Category: IT

Orange Mauritius being generous: ADSL prices fall, MyT speed doubles! (updated)

by
InF

I did say I was going to blog about Orange some time again. There was a news item that told how Orange suggested that prices remain constant and that speed increases, and ICTA wanted that prices fall while speed remains constant, which is plain stupid. However, something nicer appeared on the front of Le Mauricien today (Edit: Today = 26th Feb 2009, I am blogging this article after midnight).

If the news is correct and if what it says really happens, we are going to have a 35-45% price fall in ADSL prices. Do you believe that? A friggin 45% decrease in ADSL prices! MyT is going to follow soon according to that same article! New prices applicable as from 1st March 2009!

Seriously, this is wicked cool. Is it really? Wait a bit, you will see.

There is something I didn’t catch. There is X allowance (X is an integer) and Fair Usage Policy (FUP). I think allowance is a quota where you pay more after exceeding it, while fair usage, you don’t pay but speed falls. That’s me, so don’t consider these words to be a fact.

First lemme give you the prices and other stuff. Everything below refers to ASDL, so no MyT’s for now. 128K refers to 128K ADSL. All prices exclude VAT. Got it?

128K home (1 GB allowance) goes to 256K with 3 GB allowance. Price goes to 434 from 650. 33% fall.

Nothing yet for 128K home (with FUP). It was not mentioned in the article, saying the info was not obtained from MT.

512K home (with FUP) falls to Rs. 750 from the current Rs. 1360.,

The very best news now: There is a new package! 1 Mbps (with FUP) priced at Rs. 1360! That’s the price of the old 512K connection! Theoretically, you can now get twice the speed for the same price!

Then for ASDL Pro, for those who interested. Vat Included I think.

256K goes to Rs. 800 from Rs. 950 (3GB cap).

512K goes to Rs. 1300 from Rs. 1540.

For Rodrigues, same thing for ADSL home. For ADSL home 256 goes to Rs. 1600 from Rs. 1860.

Personally, I think this is good news. If not for the ridiculously low capping. (3GB on 256? Seriously? That’s less than a Linux distro DVD!) I also appreciate the introduction of the fair-priced 1 Mbps and I might even consider moving to that one when the new price policies start. That’s how 1 Mbps should have been priced from the very start! Now I can call it accessible. And I can finally thank Orange for listening to me: More speed for the same price. They did just that. I don’t know why ICTA was initially rejecting that, but they were not being rational.

Also, as you noticed, the FUP does not tell what exactly is the limit. I’d greatly appreciate some more information on that. Not this time I guess.

I am done now. Let’s hear your views. Happy? Not happy? What about the capping? Fair? Fair Usage Policy? Love it? Hate it? Suggestions?

EDIT:

Today (Today = 27th Feb 2009), news about MyT offers came out, and it’s very good news for them: Their speed doubles for the same price! 256K users will now have 512K. 512K will have 1Mbps and 1 Mbps will have 2 Mbps! Amazing!

Some new offers were also added, such as a MyT 512K with added TV channels (15 of them) for Rs. 999 / month. There will also be a 2Mbps offer will be available at Rs. 2999/month!

However, as Morinn has pointed out, there must be a catch!

I believe personally have two theories. Either Orange had the possibility to offer those speed and prices from the very start, but for some weird reason, they did not.

Or the more sombre reason: Capping and FUP will now be strictly enforced. As you probably noticed, for some users, even if they exceeded the unknown FUP limits, their speeds were not affected. I don’t know the limits, but I guess they must be around or less than 10GB. The question is: how can Orange offer twice the speed to all users, without making any upgrades to their networks or buying more bandwidth on the SAFE. Maybe I have missed something that was announced, or that it was done internally, but without upgrades, there is no logical way this can be done! Unless capping is strictly enforced.

This will keep heavy downloaders from leeching all the bandwidth, and redistribute the saved bandwidth to other users.

This is just a supposition, but a terrifying one none the least. We don’t know the limits, and therefore, don’t know when or how we are going to be capped.

Also, a commenter mentioned that 3GB capping. There seems to be a difference between capping, properly said, and Fair Usage Policy. As I said above, the “capping” policy is that if you go over the limits, you pay for additional MB’s downloaded. Whereas for FUP, it’s just that your speed decreases. Probably some kind of limit imposed, or that your connection is given less priority.

Another scarier issue: if capping (as in speed reduction) is enforced, it means that connections of users will be monitored to know what they are doing, how much and what they are downloading and from where. All this is just suppositions, but isn’t this called invasion of privacy?

