Since the rebranding, Orange in Mauritius has quietly imposed on us its fair use policy which is described as follows on the website of Mauritius Telecom:
[The Fair Use Policy] is designed to make sure your broadband service is as fast as possible and reliable whenever you are connected.
Some of our broadband customers use file sharing software and download large files like music and videos. This uses up lots of network capacity leaving less available for others. This means that the speed of your broadband service is then affected.
Am I likely to be affected by the Fair Use Policy?
If you don’t regularly use file sharing software or download large files from the internet it’s unlikely you’ll ever be affected by this policy.
What will happen if my use is very high?
If you only occasionally have very high usage, we’re unlikely to be concerned. If your usage continues to be very high, we’ll advise you if your usage is excessive. Ultimately, if your usage still remains excessive, we may have reduce the transmission speed of the service whilst we monitor your usage.
In general, this seems like a good thing. Those who continuously download too much will first be contacted by the MT personnel and if, consequently, they don’t reduce their bandwidth requirements then they’ll be penalized. This seems like the most sensible thing to do given the geographical situation of Mauritius and the limited number of Internet links we can have access to.
There are two aspects that somewhat disturb me though:
- The Fair Use Policy has been retrofitted in our existing contracts. Is this legal? Or should have we been contacted by Mauritius Telecom to sign a new contract?
- The Fair Use Policy system is not transparent. What happens if the son (or daughter) of one of the big-bosses of Mauritius Telecom (or a Minister) uses too much bandwidth? Will the MT technicians contact him or her? Will they have the courage to limit his/her bandwidth? I have some doubts. For the system to work (i.e. so that people do not complain), it must be 100% transparent (i.e. everyone should know what all other Internet subscribers have used as bandwidth) but this looks a lot like a privacy violation to me…
Opinion?
[Thanks to Ajay Ramjatan for initiating this whole thought process...]
Popularity: 4% [?]
May 3rd, 2008 at 09:27
“we may have reduce the transmission speed of the service” and “whilst we monitor your usage”
are these even legal?? i pay for broadband of a particular speed and why on earth should i not get what i pay for? this is THEFT! and why should they “monitor my usage” and my privacy be baffled??
somebody really needs to complain to the ICTA or sue orange or people need to change ISP in mass; but then, who will bell the cat?
May 3rd, 2008 at 12:11
Thanks for posting about the FUP.
Yes, i seriously doubt whether it is legal to impose a new policy on users without their agreement. My last MT bill (with an Orange logo) didn’t contain any information at all about a new FUP. So it seems to be definitely illegal.
& secondly there’s the total lack of transparency…
No one knew about the FUP & there’s no info about what are the limits the FUP will implement.
& there’s a big misconception that the FUP will affect only “big” downloaders. That’s wrong! Now imagine Orange putting a 1GB cap on your 128k or 512k connection?!?! Even minimum (forget ‘normal’) usage will exceed the FUP!!
& don’t forget MT are known for having capped My.T at ridiculously low limits!
& yes, there’s also this question of privacy. By monitoring our connection, MT is intruding in our private lives! Who says they are not storing all our visited sites??
& there’s also a question of abuse - unless you monitor your connection, they can falsely trap you for exceeding limits!
& btw there’s been uproar about the FUP both on my blog & Geekscribes.
May 3rd, 2008 at 13:31
“Fair usage policy” applies to services beyond Internet. For example, at an “all you can eat” buffet in the restaurant, if you are seen as abusing, you may be refused service in the future. But, at the restaurant, how much people can eat is dictated by the size of their stomach. The eye may be willing, but the stomach not so much
If you start slipping food in your purse, then the fair usage policy will hit you.
Now, for the Internet, things are a bit different. The huge hard-disks available nowadays allow virtually unlimited storage, meaning that *everyone* can afford to download *endlessly* (not taking into account your electricity consumption.) For an ISP, a more practical solution is to limit bandwidth on the fly to bring in line those who are abusing the service.
The bottom line is, fair usage policy is a necessary evil to provide all customers with an optimal* service. Remember, not only your fellow Internet users are affected by your bandwidth usage; you are, too, by their high usage. Without fair usage policy, your service would be much worse.
Now, if you *need* guaranteed QoS, go buy a leased line.
* Optimal may not seem so in the case of Orange Mauritius, but I believe the circumstances dictate what “optimal” means.
@Avinash: (1) Every single contract that I have seen includes a “contract subject to change” clause. (2) Being the big boss (or the son or daughter of) has its perks. It’s life.
I know I play the devil’s advocate, but I am just being realistic.
Eddy.
May 3rd, 2008 at 16:25
I beg your scrawny little rotten stinking pardon? broadband?? service??? fast????? reliable?????????? connected??????????!?@??!@?$&*$#^!?
those are terms not usually used in the context of a racket methinks.
it’s already fucked up so this is their way of saying “it’s not our fault, it your fault” pas nou sa, zot sa.
@Young
basically what why are saying is that they reserve the right to *punish* you if you simply use your internet connection for an extended period.
we’re talking about an *always on* connection here. not even something that’s reliable or even fast. its already very limited. and there is no quality to any service. And I’m not aiming at being sarcatic here.
If it’s supposed to be limited to 32kbps then fine, 32kbps it is. but don’t just cut that down because of some obtuse view on equality.
I mean this is stated as being broadband internet. ADSL for the Holy Spaghetti’s sake. It’s supposed to be fast all the time and allow you to download big files day and night if you want to.
Those effin’ idiots just can’t cope with that concept and instead of investing in making more connections to the outside to increase the bandwidth available for everyone they are just interested in leeching a small market to death just to fill their coffers and wear silly ties when going to work in Port Louis (loaf about in air-conditioned offices really and what kind of idiots wear ties on a tropical island anyway?).
can’t we just pretend this is a “developed and enlightened” country and mount a class action lawsuit against MT? for any number of already stated offences. including being a monopolistic bitch, which would be a capital offence if anyone had the common sense to make it one. there’s probably something under some trades description act of some sort we could attack them on.
and what about that report thingy you were writing avinash? what happened to that?
May 3rd, 2008 at 16:57
Orange is nothing more than a once-booming now debt-ridden business bent on squeezing the revenues from the guaranteed broadband demand of our local population and subsidizing its plans to expand their operations in Africa and the poorer parts of eastern Europe.
This is not all. Naively imposing such downloading restrictions is definitely against the purpose of enlightening this locked-up country of ours at a time when Web 2.0 is in full swing! If broadband (by definition, internet plans should be of the order of Mbps and not Kbps)is still not available in our country in 2008, then how do we expect Orange to upgrade its communications infrastructure in the years to come? I really fear for all Orange subscribers.
May 3rd, 2008 at 18:18
To Yaasir:
The survey we did 6 months ago basically showed that we were getting only a fraction (< 50%) of what we were paying for AT THAT TIME.
Since then, I’ve personally noticed that I am practically getting close to 100% of that I pay now (around 28 kilobytes/s for a 256 kbit/s line). So the survey seems to be irrelevant now (at least for me).
