Thanks Mwendwa for the resources. I'm going to push back on your point on using market share to define whether or not competition exists in this market obscures a lot. When it comes to fixed lines what matters is where the cable terminates near enough to you connect to. There are entire neighbourhoods that are only served by a single provider. So my question still stands about what the CA is doing to ensure more competition. On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 21:47, Mwendwa Kivuva <Kivuva@transworldafrica.com> wrote:

Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate.

On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

...

Listers, Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering. Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-...

The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves <https://twitter.com/Safaricom_Care/status/1360876964651929600>, never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services.

That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers.

...

All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place.

So I have a few of questions:

1. Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users?

CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have

to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibili...

Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless.

...

1. Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers?

I hope lawyers here can help us with this.

...

1. 2. If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area. 3. Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places

Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day,

Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020... Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914 subscribers , 19.8 Poa % market share Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824 subscribers ,8.8% market share Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228 subscribers, 1.4 % market share

Consumers are speaking with their wallets.

As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device.

Best Regards ______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva

-- Regards, Sidney *Twitter:* @princelySid <https://twitter.com/princelySid> | *Web: * sidneyochieng.co.ke *Skype: *sidney.ochieng | *Github:* princelySid <https://github.com/princelySid>

Dear all, Just received an invite for the following webinar https://lawyershub-org.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_h_8OwhRDRzO7K09qCUn91A This could be timely, seeing the current discussion on this list. Thanking you Kind Regards Anuradha Khoda On Wed, 17 Feb 2021, 07:01 Ali Hussein via kictanet, < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

@Sidney Ochieng <sidney.ochieng@gmail.com> and listers. This is a great conversation. I like Kivuva's argument on market forces. What we should possibly ask is this:-

1. Did Safaricom deliberately sought to hoodwink customers, hook them on cheap internet, and once they had penetrated the market changed the Terms of Service? And if so, are there other options in the market? 2. It wasn't very long ago that this list was full of complaints about Zuku's service. That seems to have disappeared. Could it be because an alternative was offered in the form of Faiba by Jamii and Safaricom's Home Fibre? I understand that Liquid is also testing a home internet offering. The more the merrier. 3. The regulator has been awfully silent as this debate rages on social media. Time for some direction?

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim <http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim>

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Wed, Feb 17, 2021 at 1:29 AM Sidney Ochieng via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

...

Thanks Mwendwa for the resources. I'm going to push back on your point on using market share to define whether or not competition exists in this market obscures a lot. When it comes to fixed lines what matters is where the cable terminates near enough to you connect to. There are entire neighbourhoods that are only served by a single provider. So my question still stands about what the CA is doing to ensure more competition.

On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 21:47, Mwendwa Kivuva <Kivuva@transworldafrica.com> wrote:

...

Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate.

On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

...

Listers, Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering. Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-...

The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves <https://twitter.com/Safaricom_Care/status/1360876964651929600> , never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services.

That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers.

...

All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place.

So I have a few of questions:

1. Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users?

CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have

to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibili...

Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless.

...

1. Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers?

I hope lawyers here can help us with this.

...

1. 2. If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area. 3. Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places

Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day,

Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020... Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914 subscribers , 19.8 Poa % market share Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824 subscribers ,8.8% market share Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228 subscribers, 1.4 % market share

Consumers are speaking with their wallets.

As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device.

Best Regards ______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva

-- Regards, Sidney

*Twitter:* @princelySid <https://twitter.com/princelySid> | *Web: * sidneyochieng.co.ke *Skype: *sidney.ochieng | *Github:* princelySid <https://github.com/princelySid> _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/khoda.anu%40gmail.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

Thank you Sidney for this. I don’t think Safaricom is being sincere in this fair usage limits. They promised that with Home Fibre one can stream, download or upload stuff without limits. All you do is pay your monthly subscription. Fair usage is a type of rationing that limits how much you can do when you had been promised that you can do whatever you want. To me this is going back on a promise. It’s reminiscent of the days of unlimited 3GB bundles on the dongle modem only for them to strike you with a fair usage notice. Are other networks doing the same? As the industry leader in the country, this is bound to influence other industry players to adopt the same standards and limits which is not good. Maybe it might be time to seek other options. Regards Beryl Sent from my iPad

On 16 Feb 2021, at 9:47 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate.

...

On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote: Listers, Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering. Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-...

The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves, never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services.

