& do you really think your latency would be improved by this new FUP? Absolutely not! :|
People will still keep downloading… but now with a FUP, they’ll just time it round the clock - the will no more peak hours!!! Anytime will be peak. :(

Let’s be practical.
You are asking for a leased line? Do you think anyone can afford a Rs 1860 256k connection? (More here) I bet 99% of us can’t! So where’s the fairness?
Orange is literally forcing the FUP on us, without providing any alternatives!

Before the FUP, there was My.T & Wanadoo ADSL. My.T was a kind of dynamic FUP (capped at 1GB) & Wanadoo ADSL was unlimited (in every sense of the word unlimited). There was a choice - if you wanted a reliable connection, you went for ADSL & if you wanted a “less reliable one” there was always My.T.

& what would Joe Bloggs do if he can’t even download his invaluable coursework bcoz his connection is limited to 1GB? Huh? :)

The total lack of transparency surrounding this FUP just makes people to mistrust Orange more than ever.

The whole network is being submerged. Instead of increasing network capacity (more fibre links), they are cutting down on user usage. Maximizing profits while minimizing costs obviously… :|

Orange sucks. Period.

Comment by carrotmadman6 — Sunday, 4 May 2008 03:41 GMT #

My internet tubes are clogged. Can you help me?
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3073/2462758273_004054cbd4.jpg

Comment by S — Sunday, 4 May 2008 04:32 GMT #

You talk about being practical, but you think the opposite way. If you want to be practical, you should know that only SAFE connects Mauritius to the rest of the world (ignoring the inefficient satellite links) and that the bandwidth is limited. You should also know that the service suffers if only a relative few download large volumes of data continuously. You should then know that this imbalance is what makes the service bad for YOU.

So, are you saying that it is fair for YOU to download 1GB in one session while others experience bad service? And, that it is unfair for others to download 1GB while your bandwidth is capped for a few hours?

Fair use policy is meant to prevent just this kind of situations. It levels the playing field for all users by throttling bandwidth on the fly based on consumption. With FUP, Joe Bloggs would always be able to download his PDF because the other Joes down the road would not be able to leech (keyword being “leech”).

The tariff you link to is not for leased line. I’m afraid you’ll need much more than Rs 1,860 to afford one.

Eddy.

Comment by Eddy — Sunday, 4 May 2008 10:08 GMT #

ah, I see I am being called out via quote. Very well.

And do shut up with your leased lines. Do you sell them?

exactly what he said. Of course we’re not prepared to pay more! Are you on MT/Orange’s payroll or something? Prices should always be going down and quality of service if not trying to go up should be stabilising to really good. we’re still paying an outrageously high price for a speed in KBPS. I’ll type it again KBPS. we should be getting at least 1MBPS unlimited for what we’re paying for MyT.

physical limit? eff’ the physical limit! that can be fixed. not very easily but most definitely without too much difficulty. Especially if you are a Telecom and telecommunication is your business.

The main point you, my dear eddy, are with an unusual relish jumping into a ditch(though possibly a fairly clean and dry one but a ditch nonetheless) to avoid realising is that instead of protecting what little they claim they have, they should be looking to increase the bandwidth. Satellite, more fibre optics, what have you. Is that india and China I see up north? why not from there? and along the east african coast. not too many geological fault lines there.

If they have more resources, the prices will go down and the quality of service will increase. All of em keep going on on how they want to free market, I am telling you about free market. I am looking at my interest, not Joe Bloggs’. If Joe want to download his pdf one in a while he can use dailup and not get an “ADSL” line he won’t be using to its fullest. it’ll probably be faster and cheaper anyway.

the class action suit I suggested was against this dodgy new clause that seems to go against what the offered service is being described as. not to mention violating the user’s privacy by monitoring what he is downloading.

and a class action suit is for people who find they have a common interest. There’s a nuance there. Instead of mounting several small lawsuits, they pile a big one and compound resources to be more effective. Compounding resources is exactly what MT should be doing instead of FUPing around with us.

and yup I leech manga. about 100mb per month, upload and download. you telling me you only use your connection to work? I won’t believe that even for a second. and I bet you don’t have one of ‘em snappy leased line and if you find that one second lag on remote desktop is that bad, why aren’t you getting one?

No you aren’t. look, your eyebrows are starting to singe.