I’ll monitor the Fair Use situation though.
May 3rd, 2008 at 21:32
FUP goes against customer rights. Before the rebranding there was a package by telecom plus for adsl 512k at around 1360 + vat and it was suppose to be unlimited..
then how can they impose a limiT without even lowering the price of the service??
personaly am using the Emtel HSDPA modem for the time being. my package limits me at 2Gb per month. i basically don’t use any p2p software or download any movies. YET 2GB is not enough.
For me FUP means less time spent on facebook browsing though profiles, reduce quality of pics before uploading on flickr, less sharing on youtube, disable emoticon on msn, no multiplayer games..
anyway i think Orange doesn’t want to disclose the limit after which the FUP will be applied
coz its gonna be dynamic
as the amount of users are increased and since its not in the near future that they are going to have more links ( besides SAFE) the limit of FUP will keep decreasing.. (10gb.. then 8gb to who knows maybe 1GB lol)
anyway i’ve gone through many discussion related to the topic and the conclusion i make is that whatever orange decides to implement, we mauritians will abide. y? coz its the “only” company in Mauritius providing this service( believe it or not its still a ‘monopol’ in our cyberisland)
i believe these things need to be cleared
1. what is the limit after which we’ll be affected by FUP
2.(i)what happens if we exceed the limit? we are warned?
(ii)what happens if we disregard the warning ?
(iii)if you are to decrease our bandwidth, by how much?
3.when will the prices go down?
anyway hoping to see some positive reactions from EMTEL and MTML
May 3rd, 2008 at 22:13
FUP, in my opinion, is unfair to heavy users. I pay for a higher bandwidth because I tend to download more. I just want my downloads to be faster. The “casual” user often has a slower connection than me, ie. pays less. What then? This person (who pays less than me) gets to have “better service” due to “my service” being reduced. You call that fairness, that cut-and-adjust policy?
What’s 10GB nowadays? Not everybody with high download rates pirate. Ok, we all pirate somewhere. I have to agree that I download tons of episodes online, particularly anime. Unlicensed anime mostly, which isn’t available elsewhere in Mauritius. At 200MB+ a file, I exceed my assumed limit of 1 GB in 5 episodes. No YouTube, no online radio, no browsing, no gaming. No nothing.
I’ve been looking around. FUP is applied in other countries too. The limit? The minimum I saw was 20GB. The highest was 500GB for a 8Mbps connection. Per month plz!
Give a read to Tiscali’s FUP, which I found fairest. It cuts your bandwidth only during peak hours, and restores it after, on a per-day basis. That’s all. No long-lasting effects at least.
Anyways, let’s wait and see other developments. Maybe we could have 1Mbps at a cheaper price in the coming decade?
Ps. Great article btw.
May 3rd, 2008 at 23:06
Well there is one thing which always says, read your contract when in doubt
17 variation
“17.1 MT reserves the right to amend the T&C herein contained at any given time and/or from time to time and the subscriber shall be bound by….Notice of the amendment may be given by MT to the subscriber as at clause 9″
clause 9 is that official news will be in myt website. Once nice thing i find about this is how to make the user think he has the upper hand.
Notice of the amendment may be given by MT to the subscriber as at clause 9
Honestly, when i was browsing quickly in there, i thought i saw the clause that protected us, consumers and i guess the intention might be so and now when posting this, im realizing that may is no obligation, and basically its as Eddy said.
The one whom i think have been the most deceived are the 512kbps unlimited adsl users as at that time, it was no FUP or anything equivalent (if i recall correctly) and now this…It would have been fair for MT and/or Orange to at least give them the unlimited till the end of the contract (this is statement is of course based on the fact that i have no idea what are the dealings with the current 512 unlimited users and i can only assume that they have fallen in the FUP, by judging to our own MyT contract)
In a case as such, the only power we have is the organizations as ICP…. Well since i havent seen anyone complain yet of the FUP, i think best is to actually know WHAT it is before we could think of what to do (hopefully, this would be just a watchdog that they can use when there are some real bandwidth problem)
May 3rd, 2008 at 23:15
p.s. i think i might have no expressed myself as i wanted in the intial post
clause 9 is that official news will be in myt website. Once nice thing i find about this is how to make the user think he has the upper hand.
Notice of the amendment may be given by MT to the subscriber as at clause 9
Honestly, when i was browsing quickly in there, i thought i saw the clause that protected us, consumers and i guess the intention might be so and now when posting this, im realizing that may is no obligation, and basically its as Eddy said.
what i meant was when you read it, you think that this protects you as they have to post their amendments on that website, but the “may” kindof protect them of that obligation and yet if you are not that attentive, reading this phrase in a hurry could lead you to believe it does protect you.
p.s. now i remembered why i got to my contract,its because i had the feeling of déja vue and now i see what i failed to notice.
May 4th, 2008 at 00:06
wats the use having an unlimited connection if u got a 1GB cap??
Basically ur internet access fee comes down to paying for 1GB worth of data from the web per month.
thats totally bullshit!
there could be other ways to implement FUP, say like u can only get stream in off peak hours, like 0000hr to 0600hrs…thats wud b fair enuf since they’re aint many ppl surfing at this time..this was just one idea, lots of other fings cud b done as well…
seems in mtius, the general motto is 1 step 4wd, and 2 steps bkwds….
long live our cyberisland!
May 4th, 2008 at 02:06
[...] has started a discussion about the new Fair Usage Policy clause in Orange contracts and what it means for users. Here is my opinion. [...]
May 4th, 2008 at 02:17
And, this is what I have to say about FUP.
Eddy.
May 4th, 2008 at 09:17
I agree with Eddy that the Fair Use Policy is a good compromise because it allows the majority of us to use the Internet at a decent speed… We must not forget that our island is insufficiently connected to the Internet (SAFE or not…) because of the distance and cost involved.
What I would like though is 100% transparency… like publishing statistics and even the identities of those who abuse so that people don’t complain too much. Up to now, the Fair Use Policy “enforcement unit” is opaque. No one knows how they operate, on whom they operate and what are their powers. This is a bad thing.
May 4th, 2008 at 13:51
Its bait and switch.
Advertise UNLIMITED service and when people have subscribed to the service, restrict the service while billing the same price for the advertised UNLIMITED service.
What does “excessive usage” means. Is it 30 GB/month, 50 GB/month? How are subscribers able to know?
In other words, don’t advertise for UNLIMITED service when you can’t provide it. The Mauritius Telecom Group has not been born yesterday. I am sure that being one of the most profitable companies in Mauritius, its not bring run by idiots.
People who are not total idiots do research before venturing in schemes like this. They knew what UNLIMITED means and decided to offer it. Now they realise they can’t provide it or don’t want to and decide to change the terms of service by an unclear FUP.
