Vodacom 3G , a big scam

Colin62 said:
Vodacom are discounting bandwidth if you use a lot - the bigger bundles are cheaper per MB than the smaller ones, and if there was no expiry date, that would have the effect of levelling the price across all users - everyone would but 10GB at the best price, and use it as slowly as needed. Most companies allow their bigger customers a better price, and there is nothing wrong with that.

...

You will always have an expiry date on your bandwidth - it's just a case of what is deemed reasonable. No-one would argue too seriously against a ten year expiry, and no-one would accept one day. People are buying with a 30 day expiry - that is the figure that the market has tolerance for. Even your employer has a cap on the amount of leave that you can accumulate - same principle - it's an accounting liability and the company's exposure to risk needs to be managed.
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Oh, stop making sense, it's daylight robbery, I tell you!
;)
 
the simple fact is that what they are doing is not illegal. the companies have not incentive to do anything else. remember when unused airtime expired on ur contract? that went on & on until one of them decided to start carrying it over - it wasn't regulation that forced them to do it just competition.

all you got to do is wait a couple of months (more likely years) and they will start carrying it over.
 
well i see it like this............... the current economic state of South Africa everythings getting more expensive and the precious Bandwidth we have needs to be rolled over so we the people can also save a little money somewhere........................


the rich continually get richer while the middle class get screwed..
 
Hi All. I'm new to the forums...
Im sorry, but I also feel like Vodacom is ripping us off.

I feel that Vodacom should extend the data bundle expiry date to at least 3 months / 90 days. Also, I believe that there are network providers overseas that sell unlimited data bundles... Erm, why dont we get offered something like that?

Also, do you guys know that if you're on a topup contract, you cannot transfer that airtime? Im sorry, did i not PAY for that airtime? So how can Vodacom tell me what I can and can't do with it?? Oh, and I also cannot get myself a data sim! Im upset because I need a data bundle every month as I have to work remotely. Now, I have enough credit on my contract account (topup 315) to buy a data bundle but Vodacom refuses to allow this. Now I have to fork out more cash to recharge the sim in my modem.

I just feel that the whole data service Vodacom provides is a rippoff...
 
This thread confuses me :confused:

From what I understand, Vodacom (or MTN/CellC/VM) did not force anyone to sign a contract for their services. The contract was signed out of choice and the no-rollover clause was in the original contract. So how can this be "ripping us off"?

You knew the facts, then you signed the contract - in my words, this means you accepted the conditions. Willing seller/willing buyer....... :p
 
I doubt you'll get a willing seller in that respect....

While I dislike the lost data aspect of 3g atm, it was part of the original contract that I signed when I got the service, therefore I abide by it... its not a big trainsmash in my life and I don't see the need to go around trying to trash a companies name because you don't like something in a contract that you WILLINGLY signed.
 
While it's correct that the terms of the contract is known to everyone upfront, I'm keen to hear the views of those opposed to a time limit on roll-over on how they would do it.

So basically the question is;

How would you structure a product where you buy bandwidth in bits/second but sell it as data bundles in bytes?
 
v3g : I don't think people are evening beginning to understand the complexities of the issue (and i for one do not profess to understand them either), but I'm guessing people are just seeing that they're being offered 1gb of transfer a month, and want it to be treated like minutes, where if you don't use it all it carries over for a period of time...
 
vodacom3g said:
While it's correct that the terms of the contract is known to everyone upfront, I'm keen to hear the views of those opposed to a time limit on roll-over on how they would do it.

So basically the question is;

How would you structure a product where you buy bandwidth in bits/second but sell it as data bundles in bytes?
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So are you saying: If Vodacom is buying X capacity international traffic from a provider how do you then chop that up into bundles for consumers and make sure they each have an acceptable service?
 
morkhans said:
So are you saying: If Vodacom is buying X capacity international traffic from a provider how do you then chop that up into bundles for consumers and make sure they each have an acceptable service?
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Pretty much.

