who have their own modems "subsidise" those who attach it to their contract, given the retail price of the modem.

I think the reason we like the m2m model is because we're not being incentivised suitably to take a contract at the moment, and some of us have beed shafted when iburst back-booked their old packages and introduced new cheaper ones.

other services - as i said, i'm not sure, iburst would need to do some activity based costing to see which activities in their business generate high costs, which are essential, and which are not part of their core offering. rule of thumb would be to say if its not part of the core offering, and its high cost, charge for it seperately.

There are many ADSL providers which offer prepaid or m2m boosters of R70 per GB or even less. There is no reason, as I see it, why iBurst cannot go the same route. They already collect a large fee as part of the standard cap, they can offer cheap boosters. R499 for 3GB is crazy.
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i'm not disagreeing, 499 is a ripoff! but e.g. axxess don't offer top-ups for R70/gb for 3gb customers vs. R50/gb for 10gb customers do they?
 
JustinB said:
i'm refering to the ability to cancel easily as flexibility. not to dwell on the this too much, all i'm saying is that any business, given the option of a contract that promises cashflow for an extended period compared to a m2m which could be gone tomorrow is obviously going to prefer the former, and in an ideal world, they should be rewarding the customer suitably with a discount for signing the contract. looking at the diff in prices between with and without modem, it would appear people who have their own modems "subsidise" those who attach it to their contract, given the retail price of the modem.
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I don't like contracts. Don't use one for iBurst, don't use one for cell phone.
They are just unfair in SA, especially with our consumer unfriendly laws.
 
JustinB said:
I think the reason we like the m2m model is because we're not being incentivised suitably to take a contract at the moment, and some of us have beed shafted when iburst back-booked their old packages and introduced new cheaper ones.
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The 'old / new' package saga affected month to month customers as well.

Contracts are in the best interest of the provider and not the consumer in the long run. Contracts are also detrimental to healthy competition in the market.
Thus I will not support contracts.
 
JustinB said:
i'm not disagreeing, 499 is a ripoff! but e.g. axxess don't offer top-ups for R70/gb for 3gb customers vs. R50/gb for 10gb customers do they?
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No differentiation. But interestingly, with Axxess you can temporararily upgrade your account as many times as you like during a month. So if you have a 3gb account, you can upgrade it to a 4gb, 5gb, 10gb, whatever and only pay in the difference in the account prices. The next month, you are back to 3gb. It is a very flexible way of doing things, and is achieved by simple web interface. It would great to be able to do that on iBurst, and pay in only the marginal cost differentials, instead of those bizarrely egregious booster prices.
 
Gekco said:
The 'old / new' package saga affected month to month customers as well.

Contracts are in the best interest of the provider and not the consumer in the long run. Contracts are also detrimental to healthy competition in the market.
Thus I will not support contracts.
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Contracts only favour the provider because the provider is not passing the benefit back to the customer! E.g. R600 p.m. at virgin active on m2m vs. R350 p.m. on 12 month contract vs. R300 p.m. on a 24 month contract. I know it is a different industry, service, everything, but it does illustrate what I mean.

I think I'm being misinterpreted to say prices charged by iburst are justified, I'm not saying that at all. I think most providers, including iburst, probably have no idea what their costs actually comprise of, they probably work out at a point in time that their current customer base uses x amount of data, the total company costs are Ry, and they divide Ry by x to get a cost per gb, and then they add some mark-up. This totally misses the opportunity to say "hey, you know what, if we increase data usage to double, the price per gb actually comes down by 30%, and we'd be way more competitive, get a whole bunch more customers, and our margins would still be intact!". It also spreads the costs of their activities across all customers when not all customers make use of them. E.g. I do not use my [email protected] email address, which is included "free" in my monthly subs, nor do i use the other "free" value-adds such as 24hr support, fax2email, delivery of my modem. Remember, these services have costs, and are making up a portion of the monthly subs. If you make delivery cost e.g. R50, then everybody's subs can go down e.g. R1. If you charge for 24hr support vs. e.g. working-hour support, subs can come down. Charge R10 for somebody who wants [email protected] and 5 other aliases - my sub can then come down.
 
wats the point of us busy talking about it here.. it aint gonna change anything . prices will probably still go up... and for less cap
 
JustinB said:
I do not use my [email protected] email address, which is included "free" in my monthly subs, nor do i use the other "free" value-adds such as 24hr support, fax2email, delivery of my modem. Remember, these services have costs, and are making up a portion of the monthly subs. If you make delivery cost e.g. R50, then everybody's subs can go down e.g. R1. If you charge for 24hr support vs. e.g. working-hour support, subs can come down. Charge R10 for somebody who wants [email protected] and 5 other aliases - my sub can then come down.
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These are some good ideas but I think that those who use these services may complain. Iburst are just trying to figure out a way to make changes while still making a 100% or more profit. Once they get that figured out we will get our price changes.
 