May 4th, 2008 at 14:53
@Avinash: Of course, I’m right. I’m all for fairness
Seriously though, FUP is a good thing. My cousin kept complaining about his downloads being slow most of the time. I knew that there was traffic shaping in place and that it could be “played”. I advised him to have intermissions of a couple of hours in between downloads. Since he’s done that, he’s always had full download speed, 1GB cap or not.
Most of the people commenting here do not realise that the more they milk the bandwidth, the longer the throttling applies to their connection. I don’t know the exact set-up of the FUP policy, but I would imagine a *fair* worst case scenario as this: if you download intensively for three hours, you’ll be capped for that duration. But, in reality, it would be much more relaxed than this especially during off-peak periods.
Many do not understand the limits of the technologies holding up the Internet together and that FUP is necessary. Maybe when we have the successor for TCP/IP (it’s already deployed at CERN) we’ll be able to do without traffic shaping.
Eddy.
May 4th, 2008 at 15:05
haha, I pissed off Mr. Young it seems. well, people can get offended at whatever they want to.
funny that you of all people would be reusing the word “abuse”, avinash.
o’rly? Think about that. It’ll end up being you without you even knowing it. you’re getting all witchhunt like mentality. seriously. be careful.
Take a family of about 7 people with 3 PC and a laptop(possibly two). something the government would applaud as high IT penetration, no doubt. they’re just using their internet at what to each of them seems a normal rate. (and please, eddy give the leased line thing a rest will you?)
As mentionned above by Anon(wtf? is this 4chan?) there are much more dynamic ways of implementing a FUP. Taking bandwidth from those who are using it to give to those who aren’t going to be using it at that time is not a very bright idea.
If the connection lags on peak hours, that’s fine. I may not have been fully awake in the networks class but I understand that perfectly. But if at 3 am, I’m getting 4 kbps and my rpm packages can’t find hosts to download from, I’ll be throwing sharp rocks in a certain direction.
The problem with their “cyberisland” is that they are more interested in saving that bandwidth for businesses in their cybertowers. The civilian users are simply on the tiny end on the limb. instead of being in the business of making profit they should be in the business of telecommunications
what is the bandwidth available to mauritius through SAFE anyway? did MT fork out pocket change when investing in SAFE that now they’re getting only crumbs? I read the whole thing can go up to 130Gbps. Say as fairly small 10Gbps for about a current maximum of about 500,000 subscribers (taking some wastage into account) that’s still something fairly solid per subscriber since not all of them will be using their connection at the same time.
my point really is that this FUP is a sort of acknowledgement that they can’t cope with the demand. But not want to do anything to increase the available resource. And even they are doing something to increase external connectivity, they should be advertising that instead of throwing tons of sipek off mountains.
some just told me as I was typing “Even if it’s not particularly effective it’s still better than being particularly ineffective, non?”. I’d like that, except that he has 20MBPS unlimited line and doesn’t know the meaning of “connection was reset”. so non.
May 4th, 2008 at 18:55
Ah shit, I should probably explain this part a bit more:
I meant to develop that a bit more so you don’t get (too) mad but I got carried away by other trains of thought.
I meant that you, avinash, know that there isn’t anything as such to “abuse”. As fas as I can tell from your past outrages against the crappy internet connection. If it were something that people could abuse I’d be the first to agree to some sort of equal opportunity policy. But the current anaemic dribble isn’t worth fighting over except when they are threatening to reduce it even further.
And I really don’t think it will benefit a majority. If peak hours implies during the day, then they are about as effective as the CWA, which cuts water during the day and lets it go to such a pressure during the night that one of my taps broke.
I’ve just noticed that my connection during the whole of today was fairly stable, around 15kbps, and at sundown things are starting to really slow down. And I can say from experience that it is usually bad through most of the night.
Are the the majority of internet users in mauritius nocturnals or is this proof that they are still being asinine and very hypocritical.
May 4th, 2008 at 20:59
FUP blessing or not only future can tell
btw did anyone try to go beyond the limit? any feedback from orange yet?
i just tried a new service by orange “E-transfer”, well it works but they did apply a fee on the transaction Rs 8, something that i guess they forgot to mention on their site
also the range permitted for the service as mentioned on their site is between Rs20 to Rs1000, but seems like it doesn’t work with Rs20 but works with Rs30( i presume the lower limit is Rs 28)
May 4th, 2008 at 22:57
To Yaasir:
I thought a lot before writing “abuse” but I stand by my word. I know (and I’m sure you know too) people who download films everyday. I don’t care about it being legal or not. That’s another thing.
What bothers me though is that those compulsive downloaders do not generally watch all the films they download.
The honest ones burn the film on a DVD and stack it on their 500-600 DVDs they have already burnt (and mostly never watched).
The others make hundred of copies that they sell for Rs. 50 on every streets of this country.
In both cases, they are abusing.
“Someone” told me that 5% of ADSL subscribers in Mauritius use more that 90% of the available bandwidth. This is very bad for most of us who are not among those 5%.
So I am for the FUP. Except that I want it to be 100% transparent instead of being 100% opaque as it is now.
But I also agree with Ajay that there is something fishy somewhere. The FUP has been retrofitted into our existing contracts. Despite Eddy’s claims, I am not too sure about the legality of this. I may be wrong though as I know practically nothing about law.
May 5th, 2008 at 02:27
Avinash,
Customer information is private property and protected by the Data Protection Act. I don’t think it is either legal or practical to expose the data pertaining to thousands of customers. The best the ISP can do is to publicise the implementation of the FUP and to be accountable to the ICTA.
Eddy.
May 5th, 2008 at 06:04
If the 5% using 90% is true then there really is a bigger issue; how could that even be allowed to happen in the first place? How did they collect those statistics? What, and this is the big one, does the 100% amount to in concrete numbers?
those can’t possibly be individual users. Unless the 100% is ridiculously small, they would have to have insanely fast connections. … which is not impossible, when you start thinking that given the high price of the 512kbps and the 1024kbps lines very few people can actually afford them. 5% or less. and they would very likely be using their high speed like it’s a 24/7 orgy of downloads.
except that you can’t accuse them of abusing. from their end of the stick, they paid for the service and they are simply using it within the limits of what it was advertised as. They most likely don’t know about SAFE and it’s limited bandwidth. They are just consuming what MT is offering them.
But still, there are some sectors that gobble up more bytes per second than most individuals put together, that I know. And from some of the post made in the “let’s loathe MT” facebook group you created, we can deduce that some regions are getting greater connectivity than others. That may be related to proximity to certain of those bandwidth guzzling businesses.
I won’t be naming names, but quite a few people working in the cyber tower bring external harddrives to their offices on which they download dozens of movies/games/anything in a single day. That is abuse. They learnt doing that kind of thing in the labs of UoM and are simply repeating it in a work environment. Their Education.
The above 2 items should be subject to a FUP much more that end users I think.
Myself, I admit that I download 1-2 big files a week, which include films too. (and for note, they are mostly old films I never got to see in whole when were aired on the MBC)
It’s not a matter of restraint, it’s just that it can’t go any faster.