That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers.

...

All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place.

So I have a few of questions: Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users?

CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibili...

Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless.

...

Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers? I hope lawyers here can help us with this.

If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area. Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day, Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020... Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914 subscribers , 19.8 Poa % market share Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824 subscribers ,8.8% market share Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228 subscribers, 1.4 % market share

Consumers are speaking with their wallets.

As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device.

Best Regards ______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

I’ve hesitated to climb into this but – here goes anyway (everything written in personal capacity) Firstly – almost ALL ISP’s have FUP’s in some form or another – generally buried deep in the T&C’s – as someone stated to me – in the UK with certain ISP’s suddenly your line just gets slow and then when you call support you find yourself quietly diverted to the abuse department. The fact is that FUP’s are a necessary evil. 1. They prevent customers from reselling one account to multiple other parties while sharing it using NAT – which impacts the financial viability of the service and make its more expensive for everyone else in the end 2. ISP’s operate on contention ratios – if you do not impose some form of FUP – you either have to put up the price or the contention ratios are going to get out of whack – and everyone else is going to suffer. 3. Globally most home accounts use well shy of half a terabyte a month – a terabyte of data is a LOT of data for a single home So let’s just put some context in what a terabyte of data actually means – and I always use video as the prime gauge of this because it’s the easiest example. Your average Netflix 4k film runs at ~25mbit at absolute maximum if you are watching 4K on an HDR enabled TV. That’s 22.5 Gigabytes of data every 2 hours – if you watch one 4K 2 hour movie every single day for a month you will eat 675gigs of data. If we drop this to 1080p – which is far more common – you are using ~7 megabit of bandwidth – or 6.3gigs every 2 hours – if you watch 300 hours of 1080p content in a month – or 10 hours a day – you still haven’t hit that cap. Effectively – you could watch one 4K movie every day for a month – and still watch 150 40minute tv episodes in 1080p in a month – and have room to move. To look at it from another perspective – installation of something like Ubuntu Linux over the net – you could still over 400 machines on that kinda data load in a month. With regards to gaming – you may burn 100gig pulling down a game and game updates – but after that in game play you are using tiny amounts of bandwidth and could keep yourself playing easily for a month with space to spare. On Zoom calls – if you ran zoom 24 hours a day – for a month – you’d use less than 70% of that cap. Also – I might point out that the FUP’s slow your link down once you hit that cap – to a rate that is still useable if a little sluggish. Basically what I’m saying in all of this – Safaricom’s FUP and T&C’s to me seem perfectly reasonable and designed to protect the network – with the alternative being – the price goes up for everyone or everyone suffers because of the few when the network congests. Bandwidth aint free – and you can’t have it both ways – the product still has to make financial sense to both the consumer and the provider Andrew From: kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston=liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of Adam Lane via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 07:36 To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> Cc: Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS There's a webinar on this topic today for those interested A Public Policy Discussion on #HomeFibre and #FairUsage Policies in Kenya. 🗓️ Thursday, 18th February 2021 🕜 12:00PM - 1:30PM Sign up here: 🔗 https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q<https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q> #LawyersHub #AfricaLawTech #ISP https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6<https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6> Speakers from CA, Safaricom, Liquid, KICTAnet, From:Beryl Aidi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> To:Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com> Cc:Beryl Aidi <bee.aidi@gmail.com> Date:2021-02-18 05:57:28 Subject:Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Thank you Sidney for this. I don’t think Safaricom is being sincere in this fair usage limits. They promised that with Home Fibre one can stream, download or upload stuff without limits. All you do is pay your monthly subscription. Fair usage is a type of rationing that limits how much you can do when you had been promised that you can do whatever you want. To me this is going back on a promise. It’s reminiscent of the days of unlimited 3GB bundles on the dongle modem only for them to strike you with a fair usage notice. Are other networks doing the same? As the industry leader in the country, this is bound to influence other industry players to adopt the same standards and limits which is not good. Maybe it might be time to seek other options. Regards Beryl Sent from my iPad On 16 Feb 2021, at 9:47 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate. On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: Listers, Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering. Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-fair-usage-limits/<https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-fair-usage-limits/> The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves<https://twitter.com/Safaricom_Care/status/1360876964651929600>, never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services. That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers. All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place. So I have a few of questions: 1. Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users? CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibilities.pdf<https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibilities.pdf> Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless. 1. Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers? I hope lawyers here can help us with this. 1. 2. If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area. 3. Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day, Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020-2021.pdf<https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020-2021.pdf> Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914 subscribers , 19.8 Poa % market share Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824 subscribers ,8.8% market share Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228 subscribers, 1.4 % market share Consumers are speaking with their wallets. As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device. Best Regards ______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva<https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva> _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet> Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet<http://twitter.com/kictanet> Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/<https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/> Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com> The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

