Tag: cellc

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Computing Rants Technology

Collusion in ad-hoc mobile data bundle pricing?

The cellular networks seem to think we are all just as stupid as the government seems to think we are.

It is abundantly clear on these screen shots taken today from the Vodacom, MTN, and Cell C websites that they are either price-fixing or colluding, or deliberately being anti-competitive in their pricing for ad-hoc mobile data bundles. It must be more than coincidence they all arrive at the same prices for the same data volumes, yet each has a very different network infrastructure, backbone and peering configuration from the other.

I hate it when big corporates assume they are more intelligent than the consumer.

vodacom_data_bundles
mtn_data_bundles
cellc_data_bundle

Categories
Rants Technology

On the Gautrain getting Cellphone Coverage by 2014

Gautrain and the Gauteng transport MEC has announced that their 80km rail system will have end-to-end cellphone coverage by July 2014. TAT TA DADAA!

That’s not an announcement. That’s a fucking apology.

July 2014? Hello, it’s 2012 now. Their lame excuse is one of needing to test that the cellphone systems don’t interfere with the train systems or some kak. Now forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but those same cellphone systems and signals are already active in the air around the train when it is above ground. So are they saying the Gautrain control systems have never been tested in the vicinity of GSM/3G signal but they operate the train anyway? What a honky pile of crap.

The cellphone companies need to wake the fuck up. By not having coverage of the underground portions of the line they are just losing revenue. The Gautrain people need to wake up – it doesn’t take a year and a half to cover 80km of train tracks with cellular signal, most of which is above ground.

South Africa Technology Fail. Embarrassing. They have had this in Hong Kong since 1993.

MTN, CellC, Vodacom, 8ta, stop being so pathetic.

Categories
Rants Technology

How Vodacom, MTN and Cell C make big money at our expense.

Cell site
Image via Wikipedia

I just came across an interesting article on the New York Times where Randall Stross decided to investigate the actual costs a text message has for a cellular network operator. Finally someone did the research I’d been too lazy to do for a while.

As I suspected, a text/sms message is basically free. They are sent to the nearest tower over a control channel – a channel that exists in order for the phone to communicate with the network, and so stuffing that channel with a message bears very little overhead, if any. This also explains the stupid 160 character limit that texts are subject to.

So yeah, another blatant rip-off. Go ahead, send your R10 messages to 35050 now!

[Article Link: New York Times]

[Update: A slightly more in-depth technical discussion by Tom Limoncelli at EverythingSysadmin.com]

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