Comment by Ketwaroo D. Yaasir — Sunday, 4 May 2008 11:01 GMT #

Oh yes, SAFE is being overwhelmed, when there’s more users, speed decreases.

The FUP is a short-term solution to a long-term international bandwidth problem. EASSY was supposed to be here by 2008 - which by best estimates has been postponed to 2010. MT had already calculated that EASSY would come right in time to relieve the increasing traffic load. But unfortunately, EASSY was delayed & Orange had to implement a FUP.
Sounds fair enough that any company should restrict traffic if their network is being overused. But if MT really wanted to improve their speeds, they would have invested into their own fibre optic links…

I’m not against the FUP. I’m against imposing ridiculous cap limits on ADSL connections - how can you even cap a 128k connection that isn’t even broadband!? :|
Everyone should have the right to download 1GB in one session… but certainly not 10GB+ in one session!
That’s what i’m trying to point out - if Orange wants to cap our connections, then do it, but at reasonable limits - certainly not 1GB/month!??! That’s totally UNFAIR.

There’s also this question of the FUP being indiscriminately applied to all ADSL connections. No choice at all.
With the FUP, there’s a risk that it will create a precedent, become permanent & will never be lifted off in the future. So we would always have crippled connections… :(

& why are 128k & 512k users paying more for less? ADSL 128k & My.T 256k are priced similarly, with both having the FUP - where’s the logic?? :(

Comment by carrotmadman6 — Sunday, 4 May 2008 12:22 GMT #

@Ketwaroo: Yours was an amusing comment, and you obviously missed my wake-up call.

So according to you, the management team would just have to place a phone order for a couple multimillion-rupee routers and a peering agreement with an ISP in Europe and the problem would be resolved overnight? Well, keep dreaming.

I admit I don’t have a leased line, but I do have a 10 mbps connection that is subject to FUP. And, I’m happy for it, as it ensures that my neighbour and I get equal service. This is in England, BTW. In Mauritius, I use an Emtel HSDPA connection (see picture above) whenever the latency makes the ADSL connection unusable for remote desktop. Mind you, I complained about high latency, but not capped downloads because FUP made it so that I always got full 512 kbps. See? When I don’t like a service, I choose an alternative, I don’t tell Orange how to run their business.

Eddy.

As said, I am immune to flame.

Comment by Eddy Young — Sunday, 4 May 2008 17:54 GMT #

Is it? Hadn’t noticed.

If it is, then what is your concern then?

My argument is, and remains: I paid for an advertised service, was already getting less in return and reasonably getting mightily ticked off at suggestions of reducing it further. and you missed the whole “we’re going to monitor your traffic” bit.

and I will keep dreaming because they do have those multimillions. The point where you start heaving bricks though their windows in the hopes of maiming a senior executive is when you ask why aren’t they investing those multimillions where they should be.

Now, you probably know that the Mauritian government, in fact a few of Mauritian governments in succession, have been going on about cyberislands and stuff. you might even say this is A Government Policy. If they want the goddam cyberisland, they had better start investing.

The same was done for the textile industry. before you could build factories you need the infrastructure to support them. Then you need roads and powerlines, now you need cables. I didn’t miss any wake up call but they definitely missed theirs.

haha! we’re talking a session how many months long here? my opinions differ. I think you should be able to download 10GB in one go. It would be absolutely fantastic if we could actually do this in Mauritius. Bandwidth is not something limited in time. it’s not like there’s a fixed reservoir of bytes and if you “take” 10Gb out of it, you’ll need to wait for digital rainfall to come along to fill back those 10Gb. (discounting idiotic policies of course)

carrotmadman pointed out EASSy, but that doesn’t mean MT or the Mauritian government can’t make their own move because they know who to talk to and how to get it done. They really should stop being such wusses and take decisive actions. AND NOT AGAINST THEIR ALREADY DISGRUNTLED CLIENTS!