Let me equate this to something else. We all agree that Freedom of Speech is a good thing – and that the right to freedom of speech should not be curtailed. But – in every country there are limits to freedom of speech – you cannot use hate speech – you cannot incite violence – etc etc Does it mean that you because you cannot incite violence your freedom of speech is being limited? I don’t believe so – you have almost unlimited right to freedom of speech – until you abuse that right. The only thing I see here is that Safaricom broke the unwritten rule of fair usage policies – they spoke about fair usage policies. I applaud the transparency they came with when they set these policies – because its more than so many other ISP’s would ever do. Typically in the ISP world – a.) the FUP’s are never spoken about b.) contention ratios are never discussed. So – honestly – I have no problem with what they did – and in fact I find it rather admirable that they were prepared to apply this level of transparency. Thanks Andrew From: Grace Githaiga <ggithaiga@hotmail.com> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 08:33 To: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Cc: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Andrew Thanks for breaking it down and being honest in letting us know that FUP is applied by practically all service providers. The question then remains, should Safcom have been have marketed the home fibre as 'unlimited?' And yes, I have read what you said about the FUP being tacked in T&Cs but should this not have been explicitly spelt out? Rgds GG ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Grace Githaiga Twitter: @ggithaiga Skype: gracegithaiga Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gracegithaiga<https://www.linkedin.com/in/gracegithaiga> ...the most important office in a democracy is the citizen. So, you see, that’s what our democracy demands. It needs you!----Barrack Obama. ________________________________ From: kictanet <kictanet-bounces+ggithaiga=hotmail.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of Andrew Alston via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Sent: 18 February 2021 8:12 AM To: ggithaiga@hotmail.com <ggithaiga@hotmail.com> Cc: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS I’ve hesitated to climb into this but – here goes anyway (everything written in personal capacity) Firstly – almost ALL ISP’s have FUP’s in some form or another – generally buried deep in the T&C’s – as someone stated to me – in the UK with certain ISP’s suddenly your line just gets slow and then when you call support you find yourself quietly diverted to the abuse department. The fact is that FUP’s are a necessary evil. 1. They prevent customers from reselling one account to multiple other parties while sharing it using NAT – which impacts the financial viability of the service and make its more expensive for everyone else in the end 2. ISP’s operate on contention ratios – if you do not impose some form of FUP – you either have to put up the price or the contention ratios are going to get out of whack – and everyone else is going to suffer. 3. Globally most home accounts use well shy of half a terabyte a month – a terabyte of data is a LOT of data for a single home So let’s just put some context in what a terabyte of data actually means – and I always use video as the prime gauge of this because it’s the easiest example. Your average Netflix 4k film runs at ~25mbit at absolute maximum if you are watching 4K on an HDR enabled TV. That’s 22.5 Gigabytes of data every 2 hours – if you watch one 4K 2 hour movie every single day for a month you will eat 675gigs of data. If we drop this to 1080p – which is far more common – you are using ~7 megabit of bandwidth – or 6.3gigs every 2 hours – if you watch 300 hours of 1080p content in a month – or 10 hours a day – you still haven’t hit that cap. Effectively – you could watch one 4K movie every day for a month – and still watch 150 40minute tv episodes in 1080p in a month – and have room to move. To look at it from another perspective – installation of something like Ubuntu Linux over the net – you could still over 400 machines on that kinda data load in a month. With regards to gaming – you may burn 100gig pulling down a game and game updates – but after that in game play you are using tiny amounts of bandwidth and could keep yourself playing easily for a month with space to spare. On Zoom calls – if you ran zoom 24 hours a day – for a month – you’d use less than 70% of that cap. Also – I might point out that the