As an analogy, think of buying a stream of water (say a river) that flows 10 000 liters per hour. For this you pay a certain monthly figure, irrespective if you use the water or not.

You now want to on-sell the water.

To make the water more affordable to small-scale users, you sell them water per bucket.

But you can't buy a bucket of water and then keep it in your garage. This is a limitation of the system.

So, rather they buy a 'bucket of water' and get to tap into the river over a period till the bucket is full. Then they can buy a new, empty bucket.

This model works fine if there is some predictability on how quickly a bucket will be filled. You need to know how many people will be filling up their buckets over a specific time to work out how strong the river must flow to handle all potential requests for water.

If there is no predictable period in which all the buckets sold will be filled up, a situation could arise where suddenly a large number of buckets try to get water from the river and exceeds to river's capacity to fill them.

One solution could be to make the river bigger (increase the flow rate) to handle such a possibility, but then you pay more for the bigger river and it drives the cost per bucket you charge up.

Even if you just increase the period in which the buckets could fill up, you need to increase the flow rate to handle potential peak demand and thus the price per bucket would go up again.

This crude analogy is exactly what happens with data.

Vodacom buys bandwidth in bits/second from Telkom at a fixed monthly price. Whether this bandwidth is used or not, does not matter. You pay the monthly line rental.

Vodacom then sell bundles in bytes.

The price per bundle is now a factor of the line rental number (the average speed needed plus any headroom for peak demand). The longer the roll-over period, the bigger the peak could be and thus the more expensive bundles will become as the base line speed will have to go up.
 
vodacom3g said:
Vodacom buys bandwidth in bits/second from Telkom at a fixed monthly price. Whether this bandwidth is used or not, does not matter. You pay the monthly line rental.

Vodacom then sell bundles in bytes.
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This is very similar to what Eskom do, they generate electricity (energy) at a certain rate (in Watts, or equivalently, Joules per second). They sell this on in bundles of kilowatt-hours (kWh, or equivalently, 3.6 megajoules). Energy, just like bandwidth, is very difficult to store on a large scale, so whatever is generated and not used during off-peak hours is lost.
Eskom also have to be able to supply the maximum loads experienced during peak hours.

Eskom sell pre-paid bundles of kilowatt-hours (3.6MJ bundles :)), Eskom pre-paid bundles do not expire. Eskom charge less for their pre-paid bundles than they charge for the same amount of energy on post-paid (contract, if you like). They do this because they don't have to worry about sending out bills, collecting the money and dealing with bad debts, and they get their money upfront.

The difference between an ISP and an energy supplier is that ISPs can oversell their bandwidth, because not everybody needs their bandwidth at the same time. If an energy supplier did that, cities would get blacked-out (oh, wait:D).
 
ginggs said:
This is very similar to what Eskom do, they generate electricity (energy) at a certain rate (in Watts, or equivalently, Joules per second). They sell this on in bundles of kilowatt-hours (kWh, or equivalently, 3.6 megajoules). Energy, just like bandwidth, is very difficult to store on a large scale, so whatever is generated and not used during off-peak hours is lost.
Eskom also have to be able to supply the maximum loads experienced during peak hours.

Eskom sell pre-paid bundles of kilowatt-hours (3.6MJ bundles :)), Eskom pre-paid bundles do not expire. Eskom charge less for their pre-paid bundles than they charge for the same amount of energy on post-paid (contract, if you like). They do this because they don't have to worry about sending out bills, collecting the money and dealing with bad debts, and they get their money upfront.

The difference between an ISP and an energy supplier is that ISPs can oversell their bandwidth, because not everybody needs their bandwidth at the same time. If an energy supplier did that, cities would get blacked-out (oh, wait:D).
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:)

The question is, what is the margin that's added to accommodate indefinite 'rollover'?

But while it's still possible to store excess energy and release it when required, I'm pretty sure the first guy that figures out how to save a time-based parameter (such as bits/second) is going to rewrite the physics books ;)

But we all know what the right answer is here; Bandwidth should be so inexpensive that there are no more caps in the first place.
 