I’m even writing a letter to whom it may concern, that is, once I single out those who it concerns. The only problem so far is that I fail to write it in a way that doesn’t suggest that they are blithering idiots and should be pig farming instead of just looking fat in their suits.

also, amusing is usually used as defensive argument when one does not to know what to retort. You may find amusing what you want, I frankly have to tell you that I am not laughing. I could for example tell you “Oh look out! there’s a three-headed monkey behind you about to mug you and make off with your scooter.” You may find the three-headed monkey part amusing but it will still mug you and leave you poorer by a scooter. This is of course almost entirely unrelated to the current discussion but you can contrive any analogy you wish from it.

and for note, I may not be an professional (if it sounds to you like I’m telling the professionals how to their job, they you may be right. I’m on the receiving end and I can tell you they are making a pig’s ear of it) but I do understand, to some degree, the limits of commmunication networks. what limits bandwidth is not the limit of the physical medium, you can ALWAYS add more wires improve routing and switching, stuff. The real culprits are the policies set by those who own administrate the physical medium. And those policies suck.

sidetracking: why do you sign your comments “Eddy”…… I mean….. on your own blog…..? habit?

Comment by Ketwaroo D. Yaasir — Sunday, 4 May 2008 20:01 GMT #

edit — I insist, your roof is on fire.

Comment by Ketwaroo D. Yaasir — Sunday, 4 May 2008 20:02 GMT #

I am trying to get into the habit of signing my posts.

I’ll have to discard your comments about the government’s plans for the cyber-island. I could give my opinions which mostly reflect yours, but I’m too well aware that the only ways I can change things are with my vote and whom I give my custom to. Besides, it would distract from the topic.

Bandwidth is limited in time. That’s why you can download only so much per second. Don’t tell me that you hadn’t figured out what ‘kbps’ and ‘mbps’ stand for! Anyway, the bandwidth allocated to MT on SAFE is just as limited as yours is, so obviously restrictions are necessary.

I’m not siding with the ISP. I’m only trying to educate about the FUP to spare you the frustration of trying to fight it.

I guess I feel concerned because I have empathy. Also, I’m a customer of Orange myself.

Eddy.

Comment by Eddy Young — Sunday, 4 May 2008 22:14 GMT #

I hear you about the SAFE limitation.

That why I plodded at rather great lengths on the stupidity of policies.

Well maybe not time as in per seconds. More like time left to the end of the Universe. I probably should have said amount.

Say if mauritius had a limited amount of terabytes per months leased on the SAFE cable and exceeded that, the whole country would be deprived of that bit of internet until next month. Bet you’d find that very curious too.

Now, I’m not trying to be contrary here but I have an alternate take on empathy for you:

take the guy, we shall call kyle, who is paying his 512kbps (advertised as unlimited) connection from Orange.

Kyle is all “woohoo! I can download everything I want! and fast! all the time!” and happily does so.

Kyle downloads all sort of things, even things he does not need. he downloads things for his friends too. and even things for his friends that his friends don’t need. why? because he can. he has “unlimitedness”. He paying for it, he can do what he wants with it.

All is sweetness and bliss on kyle world. Not a worry in sight. until…

More subscribers come along to Orange

Orange finds that it can’t supply all those subscribers and sneaks in a FUP in the contract.

then Orange says to Kyle “onoes, you can’t has unlimitedness no moar,sry but you still pays same prices lololol kthxbai ”

you might think that kyle had it coming and it all well and done but think how Kyle is feeling. He’s still paying for the 512 unlimited. but he’s no longer getting that.

Kyle doesn’t know that you think he was abusing anything. he’s no network technician. As far as he is concerned, he’s just using what he paid for and what was made available to him.

Saying that kyle should have read his contract through and through before signing anything is rather self-righteous, don’t you think? Contracts and Term of service are written in a way as to be obfuscated to the end user. And even if you noticed the “terms are subject to change” clause you aren’t necessarily expecting them to backstab you with it whenever they feel it suits them best.

So if it’s not kyle’s fault, not your fault, not my fault, I say it’s the ISP’s fault for overselling in the first place. Retrofitting a FUP like that is appalling behaviour. Its literal skulduggery. I probably would have found out if it weren’t for Metoo’s blog post.

Anyway, we both know the why of the FUP. Now ask yourself the “why not?”

why can’t kyle have his unlimited 512 that he pays for? why can’t you and me have your whatever connection we use at a reliable quality and all the time?

the answer lies somewhere on the trajectory of a brick being hurled through a window at a passing Telecom senior executive. possibly…

Comment by Ketwaroo D. Yaasir — Sunday, 4 May 2008 23:43 GMT #

If I were Kyle, I’d resign the contract and claim compensation for the missing bandwidth. I’d then reconsider what options are available to me. Maybe I’ll sign up to the same ISP, but being aware this time. What I won’t do is telling the ISP how to run its business, as this would be pretentious. (Having said this, I proposed different business and residential tariffs in the past, which I like to think was adopted. So maybe you should thank me for not paying Rs 5,000 for a 512 kbps connection.)

