I agree that there is need to invest in more bandwidth inline with the expected/current no. of customers. The problem is that to invest in bandwidth and ISP will require huge investments and that money has to come from somewhere. Personally i think that a business should be able to sustain its growth without dipping to its owners pockets, other wise what would be the use of owning such a business and how will it be beneficial to to the customers should the business wind up. What i am saying is that ISPs need adopt carefully crafted startegies that will give value to both customers and owners and can cope with the increasing costs associated with the never ending modernisation of telecom equipments inline with the technology changes.

On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 5:09 PM, Kevin Mutuma <kkmtumah@gmail.com> wrote:
The Original post was by one Mr. Tom Makau.


On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 4:52 PM, Kevin Mutuma <kkmtumah@gmail.com> wrote:
Safaricom and all you other people supporting this move need to understand one thing; Unlimited internet is not a want anymore....It's a NEED. People need this services more than ever. The same way Thika road gets congested and they call in the Chinese to build super expansive highways,not limit how many times you use your car in a month and give you a formula of when to be on the road and when not to.( The equivalent of throttling speeds).

We are in the digital era where someone in Australia makes a video of how some Ugandan LRA leader is abducting child soldiers and using them as sex slaves goes viral in days and everyone goes on you tube to view and download. Smartphone,modem and tablet alike-all needing to use the same pipe to get the same content. Will you restrict this because it does not make business sense? People will leave your network and flock where they can access whatever they want at anytime for however long. China, India the worlds biggest countries have unlimited tariffs and their networks are flourishing.(China has two companies in the Top 10 Telecom Company in the world)

Simply put, Its a problem we have to embrace and mitigate solutions for; not lock out your customers and give them conditions - the same people making you money. I am pleased with what Orange is doing for example. They Identified the NEED and its solution? Simple..get more bandwidth with the launch of LION2. Too see this, click here. Investing heavily in bandwidth is what has gotten the top companies where they are. Other solutions can be investing in technologies that have more bandwidth capacity such as WIMAX, WiFi, fibre-to-home etc. How come we haven’t heard Zuku, Access Kenya and other WiMAX/fibre ISPs complaining of abuse? They have always billed fixed monthly amounts, and it works for them. Safaricom and all other Telcos feeling the pinch should simply start selling Unlimited Internet via WiMAX USB dongles on 16e mobile WiMAX and WiFi in high traffic areas like Nairobi CBD and get serious on their traffic engineering models to ensure a balanced ecosystem.

At the end of the day, what Safaricom see as saving some money now may be a huge loss in market share in the near future, a dip they may never recover from if they chose to ease up on policy, seeing as the competition is very tight. Its not all doom and gloom though, at least there are other companies offering the same for now.. The Oranges and the Airtels.

My opinion,
Kevin,



On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 1:13 PM, Stephen Munguti <kamitu.sm@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi kevin i disagree with some parts of your analysis. Unlimited internet can be profitable with the right tools and pricing strategy and policies, it all depends on what the ISP is trying to achieve. Its not something that you should wake up one day and decide to do (Safaricom/Orange case). It will require some years of careful analysis of user traffic patterns. Like all things technical the more you in a hurry the more you mess up.

You are required to ensure that the pricing represents the average network use of people paying for unlimited and do not hammer the links and people that pay for unlimited and hammer the links. Personally knowing kenyans the people that pay and hammer the links will be very near 100% of the total unlimited internet customers, so safcom/orange can figure out what the average data for this users are and price based on that. This should include usage at night where people leave downloading torrents. So basically the charge will be very high for most kenyans. The issue of blocking/limiting torrents bandwidth is out of question as this is like having someone buy a car and then give them rules on how they should use it.

There are two areas you can employ QOS, the Backbone and to the end user, Real backbone QOS require an understanding of traffic engineering (ATM, MPLS, Frame Relay, Metro ethernet) while the end users can be under host to host or based on flow QOS. I think i should get you a QOS book for CCIP. Cisco certifications are from layer 4 downwards. The reason people get cisco certified is because of the amount of reading materials provided over the internet. If you carefully understand the contents of the cisco books the knowledge acquired is more than CISCO, since the only part that is CISCO is the commands, the rest are IEEE and RFC standards that all vendors must adhere to. Ofcourse the books always state that a certain feature is only available in CISCO. I think the main problem here is the dumps found all over the internet that cheat a student that once they pass the exams then they qualify to be called Network engineers. I speeak from experience and prefer reading CISCO books even when i intend to do a Juniper Exam or handle other vendors equipment. Then find one of the manuals and figure how to implement my concepts on the said vendors equipment

Also traffic engineering principles are very theoretical and that is why we need to observe traffic characteristics over time inorder to come up with a  traffic engineering solution.


On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 12:19 PM, Kevin Mutuma <kkmtumah@gmail.com> wrote:
@Moses

Eh Homie, You must have been caged in a GREEN cell wearing a loyalty shirt. Orange 3G does that day in day out. I just looked at my history speed analysis and The least I have gotten at peak times this year is 1.6Mbs.

On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 11:58 AM, Moses Muya <mouzmuyer@gmail.com> wrote:
As a result of my frustrations with Limited "Unlimited" by the said company...I am testing Airtel today for possible migration. My jaw is on the floor man! I had these documents that were sent to me, I clicked 'Save' n waited...little did I know they had downloaded immediately n I was there waiting! Oh,did I mention I am also streaming my favourite gospel hip-hop tunes as I download some open source software that I need? Where else have you seen download speeds of 235 KiloBytes/Sec (1.88Megabits/Sec)? :) If this goes on, I'm going to retain my Saf line for sending money to my grandmother in the countryside! :)

On 19 April 2012 10:41, Philip Musyoki <pmusyoki@gmail.com> wrote:
Anyway, who has been using Airtel 3G and how has it been? I have always been sceptical of Airtel but it does not hurt to hear about their services.

And yu? What are they up to these days?

_______________________________________________
Skunkworks mailing list
Skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke
------------
List info, subscribe/unsubscribe
http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks
------------

Skunkworks Rules
http://my.co.ke/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=94
------------
Other services @ http://my.co.ke



--
Kind Regards,

Moses Muya.


_______________________________________________
Skunkworks mailing list
Skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke
------------
List info, subscribe/unsubscribe
http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks
------------

Skunkworks Rules
http://my.co.ke/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=94
------------
Other services @ http://my.co.ke


_______________________________________________
Skunkworks mailing list
Skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke
------------
List info, subscribe/unsubscribe
http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks
------------

Skunkworks Rules
http://my.co.ke/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=94
------------
Other services @ http://my.co.ke



--

Best Regards,
Stephen Munguti.

+254702945908






--

Best Regards,
Stephen Munguti.

+254702945908