JustinB said:
Contracts only favour the provider because the provider is not passing the benefit back to the customer! E.g. R600 p.m. at virgin active on m2m vs. R350 p.m. on 12 month contract vs. R300 p.m. on a 24 month contract. I know it is a different industry, service, everything, but it does illustrate what I mean.
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I'm not going to attempt to compare it to the Cellular model here because that Industry is riddled with issues of it's own and there are dedicated threads for those.
What does apply to all industries is economy of scale and the fact that generally consumers know when something is overpriced.
Consumers do not buy into something where they feel they are being overcharged unless they have no other option, and in that case they purchase the bare minimum.
Thus income per customer is reduced whereas if the price/service etc. is good the opposite is true.

JustinB said:
I think I'm being misinterpreted to say prices charged by iburst are justified, I'm not saying that at all. I think most providers, including iburst, probably have no idea what their costs actually comprise of, they probably work out at a point in time that their current customer base uses x amount of data, the total company costs are Ry, and they divide Ry by x to get a cost per gb, and then they add some mark-up. This totally misses the opportunity to say "hey, you know what, if we increase data usage to double, the price per gb actually comes down by 30%, and we'd be way more competitive, get a whole bunch more customers, and our margins would still be intact!". It also spreads the costs of their activities across all customers when not all customers make use of them. E.g. I do not use my [email protected] email address, which is included "free" in my monthly subs, nor do i use the other "free" value-adds such as 24hr support, fax2email, delivery of my modem. Remember, these services have costs, and are making up a portion of the monthly subs. If you make delivery cost e.g. R50, then everybody's subs can go down e.g. R1. If you charge for 24hr support vs. e.g. working-hour support, subs can come down. Charge R10 for somebody who wants [email protected] and 5 other aliases - my sub can then come down.
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You make an interesting point.
Whether making services you mention optional will have an impact on prices is difficult to say without knowing the true costs of said as you stated.
24 Hour support for me personally is a 'must have'.
 
theone said:
These are some good ideas but I think that those who use these services may complain. Iburst are just trying to figure out a way to make changes while still making a 100% or more profit. Once they get that figured out we will get our price changes.
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IF ADSL becomes cheaper than iBurst I will change over immediately. Likewise if Neotel comes into my area, I will try that out and change over if the performance is even in the 1 Mb/sec range.

If iBurst can compete, I would prefer to stay with iBurst and not pay TELKOM any line rental fees but I can't subsidize iBurst with R499 boosters.
 
Volt4ge said:
wats the point of us busy talking about it here.. it aint gonna change anything . prices will probably still go up... and for less cap
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They can't increase prices as everyone is dropping them. Look at R199 for 1GB of cap, what will they increase it to, when R70 buys you the same on ADSL?
 
PeterCH said:
IF ADSL becomes cheaper than iBurst I will change over immediately. Likewise if Neotel comes into my area, I will try that out and change over if the performance is even in the 1 Mb/sec range.
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Neotels coverage sucks. I'd have tried out Neotel long ago if only I had coverage in my area.
 
theone said:
Neotels coverage sucks. I'd have tried out Neotel long ago if only I had coverage in my area.
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Agree with you 100%. However, IF it comes to my area - and there is coverage only about 1km away - and iBurst is still R999 for 10GB, R999 for uncapped will seem a better option, unless Neotel is really as bad as they say it is. Seeing how people demonise iBurst (and I usually get 1Mb/sec consistently) I am hopeful I'll see the same with Neotel.
 
PeterCH said:
Agree with you 100%. However, IF it comes to my area - and there is coverage only about 1km away - and iBurst is still R999 for 10GB, R999 for uncapped will seem a better option, unless Neotel is really as bad as they say it is. Seeing how people demonise iBurst (and I usually get 1Mb/sec consistently) I am hopeful I'll see the same with Neotel.
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+1 I'm with peter here, and neotel is available in my area now. Last month I used my full 5gig @R599 plus an extra 3gig @499, so 8 gig for R1000?!? Neotel is looking good! In my opinion the bechmark is set, there should never ever be another package for over R1k.
 
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PeterCH said:
Seeing how people demonise iBurst (and I usually get 1Mb/sec consistently) I am hopeful I'll see the same with Neotel.
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Same here, I have a good signal and no issues with their billing.

I am happy with iBurst, I'm just not happy with their booster prices and packages.
 
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