FUP’s slow your link down once you hit that cap – to a rate that is still useable if a little sluggish. Basically what I’m saying in all of this – Safaricom’s FUP and T&C’s to me seem perfectly reasonable and designed to protect the network – with the alternative being – the price goes up for everyone or everyone suffers because of the few when the network congests. Bandwidth aint free – and you can’t have it both ways – the product still has to make financial sense to both the consumer and the provider Andrew From: kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston=liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of Adam Lane via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 07:36 To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> Cc: Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS There's a webinar on this topic today for those interested A Public Policy Discussion on #HomeFibre and #FairUsage Policies in Kenya. 🗓️ Thursday, 18th February 2021 🕜 12:00PM - 1:30PM Sign up here: 🔗 https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q<https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q> #LawyersHub #AfricaLawTech #ISP https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6<https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6> Speakers from CA, Safaricom, Liquid, KICTAnet, From:Beryl Aidi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> To:Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com> Cc:Beryl Aidi <bee.aidi@gmail.com> Date:2021-02-18 05:57:28 Subject:Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Thank you Sidney for this. I don’t think Safaricom is being sincere in this fair usage limits. They promised that with Home Fibre one can stream, download or upload stuff without limits. All you do is pay your monthly subscription. Fair usage is a type of rationing that limits how much you can do when you had been promised that you can do whatever you want. To me this is going back on a promise. It’s reminiscent of the days of unlimited 3GB bundles on the dongle modem only for them to strike you with a fair usage notice. Are other networks doing the same? As the industry leader in the country, this is bound to influence other industry players to adopt the same standards and limits which is not good. Maybe it might be time to seek other options. Regards Beryl Sent from my iPad On 16 Feb 2021, at 9:47 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate. On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: Listers, Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering. Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-fair-usage-limits/<https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-fair-usage-limits> The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves<https://twitter.com/Safaricom_Care/status/1360876964651929600>, never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services. That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers. All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place. So I have a few of questions: 1. Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users? CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibilities.pdf<https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibilities.pdf> Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless. 1. Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers? I hope lawyers here can help us with this. 1. 2. If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area. 3. Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day, Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020-2021.pdf<https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020-2021.pdf> Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914 subscribers , 19.8 Poa % market share Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824 subscribers ,8.8% market share Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228 subscribers, 1.4 % market share Consumers are speaking with their wallets. As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device. Best Regards ______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva<https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva> _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet> Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet<http://twitter.com/kictanet> Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/<https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet> Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com> The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