Eddy.

Comment by Eddy — Monday, 5 May 2008 08:33 GMT #

Kyle: Hello, I would like to terminate my contract, thank you.
Orange: lol
Kyle: Excuse me?

you can guess the rest. Have you ever tried doing that yourself? I mean getting your money back.

“how to run their business”? That is a rather big assumption. It would be rather weak to assume that they always know what they are doing. And it definitely seems that they are stuck in first gear and can’t find the clutch. If they were “running their business”, as you say, properly I wouldn’t be telling them how to do it.

I don’t think so, no. We’d all like to think all sort of things. and you are thinking on the wrong side of the wall(’wall’ in the metaphorical sense. whatever that means). You are mostly concerned with how the ISP can make profit off a single external line i.e. SAFE. I’m concerned about making more connections to the outside. I’d like to think (see above) that I’m looking at the much bigger picture (and still considering all the improvements it can bring on the smaller scale).

I could go on but it’ll be mostly a repeat of what I’ve already written in previous comments, here and on noulakaz.net. You should also read the stuff on carrotman’s blog.

I’ll leave it at that.

Comment by Ketwaroo D. Yaasir — Monday, 5 May 2008 13:59 GMT #

OK, you don’t need to thank me. But, at least acknowledge that I am the only freaking person to have ever taken a public stand against MT for the fees that they were charging in the beginning for ADSL.

ADSL petition. Unfortunately, the database has been archived and you cannot see the massive list of signatures on the petition. Two things happened shortly after the petition went out: 1) residential tariffs for ADSL were lowered, and 2) business tariffs were raised. I don’t think it was a coincidence, but rather a realisation that there was the solution to make everyone happy.I raised a petition that made it in the local press in 2002 (2003), and I was not even in Mauritius then. See

Eddy.

Comment by Eddy — Tuesday, 6 May 2008 00:22 GMT #

I don’t think you’d like to suggest that you helped engineer the current situation whereby much much more households were made able to afford ADSL and therefore end up consuming more and more bandwidth. And with one thing leading to another, our allocated bit of the SAFE line gets used up and we getting FUP’ed.

Of course, I may just be rambling but its still a possibility. Not an unlikely one though not necessarily my opinion. From just considering many view points, most arguments usually come to a moot point. You could say that I hold very few actual “opinions” just from that. One of them is still that not enough has been done to increase the connection of the island to the rest of the world. And that is still the nub of the matter.

The FUP may be towards better sharing. But it’s still a sign that that the infrastructure is getting inadequate. If there were more cables we wouldn’t have to worry too much about sharing.

There’s till only SAFE. but if they start by adding another cable. then another. and another. and so on. As I said India isn’t that far away. neither is Reunion. or Madagascar. and the east coast of Africa. We’re taking about distances which can afford pretty large bandwidth optical lines with fairly few repeaters. no repeaters between the islands in fact (even to Rodrigues). And we’re not at war with any other country in the I.O. so if we keep at it, we’d end up like South Korea or Japan.

But I don’t think a petition won’t be quite enough to get what I want to happen going. probably will have to spam some of the “policy makers”. What you decide is affected by the options available to you. and they have the options.

like you explained the advantages to MT in your petition call, the obvious advantages that can be explained here, to whom it concerns, are for their cyberisland. and it will only get better for us, the individual users.

Eventually, they will also have to think abut getting rid of all that sugarcane that doesn’t sell very well and start planting more things that we can actually eat. and all sorts of other stuff.

and I quite like coincidences. they happen to me all the time. Everything is interconnected you see.

Comment by Ketwaroo D. Yaasir — Tuesday, 6 May 2008 19:20 GMT #

[...] Mauritius is not so retarded technologically, as some would want us to think. [...]

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[...] Orange (ex-Telecom Plus) are trying to cut corners with such gimmicks as Fair Use Policy and monthly download caps, Emtel is bent on serving their customers as best as possible. To achieve [...]

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