Neotel Fair Usage Policy...Come on!!

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donGuan_201

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:sick: I am on a Neotel Prime "Uncapped" package, I got myself an external arial not 2 long ago to make sure that I get the best possible signal. Just when I thought that I finally got my internet connection sorted out, I realized something funny with my downloads. At days I get awesome downloads through my Rapidshare account then at days I can not even browse the net so slow is my connection...

I am building up a stats / usage archive to try and establish a pattern. But so far I found that after about 2 days of awesome speeds (est. 6GB of downloads), the line speeds drop so much that I have to use my 3G to browse the internet.

I read on some of the forums (unconfirmed) that Neotel has a Fair Usage Policy but on the other hand can not monitor / keep track of line usage; something does not add up then!!! How can they then drop my line speed after a certain amount of transferred downloads!!! I mean the line is afterall marketed under the uncapped section right??

I will post more details as I progress on my stats study....but I think we need to get more information from Neotel so that we can throttle our own downloads not 2 exceed the FUP (if it exists) so that we don't get throttled from Neotel's side up to a point where the connection is useless!!!
 
I'm the one who made the comments regarding the fair usage policy.

From what I've gathered by chatting to other Neotel users who do sorta know about it, they are not supposed to tell people about it as it's not something Neotel talk about.

Ya, I can be ragged about it, told I'm "talking kark" or "I have no proof" but funny enough, I don't need proof, I know what I've been told, I can see how my connection behaves, so it's bloody obvious something is going on and people who know me know I'm very forward, if I have something to say, I will say it... I have NO reason to lie and BS anyone.
 
Awesome gdiza!! so all we need to know then is how we can avoid being throttled so much....:confused:

I am hoping to be able to identify these stats through my study, this is if Neotel does not want to make these available publicly...
 
Look, let me put it this way, I will not mention the users who told me, because they asked me to keep it quiet.

Only 2 people have told me about the FUP information, I recently (today) received a 3rd's comments.

They however did say that;

1. Prime Uncapped users are currently being targetted by the FUP.
2. Hugo himself told them about the FUP, it doesn't affect them because they are NeoFlex users.
3. When possible, Neotel will use 'contention' as blame when infact, it's FUP.

Now Hugo can probably count on his hand how many people he told about this, so he can go and *** those people out himself - but either way, I think Neotel users should know about this!

I told Hugo originally, from the start via telephone call, I will always be open and honest with people regarding my dealings with Neotel, he himself said he appreciated it.

So... he can either come to the party and explain it, or he can continue to BS or he can say that "the 3 people you spoke to are F'ing LYING"

Alll I can say is;

One minute, I'm getting 100KB/s (sometimes more) and the next, for a few days, it's 20-30KB/s (like now!)
 
Yeagh I am totally agreeing with what you are saying and thanks for the open and honest comments, this is what we (Neotel Subscribers) need to get all the kinks sorted out....

I would be hoping and praying for 20-30KB/s, I ran a couple of speed tests and I at most get 5KB/s (ok maybe a bit more, added link to speed test below) which I think is ridiculous as I can not even browse the net properly, I will keep running these tests to check when the connection recovers....

Speed test link: http://www.speedtest.net/result/685197641.png
 
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This whole theory would imply Neotel is paying for their upstream/Seacom/bandwidth PER GB. Why would Neotel care how much you pulled down -historically- ? They would only care how much of the pipe you are using at a given moment in time.

Are you saying they go "oh look, this dude got his 10GB for the month, lets throttle him so we can give someone else more speed" ? What if this "someone else" is not downloading? Do you now remain throttled? What for?

Ok, but lets assume Neotel is doing this. Lets further assume they are doing it because they LACK capacity and are forced to "fiddle" with the contention ratios (almost like Eskom's load shedding) .

What exactly can Neotel do otherwise? [until they have more capacity]. They can either do nothing and that would mean -everyone- will have a weak connection -all the time- OR they can give one group a "super connection" while another group get a "zero connection" and then give everyone a turn. Which would be better?

From a business perspective, doing the "load shedding" aka "rotation" trick will certainly not look as bad as opposed to a "always crappy" situation.


PS: I'm not saying it is out of the question that this is not happening, but i don't think it is as "personal" as people are making it out. Almost like saying "Eskom is checking up on my power usage, when i turn on my aircon for 2 days then they loadshed the area" . I'm sure Neotel might be able to see issues on a -tower- or -area- on the network and possibly adjust priorities [shaping] towards other areas or on protocols , but i can't imagine them going down to user level and throttling a -user- .
 
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Well...I think it might be a case where even the uncapped solutions do in fact have a capped amount that they can not exceed, and this is controlled through this method of throttling, but then the questions remains; "why do they call this an uncapped solution, which is priced a lot higher than the other packages?" when in fact is not really an uncapped solution....