Btw, remember how I was ranting about how my speed on Rapidshare was breaking and resuming every 4-5 seconds? It’s back! My download manager reports a download speed, but my router lights don’t flash. Ewww!

Note: My connection was automatically upgraded to 1Mbps today. I am having around 90-95KBps even 100+ KBps download speeds! AMAZING!! I noticed my upload went to 256 from 128! (Here I come, online gaming!!)

Ok, I stop here now to let you folks talk. I’m out of ideas. Let’s hear yours! :P

Some Updates (and one rant)

by
InF

Hello readers! No, I am not dead nor kidnapped by aliens nor anything else. I am just extremely busy with my life. Hell, CSE eats time. It just ATE my holidays! Who in their sane minds give 3 major assignments in a 2-months holidays?? Blame my lecturers!

I am just here to say sorry that I am unable to blog often now, but hey, it’s life. From now on, I’ll TRY (I say TRY) to blog about short tidbits here and there, instead of long articles. That’s until I end my Year 2, and all the assignments and whatever else associated with it.

For me to get some more sympathy, consider this: I got a test week (6 modules’ tests in one week!) in 3 weeks time. I got to submit 3 assignments (that’s till now, possibly more to come) by the end of the semester. And to conclude it all, I got exams (6 modules again!) that will cover the whole 2nd academic year’s content!! What the HELL! (Same for Guru btw) :/

Therefore, I ask for comprehension from your part. Don’t expect updates too often.

And now, time for the rant. You can guess towards what. ORANGE! :/

Damn them! I just noticed something funny today. I got a router, and I can see lights flash on it when I download. Well, guess what. Every 5 secs, the lights stop flashing, as if the download momentarily pauses. Then it resumes. I just timed it using a stopwatch. Every 5 seconds, there is a break!

Do you think this is normal? I bet this is some new form of capping or download regulation for “heavy” downloaders. I still haven’t exceeded 10GB download this month, so I really want to know what they consider to be “heavy downloading” for a 512K user.

Also, I got something to blog about Orange/Mauritius Telecom. They don’t do everything badly, as one would expect. This article will come soon, probably tomorrow hopefully, so wait for it. It’ll be a short one, I guess.

Pious Maha Shivratree to all. And bye, dear readers. :)

Orange’s Capping Policy hit L’Express Newspaper

by
InF

… and people are not happy! If you want a snapshot of the page, here goes: (Sorry for the quality. I’ve got no scanner)

Orange Article in L\'Express Newspaper

(L’Express of Wednesday 10th September 2008, Page 7)

This article talks about a number of interesting points worth mentioning. It seems that a number of users are not aware that capping policies were put in place, and continued downloading as they used to without caring for a limit. And now, Orange is surprising them by saying “Hey! You downloaded too much dude! You will be capped!”.

Personally, I don’t know anybody who got a warning for over-downloading (yet). We know there are capping policies, but I didn’t hear of anybody getting a letter or call, or anything like that to inform them of going over the cap limits.

Next, it seems ACIM (Association des Consommateurs de Maurice – I think) is not very pleased with Orange’s practices, reporting that even if Orange applied their capping in other countries, it should not do so here since there is hardly any competition in the ISP (Internet Service Provider) sector. Abroad, if you are not satisfied with your ISP, you can choose from a dozen others, while here, you are stuck with two or three, like Nomad, DCL and Emtel if you can afford the modem. Azu of MTML is not on par yet, with lowly cap limits of 1GB I think.

ACIM giving the matter focus is a good thing for us all, even if you are not a heavy user. What is heavy usage anyways? Orange says [2000 MP3s or 14 Movies] for ADSL 128K Home and [3000 MP3s or 28 movies] for ADSL 512K Home per month.

Seriously, is this how you measure bandwidth usage? In terms of MP3s or movies? It’s like measuring the speed of an airplane by how many clouds go by in 1 hour! Please, just tell us what is the real cap! Just tell us plainly “You are allowed x GB of bandwidth per month”!

Things like MP3s and Movies have varying sizes. I can say an MP3 has an average size of 5MB and I’m being conservative. A movie, assuming a DVDRIP is 700MB. Notice that no format is given. What is the movie encoded in? AVI? MKV? The size would greatly vary, almost in a 1:2 ratio! Ok, so I assume 700MB, then I estimate the cap to be around 9800MB or 10GB for 128K and 20GB for 512K? We are not told!

And what’s with the idea of telling people they can “download movies” and “download MP3s”? Is that  some kind of condoning of piracy? What I read here is this: “Pirate a bit, but not too much, else your speed goes down”!

