Altech Technology Concepts ’s big plans in the ADSL and ISP market

De Nobrega however explained that users should not expect them to be the cheapest in the market, but rather a provider with affordable high quality services.
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They should explain how they are going to utilise all their "significant" IPC capacity with an untested network entering a hugely competitive ISP market.

They need a "significant" reason for people to make the switch. If it's not price then it's going to have to be something spectacular.
 
Is it just me or is the term "tier 1" used quite loosely?

The problem is many ISPs have been forced to implement redundancy so if we should "not expect them to be the cheapest in the market" I'd be very curious how they plan on competing with other ISPs as the redundancy card doesn't have such a big impact any more.
 
Here goes another WebAfrica. We're tier 1 hence we have to charge more to recoup the investment, but its better ... somehow.
 
Is this another Vodacom company that doesn't understand what the consumer wants, but rather what they want (to exploit/rape the consumer) as an ISP...
 
Gatecrasher said:
They should explain how they are going to utilise all their "significant" IPC capacity with an untested network entering a hugely competitive ISP market.

They need a "significant" reason for people to make the switch. If it's not price then it's going to have to be something spectacular.
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That exactly the same thing I was thinking. an ISP cant try and sell themselves as being a stable quality service without longstanding proof. Unless they include scantily clad girls that bring me beer and stuff then im not too interested :p
 
The term Tier 1 is used incorrectly in this country and it pisses on my battery BIG time...

Not even Telkom or Neotel can claim Tier 1 ISP status.
 
fluffy54 said:
Here goes another WebAfrica. We're tier 1 hence we have to charge more to recoup the investment, but its better ... somehow.
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They are actually better. They're faster and less shaped or something. I have a WebAfrica account at the moment. Also, they're not affected by seacom outages.
 
De Nobrega however explained that users should not expect them to be the cheapest in the market, but rather a provider with affordable high quality services.
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Haha, what a fail. South African companies seem to think they can get away with charging whatever they want as long as they offer "high quality service". The problem is that this high quality service is very seldom forthcoming or else it's offered for a product that doesn't require it. 99% of the time when a user has an issue with their ADSL product, it's the fault of Telkom anyway and there's nothing the ISP can do anyway, so why exactly are you paying extra for your "high quality service". No thanks, you can keep your "high quality service" and just give me cheap bandwidth.

Consumer ADSL is all about price now, if you can't beat R19 per gig (Axxess) then I don't know why you'd even bother coming into the market.
 
DarkStreet said:
Is it just me or is the term "tier 1" used quite loosely?

The problem is many ISPs have been forced to implement redundancy so if we should "not expect them to be the cheapest in the market" I'd be very curious how they plan on competing with other ISPs as the redundancy card doesn't have such a big impact any more.
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DarkStreet said:
WA is not tier 1.
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ToxicBunny said:
The term Tier 1 is used incorrectly in this country and it pisses on my battery BIG time...

Not even Telkom or Neotel can claim Tier 1 ISP status.
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+1

There is no Tier 1 ISP in SA. There are only about 10 Tier 1 ISP's in the entire world.
 
The part about redundancy is encouraging, although I wish that at some point they plan on ditching SAT-3 for one of the incoming cables.

And yeah, the term 'tier-1' does seem to be thrown around, turning it into some kind of marketing catchphrase. As mentioned before, there are only 10 tier-1 providers worldwide: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network#List_of_Tier_1_networks
 
If Altech was half the price of the next competitor I would still rather use someone else.
 
rorz0r said:
If Altech was half the price of the next competitor I would still rather use someone else.
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+1 with my past experiences with them it will take ALOT to get me to pay for a service that comes from them.
 
I agree that the term is used to loosely as well as the term 'industry expert'. To be fair from a local perspective, I would label the carriers Telkom/Neotel/Mobile operators as Tier-1, then WA, CyberSmart, ATC, IS, MWEB as tier-2 and the rest Afrihost, Axxess tier-3.

Regarding Altech, it is great to see a company with ambition, but I think talk is cheap. To build a world class platform that can contain the local obsession with data is rocket surgery. You never know when your tier-1 providers are going to throw you a curve ball and suddenly you have major holes in your network that users will exploit to get that extra few gigs. It is not as simple as put a cisco here, ipc here, IS transit here and a cherry on the top. So far everyone has failed to get this right.
 
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