I usually ponder a lot while at my PC and in the meanwhile a lot of idle time is lost. So I always have something downloading, albeit slowly, just so that idle time is not lost (and so that little connection icon in the lower right stays happily lit instead of blinking pathetically at irregular intervals).
And sometimes when I have to turn off my PC, I notice that the download speed isn’t that bad and it could put in a solid contribution while I sleep. so I just leave the PC on to download quietly(I have a very quiet fan setup).
result: my PC stay on sometimes 2-3 days at a stretch just from downloading things.
Even then, given the amount of new data I have on my hard drive at the end of the month, I’m not going over 4-5 Gb per month. And as I said above, it’s not a matter of restraint.
as Ajay R Ramjatan wrote, how do you know what constitutes excessive usage?
Is the length of time I stay connected and downloading counted as excessive? It definitely can’t be the speed. I can’t see any argument for the quantity. But from the FUP it definitely seems like I will be negatively affected.
And I will insist, you don’t pay for “broadband” internet just to check your emails every 5 minutes. The downloading of files is a definite application. There’s even mention of downloading songs all over the myt FAQ
It’s interesting to note that the news of the FUP was sneakily introduced on the myt FAQ but no news for “unlimited” users.
if they intend to take from myt to give to “unlimited” users, they definitely are asking for a punch in the face.
On the legality of it all. It’s legal to the word. The contract says there can be changes. these are changes.
but legal is not synonymous to fair or just or even plain common sense.
monopoly is no excuse for mediocrity either.
and I think those Rs.50 DVDs are mostly recopied off imported pirated copies. not necessarily procuded locally from downloads.
everybody will be quick to point the finger at everybody else when things go wrong. I don’t think the end users are in the wrong because they don’t have all the facts. I’m just point my finger at MT for overselling to begin with. And possibly for not doing enough to increase the QoS.
May 5th, 2008 at 11:12
Interesting comment Yaasir.
There is one thing which is absolutely central to our discussion:
Ideally yes.
But in practice all ISPs all over the world base themselves on general statistical laws to buy less bandwidth than would strictly be required to provide their services at decent prices.
In fact, as Eddy pointed out, for an indecent price, you can get yourself a leased-line and happily download everything you like all day long.
The baseline should be the price of the leased-line. People pay (at least) Rs. 10,000 per month for such a line. Common sense would say that we should be using our ADSL lines (which are around Rs. 1000 say) about 10 times less for the system (trick?) to work.
If all of us use our ADSL lines all the time, then there is no way MT can give us all 256kbit/s as they simply have not bought this kind of capacity in the first place.
May 5th, 2008 at 11:14
And this is true for every single ADSL provider on the whole planet
May 5th, 2008 at 14:34
I’m a noob here, when I see all the ethical/technical debates going on. But I’ve got a simple question.
My connection is unlimited, right? It’s also 24/7 on, right?
So, if I leave my PC on, downloading stuff, it means I’m using the service I’m being provided with, and paying for.
That is, I’m downloading at my advertised speed, and since my connection is 24/7, I can use it 24/7 as I want, right?
So, how can they tell me I’m abusing? What do they consider abusing? They gave me an always-on connection, and a fast one at that. So, I should refrain from using it fully??
Anyways, the above was just a scenario. If I did that, my electricity bill would break my roof as soon as I take it out of the envelope. But still, some people do it. Those “compulsive downloaders” as Avinash calls them. But can we really blame them? They are just using what they paid for, and what they are being offered. It’s the problem of MT if they can’t guarantee equal service for all.
May 5th, 2008 at 15:07
In fact, I believe that there is a lack of information from MT to us on this issue. You wrote:
“I’m using the service I’m being provided with, and paying for.”
but I don’t think that this service is 24×7 downloads at maximum speed. Don’t forget that bandwidth is never guaranteed on the Internet (TCP/IP is a “best-effort” protocol) and therefore MT has never sold 256kbit/s (or whatever) to us. Instead, they have told us that they’ll make their best-effort to give us 256kbit/s.
Technically speaking, I guess they can give us all 256kbit/s at all time but we’ll have to pay in excess of Rs. 10,000 per month for that. This is simply the cost of bandwidth. Until then, we’ll have to comply with FUPs like all other ADSL users throughout the planet. What I would like though is 100% transparency on bandwidth usage in Mauritius.
(PS: Read my post. I understand the technical and economic reason behind the FUP. FUPs are used all other the world (including the US and UK). My only problem is its legality and impartiality in Mauritius)
May 5th, 2008 at 15:11
Now that I think of it, there is a more interesting question that we can ask ourselves:
Acceptable is terribly subjective. Maybe network experts (using some kind of very advanced Poisson theorem or, ahem, black magic) can tell us how we can verify this?
May 5th, 2008 at 18:15
hence ISPs are in the business of being loathed, not providing internet service.
I stumbled upon this while poking around (ignore the excessive ads). Seems we all reach roughly the same conclusions going on what we separately know or can guess. So we could all be right. And I wrote a few(un)edifying things on Eddy Young’s blog too.
the thing is, when you look at the map representing the submarine fibreobtic layout of the world, the Indian Ocean has only ……………. one(1) cable…
the indian ocean is not much wider that the atlantic, is it? I am restating the very very obvious when I say that this is the root of the problem.
Now before anyone jumps in to defend MT/ICTA/government, you all have to realise (again) that is is their job to predict that kind of demand. I mean they commission multimillion fact finding comities to learn in months what the Man On The Street could have told them in 5 minutes, so they really should know. If only to justify the expense.
telecommunication is an issue on the same scale as food, water, energy and transport.
I don’t think MT bought enough bandwidth for all of us. And isn’t doing all that it can, and I insist, it can do more to get more.
I think 85% of maximum speed is a nice figure for “acceptable”, ne? Just have to spin some voodoo and paint your telephone pole in freshly decapitated chicken blood to make it happen.
now this is going to sound odd… but I’m getting around 27 kbs at the time of this post.
If I were to just a little bit paranoid, I’d be thinking “they” are trying to trap me into “abusing” the bandwidth.
May 5th, 2008 at 21:33
There are huge ambiguities in that, what does high means here, this is not a figure, hence tomorrow their definition of high can be changed?
As far as whether they have the right to change the rule of the game anytime? Yes i think they do, because right in small lines in the contract it is written “Mauritius telecom reserves the right to change this term of use at any time..” (or something like that).
This “high usage” will be a weapon that will be used to “defend” themselves whenever they wish to decrease your bandwidth to redirect that to something more lucrative.
If only i had enough money :p i could have bought Telecom and made a video club out of myt!
fouff.. those guys are bastards who just doesn’t have any respect for their customers, that’s cheap.
+$3|v3n
May 5th, 2008 at 21:34
Btw, this new theme sux compared to the old one!
May 5th, 2008 at 22:13
Lol @ Selven. Video club out of myT.