🙂 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Grace Githaiga Twitter: @ggithaiga Skype: gracegithaiga Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gracegithaiga ...the most important office in a democracy is the citizen. So, you see, that’s what our democracy demands. It needs you!----Barrack Obama. ________________________________ From: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> Sent: 18 February 2021 9:01 AM To: Grace Githaiga <ggithaiga@hotmail.com>; KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Grace – as a further note. Under the FUP – you are NOT cut off – you still have “unlimited” internet – albeit more slowly – so the unlimited term still applies. To equate it to my previous email – you still have your freedom of speech – you just get to speak more slowly 😊 Andrew From: Grace Githaiga <ggithaiga@hotmail.com> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 08:33 To: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Cc: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Andrew Thanks for breaking it down and being honest in letting us know that FUP is applied by practically all service providers. The question then remains, should Safcom have been have marketed the home fibre as 'unlimited?' And yes, I have read what you said about the FUP being tacked in T&Cs but should this not have been explicitly spelt out? Rgds GG ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Grace Githaiga Twitter: @ggithaiga Skype: gracegithaiga Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gracegithaiga ...the most important office in a democracy is the citizen. So, you see, that’s what our democracy demands. It needs you!----Barrack Obama. ________________________________ From: kictanet <kictanet-bounces+ggithaiga=hotmail.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of Andrew Alston via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Sent: 18 February 2021 8:12 AM To: ggithaiga@hotmail.com <ggithaiga@hotmail.com> Cc: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS I’ve hesitated to climb into this but – here goes anyway (everything written in personal capacity) Firstly – almost ALL ISP’s have FUP’s in some form or another – generally buried deep in the T&C’s – as someone stated to me – in the UK with certain ISP’s suddenly your line just gets slow and then when you call support you find yourself quietly diverted to the abuse department. The fact is that FUP’s are a necessary evil. 1. They prevent customers from reselling one account to multiple other parties while sharing it using NAT – which impacts the financial viability of the service and make its more expensive for everyone else in the end 2. ISP’s operate on contention ratios – if you do not impose some form of FUP – you either have to put up the price or the contention ratios are going to get out of whack – and everyone else is going to suffer. 3. Globally most home accounts use well shy of half a terabyte a month – a terabyte of data is a LOT of data for a single home So let’s just put some context in what a terabyte of data actually means – and I always use video as the prime gauge of this because it’s the easiest example. Your average Netflix 4k film runs at ~25mbit at absolute maximum if you are watching 4K on an HDR enabled TV. That’s 22.5 Gigabytes of data every 2 hours – if you watch one 4K 2 hour movie every single day for a month you will eat 675gigs of data. If we drop this to 1080p – which is far more common – you are using ~7 megabit of bandwidth – or 6.3gigs every 2 hours – if you watch 300 hours of 1080p content in a month – or 10 hours a day – you still haven’t hit that cap. Effectively – you could watch one 4K movie every day for a month – and still watch 150 40minute tv episodes in 1080p in a month – and have room to move. To look at it from another perspective – installation of something like Ubuntu Linux over the net – you could still over 400 machines on that kinda data load in a month. With regards to gaming – you may burn 100gig pulling down a game and game updates – but after that in game play you are using tiny amounts of bandwidth and could keep yourself playing easily for a month with space to spare. On Zoom calls – if you ran zoom 24 hours a day – for a month – you’d use less than 70% of that cap. Also – I might point out that the FUP’s slow your link down once you hit that cap – to a rate that is still useable if a little sluggish. Basically what I’m saying in all of this – Safaricom’s FUP and T&C’s to me seem perfectly reasonable and designed to protect the network – with the alternative being – the price goes up for everyone or everyone suffers because of the few when the network congests. Bandwidth aint free – and you can’t have it both ways – the product still has to make financial sense to both the consumer and the provider Andrew From: kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston=liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of Adam Lane via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 07:36 To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> Cc: Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS There's a webinar on this topic today for those interested A Public Policy Discussion on #HomeFibre and #FairUsage Policies in Kenya. 🗓️ Thursday, 18th February 2021 🕜 12:00PM - 1:30PM Sign up here: 🔗 https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q #LawyersHub #AfricaLawTech #ISP https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6 Speakers from CA, Safaricom, Liquid, KICTAnet, From:Beryl Aidi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> To:Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com> Cc:Beryl Aidi <bee.aidi@gmail.com> Date:2021-02-18 05:57:28 Subject:Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Thank you Sidney for this. I don’t think Safaricom is being sincere in this fair usage limits. They promised that with Home Fibre one can stream, download or upload stuff without limits. All you do is pay your monthly subscription. Fair usage is a type of rationing that limits how much you can do when you had been promised that you can do whatever you want. To me this is going back on a promise. It’s reminiscent of the days of unlimited 3GB bundles on the dongle modem only for them to strike you with a fair usage notice. Are other networks doing the same? As the industry leader in the country, this is bound to influence other industry players to adopt the same standards and limits which is not good. Maybe it might be time to seek other options. Regards Beryl Sent from my iPad On 16 Feb 2021, at 9:47 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate. On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: Listers, Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering. Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-fair-usage-limits/<https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-fair-usage-limits> The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves<https://twitter.com/Safaricom_Care/status/1360876964651929600>, never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services. That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers. All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place. So I have a few of questions: 1. Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users? CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibili... Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless. 1. Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers? I hope lawyers here can help us with this. 1. 2. If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area. 3. Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day, Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020... Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914 subscribers , 19.8 Poa % market share Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824 subscribers ,8.8% market share Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228 subscribers, 1.4 % market share Consumers are speaking with their wallets. As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device. Best Regards ______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/<https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet> Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

