This problem of sharing bandwidth is especially worse in buildings using a common infrastructure e.g. WIMAX or fiber. There is no QOS with almost all these providers and during peak hours all the users experience terrible slow down. The providers will mostly woo you by telling you of possibilities of getting even higher bandwidth than you're paying for when traffic is low, but this only happens in the evenings and over the weekends. Internet is however critical to a business during working hours when real business is transacted and real work done. I think it's only good policies and proper enforcement methods that can help us out in this one. But even worse is the way the SLA's for the provisioning of internet are done. Th common practice is where the ISP's does the document while the customer / consumer just sign it. I think there is need for this practice and role to be reversed so that the consumer does the SLA and ensures there are means to measure whether the ISP is keeping to their part of the bargain and what to do when in violation of the agreement. Otherwise for now they have been having their cake and eating it at the same time, as they are the players and also set the rules of the game. CCK can do this, but there's a need for greater technical capacity to enforce it. Regards ________________________________ From: kictanet-bounces+jkagwe=kippra.or.ke@lists.kictanet.or.ke [mailto:kictanet-bounces+jkagwe=kippra.or.ke@lists.kictanet.or.ke] On Behalf Of wesley kiriinya Sent: Friday, August 01, 2008 1:07 PM To: James Kagwe Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Subject: Re: [kictanet] ISPs and Bandwidth: CCK Problem I should also add that we should accept that the said bandwidth will not always be constant, but a certain acceptable margin should be guaranteed. For example someone signing up for 512 may not receive less than about 400. For some businesses where bandwidth is critical then a smaller variance may apply. I've also heard that the 512 (or whichever amount of bandwidth) can be shared. As long as a client is aware of sharing and s/he knows the net bandwidth they should recieve and the variance to expect, and the client goes ahead and signs the contract then no problem. All in all it's a serious issue that leads to a lot of losses when employees can't work because net is down or too slow. If there was a sturdy on this I wouldn't be surprised if the economy is loosing lots(billions) of money. Also consider companies that are afraid to come into the country because of this bandwidth issue. Regards. --- On Fri, 8/1/08, waudo siganga <emailsignet@mailcan.com> wrote: From: waudo siganga <emailsignet@mailcan.com> Subject: Re: [kictanet] ISPs and Bandwidth: CCK Problem To: kiriinya2000@yahoo.com Cc: "KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions" <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Date: Friday, August 1, 2008, 12:44 PM Wesley - Your concern is an important one, especially for consumers. I agree with what Mhseshimiwa Rege said yesterday that CCK needs to take more seriously its obligations of ensuring service providers and operators meet obligatory service levels. I do not think that ISPs or other operators/service providers can police themselves. A service like Telkom's ADSL is another example that Kenyans are willing to live with extreme complacency. This service takes to another level what was taught at University that data communications are "bursty", Sometimes you will be lucky to get a few "bursts" in an hour. Two weeks ago our office even lost the ADSL service for about 5 days and yet we are paying a fixed charge of 9,188/= per month. CCK needs to move beyond issuing licences and do its duty under law to ensure that the licensees are meeting the Service levels. This is the only way consumers (who are often ignorant of what to expect) can be protected. Waudo On Wed, 30 Jul 2008 07:17:47 -0700 (PDT), "wesley kiriinya" <kiriinya2000@yahoo.com> said: Hey, I was wondering whether it's possible for ISPs to be forced under a law (which can be enacted if one doesn't exist) to host applications on their servers that clients can use to check how much bandwidth the client is recieving. I believe it's very unfortunate when ISPs say they are giving a client x bandwidth but the client is experiencing far much less. Isn't that stealing? Bottom line is that the clients need some assurance as to what they are paying for. o_O? People make a plan work, a plan alone seldom makes people work (Confucius).