Anybody heard anything about the EASSy cable, and about a rumor as to UCL coming and implementing FTTH at an affordable price in Mauritius?
May 5th, 2008 at 22:47
@Anon
EASSy seems to be stuck in limbo… last i heard was that they have started the marine survey in March… so most probably, Eassy would be here by late 09 or 2010.
As for UCL, they’ve just disappeared!
& instead MT is installing FTTH in Quatre-Bornes… (can anyone plz confirm this?) I think MT are doing it on a test scale…
May 6th, 2008 at 11:10
zot ine blok rapidshare
May 6th, 2008 at 12:23
Rapidshare has multiple IP addresses:
195.122.131.16
195.122.131.17
195.122.131.18
195.122.131.19
195.122.131.20
195.122.131.21
195.122.131.22
195.122.131.2
195.122.131.3
195.122.131.4
195.122.131.5
195.122.131.6
195.122.131.7
195.122.131.8
195.122.131.9
195.122.131.10
195.122.131.11
195.122.131.12
195.122.131.13
195.122.131.14
195.122.131.15
Are all of them not working? I don’t think that MT is deliberately blocking Rapidshare. Looks more like a failure there… I may be wrong though.
May 6th, 2008 at 12:45
‘traceroute’ or ‘tracert’ will tell you if the IPs are blocked.
Eddy.
May 6th, 2008 at 13:35
Le ping passe sur les IP RS mais http access non.I think that this is a few hours maintenance on their authentication servers rather that MT “blacklisting” RS for subscribers kuz their are certainly issues like premium account users who are at stake so MT will think twice before doing such things.
May 6th, 2008 at 14:06
Yes, MT is deliberately blocking Rapidshare. No doubt about that.
Rapidshare.com is not working.
But the download servers haven’t been blocked… (I hope MT doesn’t notice this & blocks all the above IPs… ) :@
I’m making a petition about that, hope some action will be taken. Enough is enough!
May 6th, 2008 at 14:38
speaking of blocking, I’ve been trying to block the youtube IP ranges, 208.65.153.0 to 208.65.153.255, on the Orange livebox firewall. How would you go about doing that?
May 6th, 2008 at 19:33
This is just about great! Not every content on Rapidshare is warez and for Orange to accept this is simply ridiculous.
No wonder they cap on dial-up like “broadband” offers like 128K and 256K when my friends & relatives in the West are enjoying 5Mbps+ lines with very decent caps or no caps at all. That’s a very telling fact about what they can afford us in terms of QoS and innovations. There are so many countries with so stringent copyright laws which still haven’t blocked Rapidshare.
Thank you Orange so very very much! You just eased our very miserable online experience…
May 6th, 2008 at 22:35
I’m getting terrible bandwidth and latency at this moment to some selected websites including mu.archive.ubuntu.com (91.189.88.46). Look at those times:
$ traceroute 91.189.88.46
traceroute to 91.189.88.46 (91.189.88.46), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 * * *
2 196.20.216.1 (196.20.216.1) 8.873 ms 8.980 ms 16.747 ms
3 ADSL-TPLUS-70-97.telecomplus.net (196.27.70.97) 10.412 ms 9.039 ms 16.769 ms
4 * * *
5 F-0-0.telecomplus.net (202.123.2.99) 1039.466 ms 1014.802 ms 985.407 ms
6 192.168.3.1 (192.168.3.1) 1032.978 ms 1108.202 ms 1032.819 ms
7 po3-1.lisbb1.Lisbonne.opentransit.net (193.251.248.133) 1313.453 ms 1286.612 ms 1313.737 ms
8 so-2-1-2-0.madcr2.Madrid.opentransit.net (193.251.241.205) 1407.028 ms 1369.164 ms 1500.843 ms
9 level3-3.GW.opentransit.net (193.251.254.14) 1406.992 ms 1422.662 ms 1547.234 ms
10 ae-4-4.ebr1.Paris1.Level3.net (4.69.135.182) 1501.339 ms 1525.888 ms 1500.569 ms
11 ae-2.ebr1.London2.Level3.net (4.69.133.94) 1641.988 ms 1577.312 ms 1641.190 ms
12 ae-16-53.car2.London2.Level3.net (4.68.117.80) 1642.082 ms ae-16-55.car2.London2.Level3.net (4.68.117.144) 1698.347 ms ae-16-51.car2.London2.Level3.net (4.68.117.16) 1699.193 ms
13 195.50.121.2 (195.50.121.2) 1747.702 ms 934.969 ms 904.425 ms
14 lithium.canonical.com (91.189.88.46) 1000.537 ms 1018.533 ms 986.183 ms
Are you getting the same thing?
May 6th, 2008 at 22:36
Based on several tests I have done. A few servers responding for the A record http://www.rapidshare.com are behaving erratically.
No indication of any rapidshare censorship of any kind so far.
May 6th, 2008 at 22:41
Seems to be on your side Avinash. My latency is acceptable
Tests done with Orange ADSL Home 512/128 with FUP (Formerly known as Wanadoo ADSL Home 512/128 UNLIMITED)
silverx2 ~ # traceroute 91.189.88.46
traceroute to 91.189.88.46 (91.189.88.46), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 192.168.0.50 (192.168.0.50) 11.475 ms 11.443 ms 11.428 ms
2 XXXXX (XXXXX) 25.039 ms 29.872 ms 45.600 ms
3 XXXXX (XXXXX) 52.880 ms 59.518 ms 66.172 ms
4 202.123.2.129 (202.123.2.129) 74.517 ms * 86.802 ms
5 F-0-0.telecomplus.net (202.123.2.99) 95.224 ms 101.596 ms 108.471 ms
6 192.168.3.22 (192.168.3.22) 114.859 ms 19.103 ms 25.145 ms
7 196.192.4.34 (196.192.4.34) 38.528 ms 22.347 ms 29.710 ms
8 58.26.87.9 (58.26.87.9) 298.713 ms 305.534 ms 311.922 ms
9 219.93.182.226 (219.93.182.226) 318.570 ms 325.179 ms 330.850 ms
10 210.187.143.5 (210.187.143.5) 338.472 ms 344.092 ms 351.471 ms
11 219.94.12.138 (219.94.12.138) 358.368 ms 273.831 ms 280.395 ms
12 58.27.113.30 (58.27.113.30) 294.416 ms 58.27.113.62 (58.27.113.62) 300.082 ms 58.27.113.30 (58.27.113.30) 281.466 ms
13 58.27.124.58 (58.27.124.58) 287.109 ms 58.27.124.54 (58.27.124.54) 300.364 ms 58.27.124.50 (58.27.124.50) 306.759 ms
14 219.93.174.84 (219.93.174.84) 313.650 ms 321.620 ms 327.429 ms
15 202.188.139.166 (202.188.139.166) 333.308 ms 339.178 ms 346.553 ms
16 ge2-24-0-cr0.nik.nl.as6908.net (195.69.145.145) 348.996 ms 355.655 ms 270.902 ms
17 te1-4-3508-cr0.thn.uk.as6908.net (78.41.154.13) 278.019 ms 291.395 ms 297.932 ms
18 canonical-gw.datahop.net (195.72.130.230) 277.907 ms 284.856 ms 296.797 ms
19 lithium.canonical.com (91.189.88.46) 309.346 ms 317.700 ms 323.368 ms
May 6th, 2008 at 22:46
hell no
Macintosh:uploader selven$ traceroute 91.189.88.46
traceroute to 91.189.88.46 (91.189.88.46), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 * * *
2 ADSL-132-1.myt.mu (41.212.132.1) 9.395 ms 11.278 ms 10.094 ms
3 ADSL-TPLUS-70-97.telecomplus.net (196.27.70.97) 16.792 ms 10.264 ms 10.108 ms