Greetings Listers, Remember the ISPs have minutely detailed back to back agreements with the Bulk Internet Bandwidth Providers and at that level the traffic is monitored to the detail one can imagine; which is one of the key drivers for implementation of FUP. So let’s not be unfair on the ISPs for implementing Fair practices. 😉 😀 The Fair Use policy (FUP) will definitely improve the general user experience of all internet users and it will be a preventive measure towards the actions of internet hungry and heavy-users who have been using the internet for rouge and unsolicited activities. (Coin Mining is just an example, setting up internet hotspots and reselling is another one…etc.. etc..) 😀!! Although 1TB is more than enough of a threshold so looks like it is not for money but more to do with efficient BW utilization and QoS, there’s hope that it won’t just be a tool for growing MRR. 🤞 The Question I have as a consumer is, will I get to see my usage data when FUP is applied?? I mean it is only fair to have this implemented in a transparent manner so that consumers can equally monitor and manage their usage. There are some ISPs who share this offline on request and some who have integrated this feature on their app but it does not work and some who do not bother at all. Simple and Transparent. FUP for win-win not win-loose!! 👍 Thanks Arun.

On 18 Feb 2021, at 09:01, Andrew Alston via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Grace – as a further note.

Under the FUP – you are NOT cut off – you still have “unlimited” internet – albeit more slowly – so the unlimited term still applies.

To equate it to my previous email – you still have your freedom of speech – you just get to speak more slowly 😊

Andrew

From: Grace Githaiga <ggithaiga@hotmail.com <mailto:ggithaiga@hotmail.com>> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 08:33 To: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke <mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> Cc: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com <mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew Thanks for breaking it down and being honest in letting us know that FUP is applied by practically all service providers. The question then remains, should Safcom have been have marketed the home fibre as 'unlimited?' And yes, I have read what you said about the FUP being tacked in T&Cs but should this not have been explicitly spelt out?

Rgds GG ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Grace Githaiga

Twitter: @ggithaiga

Skype: gracegithaiga

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gracegithaiga <https://www.linkedin.com/in/gracegithaiga>

...the most important office in a democracy is the citizen. So, you see, that’s what our democracy demands. It needs you!----Barrack Obama.

From: kictanet <kictanet-bounces+ggithaiga=hotmail.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke <mailto:kictanet-bounces+ggithaiga=hotmail.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> on behalf of Andrew Alston via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke <mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> Sent: 18 February 2021 8:12 AM To: ggithaiga@hotmail.com <mailto:ggithaiga@hotmail.com> <ggithaiga@hotmail.com <mailto:ggithaiga@hotmail.com>> Cc: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com <mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

I’ve hesitated to climb into this but – here goes anyway (everything written in personal capacity)

Firstly – almost ALL ISP’s have FUP’s in some form or another – generally buried deep in the T&C’s – as someone stated to me – in the UK with certain ISP’s suddenly your line just gets slow and then when you call support you find yourself quietly diverted to the abuse department.

The fact is that FUP’s are a necessary evil.

They prevent customers from reselling one account to multiple other parties while sharing it using NAT – which impacts the financial viability of the service and make its more expensive for everyone else in the end ISP’s operate on contention ratios – if you do not impose some form of FUP – you either have to put up the price or the contention ratios are going to get out of whack – and everyone else is going to suffer. Globally most home accounts use well shy of half a terabyte a month – a terabyte of data is a LOT of data for a single home

So let’s just put some context in what a terabyte of data actually means – and I always use video as the prime gauge of this because it’s the easiest example.

Your average Netflix 4k film runs at ~25mbit at absolute maximum if you are watching 4K on an HDR enabled TV. That’s 22.5 Gigabytes of data every 2 hours – if you watch one 4K 2 hour movie every single day for a month you will eat 675gigs of data. If we drop this to 1080p – which is far more common – you are using ~7 megabit of bandwidth – or 6.3gigs every 2 hours – if you watch 300 hours of 1080p content in a month – or 10 hours a day – you still haven’t hit that cap.

Effectively – you could watch one 4K movie every day for a month – and still watch 150 40minute tv episodes in 1080p in a month – and have room to move.

To look at it from another perspective – installation of something like Ubuntu Linux over the net – you could still over 400 machines on that kinda data load in a month.

With regards to gaming – you may burn 100gig pulling down a game and game updates – but after that in game play you are using tiny amounts of bandwidth and could keep yourself playing easily for a month with space to spare.

On Zoom calls – if you ran zoom 24 hours a day – for a month – you’d use less than 70% of that cap.

Also – I might point out that the FUP’s slow your link down once you hit that cap – to a rate that is still useable if a little sluggish.

Basically what I’m saying in all of this – Safaricom’s FUP and T&C’s to me seem perfectly reasonable and designed to protect the network – with the alternative being – the price goes up for everyone or everyone suffers because of the few when the network congests. Bandwidth aint free – and you can’t have it both ways – the product still has to make financial sense to both the consumer and the provider

Andrew

From: kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston=liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke <mailto:kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston=liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> on behalf of Adam Lane via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke <mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 07:36 To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com <mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> Cc: Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com <mailto:adam.lane@huawei.com>> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

There's a webinar on this topic today for those interested

A Public Policy Discussion on #HomeFibre and #FairUsage Policies in Kenya.