Look the analogies above are perhaps a very effective way of explaining things but the fact is Iburst and Cybersmart offer data rollover at a nominal fee, so it's quite practical to expect something similar from MTN/Vodacom. I think which ever service provider is the 1st to offer data rollover may gain a significant edge over its competitors but so long as the South African market laps up their products it doesn't seem either of the 2 big players need to offer anything out of the ordinary...
 
The fact is that on average not everyone will try to use their spare bandwidth at the same time - banks don't have enough cash to pay everyone, because people don't need it all at once - and they can store it if needed. However at the moment you have a mad rush at the end of the month to clear all your bandwidth - if it rolled over a couple of months you'd be able to use it at a leisurely pace over the course of the next month.

It's actually no different from airtime - the network needs to be there to allow all of us to blow our airtime credit at the same time but in reality it isn't going to cope if we did that. But the airtime rolls over (for 5 months). That makes us feel warm and fuzzy, because we are saving it for later. And if we ever get to the point where we have enough to lose any airtime, we actually don't mind all that much, because we've still got a lot stored away, so the few minutes that get lost aren't as serious as they would be if we were losing them at the end of the first month. I am willing to bet (with Vodacom's money ;-) ) that allowing a 90 day window for data will actually smooth the data usage rather than endanger network stability.
 
Vodacom's data bundles are just plain too expensive to begin with. If it wasn't so expensive, people wouldn't be complaining about the rollover. If Vodacom get their bandwidth from Telkom we should see per gig rates similar to that of ADSL. I can even understand if its a bit more expensive, what like 20%, 30%, 50%? But I can buy a gig of unshaped data from AXXESS for R99. Why does my Vodacom 1GB data bundle cost almost 3 times as much? Fact is we're paying ridiculous amounts of money for a service that is unpredictable at best.
 
TMoose said:
Vodacom's data bundles are just plain too expensive to begin with. If it wasn't so expensive, people wouldn't be complaining about the rollover. If Vodacom get their bandwidth from Telkom we should see per gig rates similar to that of ADSL. I can even understand if its a bit more expensive, what like 20%, 30%, 50%? But I can buy a gig of unshaped data from AXXESS for R99. Why does my Vodacom 1GB data bundle cost almost 3 times as much? Fact is we're paying ridiculous amounts of money for a service that is unpredictable at best.
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Once the data packets leave Telkom's network, how do they get to your PC?
 
vodacom3g said:
Once the data packets leave Telkom's network, how do they get to your PC?
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So it is more expensive to get the packets from the SAT3 cable to the Vodacom tower than it is to get those packets from overseas through the SAT3 cable?

I always thought telkom were ripping people off with their SAT3 prices ;)

My feeling is that it is a supply and demand problem. If Vodacom were to reduce their prices more people will use them. Can their network handle more traffic? If not, keep the prices high :D
 
Pilgrim : A cellular network is considerably more complex than the wireline network that Telkom run, which would explain the higher prices... plus you have to factor in all the diginet links that VC have to rent from Telkom, over and above the price they pay for sat3 bandwidth...
 
Pilgrim said:
So it is more expensive to get the packets from the SAT3 cable to the Vodacom tower than it is to get those packets from overseas through the SAT3 cable?

I always thought telkom were ripping people off with their SAT3 prices ;)

My feeling is that it is a supply and demand problem. If Vodacom were to reduce their prices more people will use them. Can their network handle more traffic? If not, keep the prices high :D
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The mobile operators are currently between a rock and a hard place.

Firstly, there is not enough back-haul capacity available to grow the network at the required rate. Telkom is thousands (and thousands) of lines behind in supplying lines ordered.

Secondly, the cost is very high, so the more lines you put in, the higher the operational cost is and thus data prices can't fall.

The answer is to get massive capacity into the ground and thus every man and his dog is digging up the roads.
 
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