4 * 202.123.2.129 (202.123.2.129) 21.054 ms 10.218 ms
5 F-0-0.telecomplus.net (202.123.2.99) 298.730 ms 551.609 ms 429.679 ms
6 192.168.3.1 (192.168.3.1) 550.824 ms 601.306 ms 475.927 ms
7 po3-1.lisbb1.Lisbonne.opentransit.net (193.251.248.133) 766.693 ms 456.564 ms 568.683 ms
8 so-2-1-2-0.madcr2.Madrid.opentransit.net (193.251.241.205) 734.340 ms 268.568 ms 275.903 ms
9 level3-3.GW.opentransit.net (193.251.254.14) 267.882 ms 270.149 ms 310.502 ms
10 ae-4-4.ebr1.Paris1.Level3.net (4.69.135.182) 265.666 ms 284.350 ms 276.884 ms
11 ae-2.ebr1.London2.Level3.net (4.69.133.94) 293.636 ms 282.652 ms 272.862 ms
12 ae-16-51.car2.London2.Level3.net (4.68.117.16) 511.947 ms ae-16-53.car2.London2.Level3.net (4.68.117.80) 272.454 ms ae-16-55.car2.London2.Level3.net (4.68.117.144) 273.129 ms
13 195.50.121.2 (195.50.121.2) 272.878 ms 271.592 ms 280.347 ms
14 lithium.canonical.com (91.189.88.46) 267.513 ms 269.580 ms 267.925 ms
May 6th, 2008 at 23:04
13 hops & 3 time-outs for me… yeah, it’s terribly slow!
& btw i’ve just posted about Orange blocking Rapidshare…
& i’m taking a leaf out of Ed’s book to make a petition on the FUP & Orange blocking RS.
May 6th, 2008 at 23:21
It seems that there is a technical problem somewhere and, for once, I think it’s not MT’s fault
May 6th, 2008 at 23:33
Does anyone know whats the limit for FUP
May 6th, 2008 at 23:43
I’ve seen Rapidshare.com going down for almost 12hrs once. I think it might be a problem like that.
As for Orange blocking RS, that would be the bit that overflows my buffers! Capping my connection, yes. Controlling what I can see? Are we going for a Great China Firewall in Mauritius too now?!
Let’s see if this persists.
May 7th, 2008 at 08:51
ya Orange really block rapidshare. got a chat yesterday on forum, seem rapidshare is working well in other countries.
orange will make our life miserable
May 7th, 2008 at 10:00
Observations on present rapidshare.com situation
1. HTTP requests without proxy
wget -Y off http://www.rapidshare.com
Results: Requests almost always times out.
wget -Y off http://www.google.com
Results: Requests always works
2. HTTP requests via proxy
export http_proxy=”http://x.x.x.x:y”
wget -Y on http://www.rapidshare.com
Results: Requests still times out most of the time.
wget -Y on http://www.google.com
Results: Requests always works
3. HTTP requests via encrypted proxy tunnelled via SSH
ssh -L 8080:127.0.0.1:8080 user@remotehost
export http_proxy=”http://127.0.0.1:8080″
wget -Y on http://www.rapidshare.com
Results: Works all the time
Seems the gremlins of the Internet are manifesting again. Why would a request using a plain proxy not work and work when using the same proxy with encryption? And please if you want to suggest sophisticated censorship filters that sniff out keywords in traffic “e.g. host: http://www.rapidshare.com in HTTP requests”, remember that its not very easy to implement.
Can anyone do other tests so that we can pinpoint the cause?
May 7th, 2008 at 10:04
Here is what the Rapidshare support teams tells me:
Hello,
Please check all your network elements and configurations. It happens often
that the problems you experience are only results of filters, proxy server,
router or firewall rules on your or on your internet service provider side.
Probably the reason of your problem is the connection between your computer
and the Internet Service Provider.
We are not able to troubleshoot other networks. We can fix problems only in
our network. The servers are up and
running and the internet connections have enough capacity to handle the
requests.
Please contact your provider to let him check if the path to RapidShare.com is
working.
Keep in mind that if you can reach us via ICMP (ping), then you should be also
able to reach us on port 80 (http://). If it is not so, there must be
somewhere a filter. We do not have applied any filter on HTTP (Port 80).
It is also possible that we block your IP-address because denial of service
attacks from your IP-address.
If you have contacted your provider and they could not solve the problem,
please let us know your IP-address so that we can check if it is blocked.
Thank you for your understanding.
Best regards,
RapidShare AG - Support Team
RapidShare AG
Gewerbestrasse 6
CH - 6330 Cham
web: http://www.rapidshare.com
email: support@rapidshare.com
tel: +41 41 748 78 80
Ashesh schrieb:
> Hi
> I have signed for a premium account. I can no longer open any rapidshare
> linked file. Even the website I cannot open.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:13
Addition to tests:
https://ssl.rapidshare.com seems to work almost always
May 7th, 2008 at 10:21
guy rapidshare for me now today 07 may 2008 at 10:15. wait till the end of day
May 7th, 2008 at 10:25
We can access rapidshare using proxy or a VPN{Avinesh you know what this is}
The only way which you can “acess RS normally” is by VPN but if orange has this hint..forget about RS again! ! !
Nomad, mtml users have no problems in accessing RS website.only Orange users cant access! ! !
May 7th, 2008 at 10:31
Hi Ajay,
I can access http://www.rapidshare.com from work. As far as I know, we are using normal business ADSL lines from MT here…
May 7th, 2008 at 10:37
10:30
I can access RS.com…. (hopefully) they’ve stopped blocking it!
May 7th, 2008 at 10:41
rapidshare is working. i forgot to type ‘is working’ above.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:01
Soooooo it seems that this was just a technical glitch somewhere… This is bound to happen from time to time.
May 7th, 2008 at 13:56
see? people are quick to point the finger when things go wrong.
the timeouts you describe happen to me too. I have a website hosted in the US and it timeout/server not found/connection was reset on me from time to time. sometimes for periods of up to an hour. When I ask a few acquiantances in france, they seem to have no problems at all. people in australia sometimes have the same trouble as me but at different times. Internet gremlims indeed.
but there’s still only one route for much of the way to us and thats getting congested as we are being made aware of. etc etc.
so anyway, back to business.