Or if your theory (lack of capacity / bandwidth) is correct, they should not sign more users up as this is only going to make the situation worse and they may never recover the lost users for good....
 
donGuan_201 said:
Well...I think it might be a case where even the uncapped solutions do in fact have a capped amount that they can not exceed, and this is controlled through this method of throttling, but then the questions remains; "why do they call this an uncapped solution, which is priced a lot higher than the other packages?" when in fact is not really an uncapped solution....

Or if your theory (lack of capacity / bandwidth) is correct, they should not sign more users up as this is only going to make the situation worse and they may never recover the lost users for good....
Click to expand...


Well this is not a problem restricted to Neotel, you see this on all ISPs. They are going to sign you up no matter how congested their network is. Have you ever seen an ISP go "sorry, we got too many people, we'll contact you when we have more capacity" ? (ok i heard this from Screamer, but only after things got really really bad)

As for the term "uncapped" . If you look at the ADSL offerings, all of them have a nice little SPEED CAP behind them. This implies there is a cap.

So you should not compare Neotel uncapped [without a speed limit] with a 384 Uncapped solution on ADSL. A 1 Mbit/s uncapped solution on ADSL = way over R1000, more like R1500 a month (4 Mbit/s uncapped = R2500+ a month)

Neotel would most likely have to do the same thing if they want (to come clean) keep up a reasonable quality connection. Even though the technology allows what, 2.4 - 3.2 Mbit/s , their network can't handle everyone using it in an "uncapped" way, hence they'll most likely have to adjust their uncapped solution to either cap your GB or your speed.
 
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True what diablous said, but then again, the contract (we signed) comes into play and it makes it void because they are in breach of it in the sense that they are MODIFYING the service to suite them / their network capabilities.
 
Yea, i'd think the contracts are the bigger issue here. That's why the new ADSL ISPs are all offering month-to-month so they can easily modify the offering if they can't cope (also less outcry if the user does not like the offering) . Neotel would be forced to do all kinds of dodgy things (instead of being honest and up front) to avoid breach of contract and all the red-tape that will follow...

A month-to-month ISP can actually say "sorry, we can't handle everyone, feel free to cancel, here's your refund for the month " . A contract ISP simply can't, or rather they can, but it will do serious damage to their books [2 year contract is alot of "forward-budgeted" money] .
 
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I do understand that they would never tell a new consumer to rather look for another solution, but this just means that any new users are so mislead with the so called "uncapped" solution offering... :mad:

Well at least other ISPs state that you will be soft capped if you reached your, lets say, 5GB every 3 days or so, where Neotel just throttles the connection without any notice or warnings...

I think it is more of a contract issue at this point, I would much rather pay more money to get a decent and more important, consistent connection....

Neotel have to come clean with all the terms of use and all the rest that goes along with it... I mean what is the point in encouraging everyone to go and spend more money and get external arials to improve the connection and then just throttle the consumers from their side, its really misleading and somewhat pathetic... :D
 
I really want to know if this is true. It would make sense though. First few months do about 120-180GB and after that roughly 30-40GB.
 
ninex said:
I really want to know if this is true. It would make sense though. First few months do about 120-180GB and after that roughly 30-40GB.
Click to expand...

It is true, I noticed the same thing, then when I asked about it, I was told it's congestion etc - but now it all makes sense.
 
MIa

Sorry peeps, been rough over the past few days and weekends, Jeanres knows bout it but not your troubles anyway. Except Neotel challenges, yeah we've got to attend to these.

Fair Usage Policy:
As much as you're convinced there is throttling, THIS IS NOT SO.
Alot can be redirected to users

Take the example below:
8 of you are sharing aconnection, 7 are playing lan one is on torrents with massive download, ask yourself this:
Are the other 7 just going to let him use all the allocation while they suffer or are they going to expel him so they can all be jsutified with inceased speed.

So the same goes for congestion, the more are on with exponential load, the lower the connection is going to be.
Yes sure, we have to attend to the congestion probs on PN's and i've found a new way to tackle these, but it is causing alot of unhappy consumers out there, namely alot of you.

Same for latency - if you have a dormant connection to test the latency and ping rates, you're going to get a good stats
If you're busy with mails in the backend and run the test gain, be reassured your latency will suffer, and though you think you're reading might be reflecting otherwise, this will be very inaccurate.
We therefor do capping to prevent sites overload. A speed of a site download is only capable of exactly that, what the sites server can handle based on volume of users, this is for all international web sites/hosted sites.

We can run this as a question or info session for reply posts:

What do you all think and and your input if we offered a Shaped Package with rights hed and therefore creating a tiered pricing structure to attract a premium price plan?

Just ideas i would like some insight from you from.....

Hugo
 
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"We therefor do capping to prevent sites overload.", what does this mean? Does Neotel Cap their own users to prevent overload on other users sites / servers? :confused:

Good 2 hear that you found a new way of tackling the congestion problems; why would this cause unhappy consumers though? If your new way of resolving this works better that the previous I am sure you will have more happy consumers rather...
 
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