🗓️ Thursday, 18th February 2021

🕜 12:00PM - 1:30PM

Sign up here:

🔗 https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q <https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q> #LawyersHub #AfricaLawTech #ISP https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6 <https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6>

Speakers from CA, Safaricom, Liquid, KICTAnet,

From:Beryl Aidi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke <mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>>

To:Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com <mailto:adam.lane@huawei.com>>

Cc:Beryl Aidi <bee.aidi@gmail.com <mailto:bee.aidi@gmail.com>>

Date:2021-02-18 05:57:28

Subject:Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Thank you Sidney for this.

I don’t think Safaricom is being sincere in this fair usage limits. They promised that with Home Fibre one can stream, download or upload stuff without limits. All you do is pay your monthly subscription. Fair usage is a type of rationing that limits how much you can do when you had been promised that you can do whatever you want. To me this is going back on a promise. It’s reminiscent of the days of unlimited 3GB bundles on the dongle modem only for them to strike you with a fair usage notice. Are other networks doing the same? As the industry leader in the country, this is bound to influence other industry players to adopt the same standards and limits which is not good. Maybe it might be time to seek other options.

Regards

Beryl

Sent from my iPad

On 16 Feb 2021, at 9:47 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke <mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote:

Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate.

On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke <mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote:

Listers,

Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering.

Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-... <https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-fair-usage-limits>

The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves <https://twitter.com/Safaricom_Care/status/1360876964651929600>, never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services.

That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers.

All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place.

So I have a few of questions:

Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users? CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibili... <https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibilities.pdf>

Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless. Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers? I hope lawyers here can help us with this.

If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area. Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day, Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020... <https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020-2021.pdf> Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914 subscribers , 19.8 Poa % market share Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824 subscribers ,8.8% market share Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228 subscribers, 1.4 % market share

Consumers are speaking with their wallets.

As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device.

Best Regards ______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva <https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva> _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke <mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet <https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet> Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet <http://twitter.com/kictanet> Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/ <https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet>

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com <https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com>

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications. _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke <mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet <https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet> Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet <http://twitter.com/kictanet> Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/ <https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/>

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/arunnairp%40yahoo.com <https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/arunnairp%40yahoo.com>

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

Spot on Andrew, @Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> , not all users are decent, majority are peculiar. As i opined earlier service providers are not in the business of policing users, it costs money to do this as Andrew argues. FUP is one of the ways of ensuring people stick to their lanes and everyone gets a good service otherwise you get users hogging links with Torrents affecting other users who want to use the same pipe which not finite. Regards On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:21 AM Andrew Alston via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

I would 100% agree that if you are going to transparently publish FUP’s that users need to be able to track their usage as they move towards violation of the FUP, and if the ISP is implementing FUP’s they are doing data accounting – and as such should be able to provide such – albeit with some development to place such data into some kinda user portal.

Andrew

*From: *Arun Nair <arunnairp@yahoo.com> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:12 *To: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>, Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Greetings Listers,

Remember the ISPs have minutely detailed back to back agreements with the Bulk Internet Bandwidth Providers and at that level the traffic is monitored to the detail one can imagine; which is one of the key drivers for implementation of FUP. So let’s not be unfair on the ISPs for implementing Fair practices. 😉 😀

The Fair Use policy (FUP) will definitely improve the general user experience of all internet users and it will be a preventive measure towards the actions of internet hungry and heavy-users who have been using the internet for rouge and unsolicited activities. (Coin Mining is just an example, setting up internet hotspots and reselling is another one…etc.. etc..) 😀!!

Although 1TB is more than enough of a threshold so looks like it is not for money but more to do with efficient BW utilization and QoS, there’s hope that it won’t just be a tool for growing MRR. 🤞

The Question I have as a consumer is, will I get to see my usage data when FUP is applied?? I mean it is only fair to have this implemented in a transparent manner so that consumers can equally monitor and manage their usage. There are some ISPs who share this offline on request and some who have integrated this feature on their app but it does not work and some who do not bother at all.

Simple and Transparent. FUP for win-win not win-loose!! 👍

Thanks

Arun.

On 18 Feb 2021, at 09:01, Andrew Alston via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Grace – as a further note.