In the name of fair use in my own house, at least until they dump more cables in the sea, I’d like block(or if possible only limit the number of connections) youtube addresses on the livebox firewall.
I”ve looked all over oranges website (the france based one not the local one where the myt page is 404) but they only ever give you unhelpful instructions like how to just find the firewall configuration page and nothing on how to actually use it.
May 7th, 2008 at 15:03
Too much paranoia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e_43fmVml8
Is Orange present in Reunion Isl.? If yes, why are they not peering? The latency from Reunion Isl. is so so much better than in Mauritius at about 250ms for a roundtrip to a server in Europe. Compare that to the near 1,000ms for the same roundtrip from Mauritius.
Eddy.
May 7th, 2008 at 20:09
The Rapidshare issue is now solved. I don’t think Orange had anything to do with blocking or anything like that. Probably a messed up device or setting somewhere along the path from Mauritian PC to RS’ servers.
“In the name of fair use in my own house, at least until they dump more cables in the sea, I’d like block(or if possible only limit the number of connections) youtube addresses on the livebox firewall.”
Can’t you implement some kind of parental filter software on the machines you own to only allow access to youtube on a time-basis?
Also, I’ve seen some freebies around that allow you to control the bandwidth available to softwares. You could restrict the bandwidth that your browser uses for example. Unfortunately, it was in an RSS feed which I failed to read, so I didn’t get the name of the software. Sorry…
May 7th, 2008 at 20:56
the youtube vid loads about 2 seconds then kindly offers that I rewatch those 2 seconds. and I haven’t been downloading any questionable files since … yesterday at least!
heh, even google no longer supports crappy connections. or it could be the Internet Gremlins. or even an ISP throttling a bandwidth intensive website (if we were to be just a tad more paranoid than usual).
kind of reminds me. I was at a Barack Obama rally in North Carolina a few days ago…. by proxy. basically, I was getting updates on the situation every few minutes via sms to IM. and about 5 minutes before the guy is supposed to arrive, I got a “This message was not sent because Mobile Messaging is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.” and suffered a fir of acute paranoia.
Goddam Internet Gremlins… but it was really exciting and you could feel what all the fuss of a presidential candidate race is about.
ahem, I may be going off topic though.
May 7th, 2008 at 21:49
@Ketwaroo D. Yaasir
I do not use the Livebox but as far as I know, all decent routers have an option to make custom routes.
I recommend you do a null route on the youtube subnet. Note that this has the detrimental effect of blocking youtube for your whole household.
Of course, the best solution is you figuring out how to use the firewall
May 8th, 2008 at 00:04
well actually, we have 3 PCs at home (and possibly a few more devices I haven’t seen yet). it seems a lot but it was the only way to avoid conflicts. trying to install sneaky software on each other’s computer would be like a Mission Impossible (with all the inconveniences of hanging from the ceiling).
THe main reason I want youtube gone is that my kid brother has recently developed the nasty fad for watching pro wrestling on youtube (if you remember those days, they were very popular on Saturdays in between the horse races on MBC1). and he tends to watch a lot of it.
Basically I have the same problem as Orange with SAFE. except here of course I don’t have an optical cable and can’t allocate the bandwidth into slots. So you could say I understand the issues that an FUP will have on our bandwidth availability acutely.
I think I got what you mean.
The firewall itself has been pretty uncooperative. It’s not even saving the changes I’ve been making between restarts and the changes I had made doesn’t seem to have any effect on anything else.. Not to mention each time I go into the configuration panel, it has reset the language to french….. which doesn’t help.
I’ve come across suggestions which require “patching” the router software but I think that would invalidate whatever warranty there might be on the thing.
I don’t mind not being able to view youtube myself. It’s mostly the long pauses in between every few seconds of video that have put me off.
long live web 2.0 as they say.
May 8th, 2008 at 14:40
rants and rants, just like an e-meeting,
speeds might be low, but this morning i was enjoying a joyful flat 108kb/sec, 1 local peer, was great, downloaded about 1gb in 1.45hrs.
i feel like there is something called ‘right of passage’ which sorts of talks about going through the phase of being ripped off, followed by a dim little winkle if successfull
the market needs to react for the top guns to react.
everyone ranting continously on a blog isn’t going to change a thing, considering 99% of mauritians who are in the corporate world dont understand or even know what a blog is all about.
most of mauritius doesn’t even understand what the internet is, except for checking emails or having a Hi5, facebook a/c.
you ranting ranters should get off your big fat asses and get on with the program of venting your rants publicly, just like politicians do.
if this is culture we are so deeply attached to, then please follow course, it’s the proven method.
btw im no conservative cunt, just someone stating facts to nerdy people talking about pings, macs, tracert, whois and whatever else.
and this is what people - most of you - should understand, the lingo you speak doesn’t translate to meaningful sentences to the real world, remember world full of co2, sometimes o2?
personal e-attack at mr avinash, your wife is a professional in communication, isn’t she?………
end of my rants about your rants
May 8th, 2008 at 22:08
Anyone care to comment?
May 8th, 2008 at 22:35
my my my 4lyf, you must be really frustrated :p
As far as rants :p, well well well, you could use some brains to realize your most greatest fantasies instead of just ranting.
The above as far as i can see wasn’t rants, but a discussion about wtf might be going on :p. Besides am sure Orange knows better than to piss off some nasty lil penguins and devils…. this could be both bad for business and security..
Anywayz, Yasir, as far as adding your own routes for the router, you can telnet to 192.168.1.1 and login as root and do your work there.
Good luck.
+$3|v3n
May 8th, 2008 at 22:45
Ignoring the last bit, I’d say that 4lyf is right mostly.
I’ve been saying similar things in the past: ranting on a blog will not bring much change because the blog doesn’t reach that far beyond a small circle of Internet users. Only concrete actions will do (and I suggest some in my original ADSL petition).
He highlights an interesting point in passing. Many are engaging in a pseudo-technical discussion without sufficient background knowledge, and that is only adding noise which makes things even worse with the confusion that ensues. Even 4lyf is getting his kb/s and KB/s mixed up!
That said, 4lyf should probably not mind the rants and pseudo-technical discussions if he’s so much against it. The obvious question is: what has he done to improve the situation?
Eddy.
May 8th, 2008 at 22:52
By the way, has anyone read an article on the FUP in News on Sunday today (yes, it appears on Thursdays…)?
A journalist called me yesterday and asked me some questions about the FUP. I think he stumbled upon this blog entry by sheer luck. I told him about my own feeling about the FUP (good thing but…) and that one possible solution to the bandwidth and cost issue would be for MT to mirror (a lot of) what we download locally.
I forgot to buy a copy…
May 9th, 2008 at 03:45
Shame you didn’t mention peering agreements with other ISPs in the region.
Eddy.