Another issue: we are not told by how much our speed decreases. What if my speed goes down from say, 512K to 128K if I go over the cap? That’s 4x less than what I’d be paying for! Plain unfair!

And finally, in countries where caps are implemented, there is the concept of peak time and off-peak time. Caps are only implemented during peak time, and you can leech to your heart’s content off-peak. That is, if ever you find your speed reduced because you went over-cap, then the reduction only applies during peak hour, and the limits are lifted off-peak. This is a good idea, if ever caps are to be implemented. And duh, anyways, the caps abroad are > 200GB! Consider Comcast’s 250GB limit, compared to our paltry 20GB. And we don’t even come close to Comcast’s speed packages, so it’s definitely not worth comparing us with them.

On this, I leave you to your conclusions and comments… :)

NetPC, Low-cost AMDs, Asus Eee: Which one is best for me?

by
InF

A number of interesting developments occurred in a short time in Mauritius. Of these, the oldest was the introduction of the NetPC by Mauritius Telecom. Recently, the Minister of IT and Communications of Mauritius, Mr. Etienne Sinatambou announced that a deal was made with AMD (yes, the CPU maker) to provide low-cost computers to Mauritius at around Rs.10,000 a machine. Again, not bad.

The NetPC and the AMD initiative as I shall call it are good moves, but they each have their respective advantages and disadvantages, which you will learn in this post. You will also learn that there are other alternatives, which are either cheaper, or offer much more value for money at nearly the same price. Ready? Read on…

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Orange UK sees subscribers leave

by
InF

The Register has an article about Orange UK’s subscribers leaving it for other, more juicy ISP offers. Here’s the article:

Customers are continuing to desert Orange’s ADSL offerings, the firm’s results revealed today.

In the six months to 30 June 44,000 net broadband subscribers quit the firm, leaving it with 1.06 million. Orange said its UK broadband customer base was “levelling off”, but figures released in February showed that just 4,000 net subscribers were lost in the last three months of 2007. On its own numbers, Orange’s decline is accelerating.

Despite the toughening economic conditions, the rest of the big six ISPs have maintained the positive trend in their customer base as the market approaches saturation. Orange has claimed that its failure to capitalise on market growth is a deliberate strategy to allow it to sort out problems with its network.

Revenues for the UK Home Communication Services unit, which also includes fixed line voice telephony, fell 7.7 per cent. Much of the sales slide was due to the industry-wide decline in traditional home telephone usage. The proportion of margin-boosting unbundled ADSL lines rose from 23 per cent last year to 40 per cent, however.

I’m not very surprised though, considering the huge amounts of complaints made by Orange users in Mauritius.

Well, I hope that this “exodus” of subscribers as The Register termed it will influence the folks at Orange MU to offer some better services instead of low speed connections (megabit for the masses is a dream!) and weird capping and monitoring policies.

Comments please?

DCL to introduce Wireless Internet in Mauritius

by
InF

DCLWireless

 

I found this interesting article in Le Mauricien today, and I thought I might share it with you folks, if ever you may have missed it.

As you can read, it’s about DCL (Data Communications Ltd.) introducing a wireless Internet connection here in Mauritius. Nothing surprising here, since you might say that Network Plus’ Nomad is already here.

Even I say the same thing, and we all know that whatever the ads may say, Nomad still has some problems in some regions of Mauritius. Can’t blame them if Mauritius is a mountainous country, and if wireless signals can’t go through mountains so well.

Due to the short length of the article, not much details are provided just yet. It appears to be long-range, but there are no details about the underlying technology, for example whether it’s WiMax or something like that.

What is mentioned is “haut débit” which I hope is better than the 256K and 512K that we currently have now (for users like me, megabit is out of price!). I wouldn’t mind a megabit, wireless connection if it’s fairly priced and uncapped (or high cap).

Another good thing. The creation of DCL Telecoms, so this could probably indicate the coming in of another ISP on the national market. DCL was already there, and it’s just that the company *might* dedicate more efforts to Internet now. This is just my opinion, huh! :P

There is not much info now, so let’s wait and see what happens, and if ever the project can survive.

Orange FAQ Updated: More details on FUP?

by
InF

It seems I’m always late with catching up the latest news updates! :(

Anyways, according to TheMediaGuru, the Orange FAQ, particularly the sections on FUP (Fair Usage Policy) have been updated. They can be accessed here. Bear with me for the long analysis. This will probably be the last FUP article for a while, since I’m kind of tired about writing on the same subject over and over, specially when we are dealing with unreasonable limits, and unfair practices.

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