May 9th, 2008 at 04:35
speeds might be low, but this morning i was enjoying a joyful flat 108kb/sec, 1 local peer, was great, downloaded about 1gb in 1.45hrs.
so you’re that little asswipe who’s been eating up our bandwidth, eh? and it’s “rite of passage” dimwit…
The ranting is for the purpose of ranting. Absolute pure rant. We love it. it gets ideas circulating. there’s really no point of petitioning it you have no clear idea what you are petitioning for. You could admit that it’s an exchange of ideas between people who know that one needs to be extremely intelligent to say profoundly stupid things.
what are you going to do anyway? Drag an extra copper wire from your house to an ISP in europe by tugging it with your pirogue?
read the top of the page it says “on Teaching, Programming, Technology and Web 2.0″. keywords being programming, technology. you can bet your little ass that there will be technical terms all over the place.
and my dear Eddy, lack of background knowledge is not necessarily a sign of lack of intelligence. Except in the case of 4lyf. that’s an arbitrary bias but he/she/it is asking for it.
Also except that I think that technical terms are a rather pompous way for the “professionals” to tell the Man On The Street that “U can’t touch this” (and then start break dancing as support to their arguments. literally.). It seems that they fear if everybody understood what they were going on about, they would lose their… “black magic”.
Anyway, if there’s something the Men On The Street don’t understand, there’s the whole of the internet just a tab away so they can look it up. Might take some time but everybody is as clueless as anybody else at one point or another.
Anywayz, Yasir, as far as adding your own routes for the router, you can telnet to 192.168.1.1 and login as root and do your work there.
password 1234, right? yeah I tried that too. but it keeps giving me “you cannot log in until 15(x num. of retries) secondes” yes. secondes. The thing is hopelessly french.
Still, I got the bit that Ajay suggested sorted out from the web interface. It’ll hold until my younger brother figures it out on his own.
I know it was a bit of a weird thing to ask in the current post, but we should all probably find ways to control our usage before we get unexpectedly FUP’ed.
A journalist called me yesterday and asked me some questions about the FUP.
journalist eh? oh hum… some of the comments on this blog post may get quoted out of context I think. no?
May 9th, 2008 at 06:52
@4lyf
Yeah, you’ve right, we’d better stop ranting & go on & face off against Orange. But with distractors (like Eddy) running around debating whether the FUP is good or not… the e-discussion will never end.
It’s high time we adopt a common stance & fight against injustice.
But since no one is willing to…IT’S ME WHO’S GONNA DO IT! :@
(… waiting for the exams to end)
May 9th, 2008 at 07:11
Just to clarify something. Eddy is right. Without something like the FUP, there is no way that a Mauritian ISP can offer a 256kbit/s connection at Rs 750 per month because of the expenses involved (SAFE, satellite, etc.)
By the way, does anyone feel to have been unjustly penalized because of the FUP up to now?
May 9th, 2008 at 13:27
Not me, since i rarely download, and most of my downloads are pr0n and updates or sources.
:p If i felt unjustly penalized (i would advise everyone to do like me), DoS em with massive amounts of fone calls to their tech services when you are drunk, loop() phpmail() endloop() then till they get pissed off at you and wish to cut you off, then you can say, bof its your fault, i am the customer i am supposed to be the king. Then grab your livebox close to you when they try to take it from you and cry out that you were kicked and brutalized by MT people, get police protection order after that :p am sure they won’t like such kind of publicity!
coming back to the question: Nope, not yet.
+$3|v3n
May 9th, 2008 at 15:23
@carrotmadman6: So, let’s see one of your contributions to the thread:
Unverified claim about RS being blocked, but nonetheless you give me credits.
I seem to be the only one sticking to the topic, while the rest have gone off a tangent. Explain how this makes me a distractor?
Or, are you still fussed up about me having your blog removed from MBT because of the deliberate plagiarism?
Eddy.
Think before you start writing or plagiarising!
May 9th, 2008 at 15:30
Eddy is right.
Except Eddy doesn’t mention where his new peering idea comes from.
He may be right from about the FUP, but from a conservative point of view.
I think carrot and me are right form what’s that other point of view. something big probably.
There are not enough cables in the I.O. money is not an issue if anyone is actually serious about those cyber island claims. It’s an investment. Supply and Demand. Increase the Supply instead of pissing off the Demand. But writing down policies at a desk in an office is of course much cheaper.
tsunamis are not an issue either. cables on the sea floor are not going to be affected by surface waves, I know that. they only have to worry about Giant Sharks, sea monsters and other Krakens.
that other one keeps going on “My farther did this. My father did that”, well your father is not around anymore. He had roads constructed for the textile factories, you should be having cables laid down AND NOT JUST FOR THOSE GODDAM BPO FARMS! they are just infrastructure. they don’t vote for you. we do.
the FUP could just be a sinecure though. I ALREADY feel I’m being unjustly penalized by the unreliable service alone. I haven’t received any threat letters or any gestapo like phonecalls but the my connection is suddenly crap at the time of this post. What’s worse it’s at a time I actually need to download a file. Even connecting to your blog is taking far far too long.
Then grab your livebox close to you when they try to take it from you and cry out that you were kicked and brutalized by MT people
Elian gonzalez!!
haha, most younger people won’t know know what I’m talking about.. I am probably a couple of decades than I appear.. come to think of it the older ones may not know either…. oh well..
Still at the virtual age of 43 and so close to my early pre-retirement, I shouldn’t have to suffer the incompetence of a few pencil pushers.
and hurray! subscriptions are working again!
May 9th, 2008 at 16:29
By distractor, i meant trying to discourage us from protesting against the FUP…. by saying things like the FUP is applied everywhere in the world, so why not Mauritius.
& concerning my blog, i don’t know whether you’ve noticed it or not, but i’ve stopped plagiarising ever since.
So can I request my blog to be re-added to the MBT?
(Oops, we are going off-topic here!)
What i’m trying to say is that there would be no need for any FUP if the rulers were far-sighted. I dunno when this whole idea of cyberisland started, but since Day 0, they should have predicted that one day or the other, traffic usage will explode & SAFE won’t be enough. If they had thought of investing into a fibre optic link, we would certainly not be facing a day where a FUP is being implemented & RS.com is being blocked. (& btw it was indeed blocked - verified by a source from Orange).
We must not forget that having only SAFE as the only link is a major economic handicap. Suppose, SAFE gets cut off (like with the Med cables), the whole BPO sector is dead & no one gets to use the Internet. (Satellite link is only 1Gbps!!!)
& another thing about the FUP is the lack of transparency! No one knows what are the limits, how are our connections are being monitored & how will we be “punished.”
& this is exactly what I’ll ask in my forthcoming petition:
1. Invest into fibre cables.
2. More transparency on the FUP.
I hope my standpoint is clear enough.
May 9th, 2008 at 16:38
In 2008, you don’t have to have a “peering idea”. It is common practice amongst ISPs. Have you tried pinging a server in neighbouring Reunion Isl.? The connection goes through