Under the FUP – you are NOT cut off – you still have “unlimited” internet – albeit more slowly – so the unlimited term still applies.

To equate it to my previous email – you still have your freedom of speech – you just get to speak more slowly 😊

Andrew

*From: *Grace Githaiga <ggithaiga@hotmail.com> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 08:33 *To: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Cc: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

Thanks for breaking it down and being honest in letting us know that FUP is applied by practically all service providers. The question then remains, should Safcom have been have marketed the home fibre as 'unlimited?' And yes, I have read what you said about the FUP being tacked in T&Cs but should this not have been explicitly spelt out?

Rgds

GG

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*Grace Githaiga*

Twitter: @ggithaiga

Skype: gracegithaiga

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gracegithaiga

.*.**.the most important office in a democracy is the citizen. So, you see, that’s what our democracy demands. It needs you!----Barrack Obama.*

------------------------------

*From:* kictanet < kictanet-bounces+ggithaiga=hotmail.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of Andrew Alston via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Sent:* 18 February 2021 8:12 AM *To:* ggithaiga@hotmail.com <ggithaiga@hotmail.com> *Cc:* Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Subject:* Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

I’ve hesitated to climb into this but – here goes anyway (everything written in personal capacity)

Firstly – almost ALL ISP’s have FUP’s in some form or another – generally buried deep in the T&C’s – as someone stated to me – in the UK with certain ISP’s suddenly your line just gets slow and then when you call support you find yourself quietly diverted to the abuse department.

The fact is that FUP’s are a necessary evil.

1. They prevent customers from reselling one account to multiple other parties while sharing it using NAT – which impacts the financial viability of the service and make its more expensive for everyone else in the end 2. ISP’s operate on contention ratios – if you do not impose some form of FUP – you either have to put up the price or the contention ratios are going to get out of whack – and everyone else is going to suffer. 3. Globally most home accounts use well shy of half a terabyte a month – a terabyte of data is a LOT of data for a single home

So let’s just put some context in what a terabyte of data actually means – and I always use video as the prime gauge of this because it’s the easiest example.

Your average Netflix 4k film runs at ~25mbit at absolute maximum if you are watching 4K on an HDR enabled TV. That’s 22.5 Gigabytes of data every 2 hours – if you watch one 4K 2 hour movie every single day for a month you will eat 675gigs of data. If we drop this to 1080p – which is far more common – you are using ~7 megabit of bandwidth – or 6.3gigs every 2 hours – if you watch 300 hours of 1080p content in a month – or 10 hours a day – you still haven’t hit that cap.

Effectively – you could watch one 4K movie every day for a month – and still watch 150 40minute tv episodes in 1080p in a month – and have room to move.

To look at it from another perspective – installation of something like Ubuntu Linux over the net – you could still over 400 machines on that kinda data load in a month.

With regards to gaming – you may burn 100gig pulling down a game and game updates – but after that in game play you are using tiny amounts of bandwidth and could keep yourself playing easily for a month with space to spare.

On Zoom calls – if you ran zoom 24 hours a day – for a month – you’d use less than 70% of that cap.

Also – I might point out that the FUP’s slow your link down once you hit that cap – to a rate that is still useable if a little sluggish.

Basically what I’m saying in all of this – Safaricom’s FUP and T&C’s to me seem perfectly reasonable and designed to protect the network – with the alternative being – the price goes up for everyone or everyone suffers because of the few when the network congests. Bandwidth aint free – and you can’t have it both ways – the product still has to make financial sense to both the consumer and the provider

Andrew

*From: *kictanet < kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston=liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of Adam Lane via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 07:36 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

There's a webinar on this topic today for those interested

A Public Policy Discussion on #HomeFibre and #FairUsage Policies in Kenya.

🗓️ Thursday, 18th February 2021

🕜 12:00PM - 1:30PM

Sign up here:

🔗 https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q

#LawyersHub #AfricaLawTech #ISP https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6

Speakers from CA, Safaricom, Liquid, KICTAnet,

*From:*Beryl Aidi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>

*To:*Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com>

*Cc:*Beryl Aidi <bee.aidi@gmail.com>

*Date:*2021-02-18 05:57:28

*Subject:*Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Thank you Sidney for this.

I don’t think Safaricom is being sincere in this fair usage limits. They promised that with Home Fibre one can stream, download or upload stuff without limits. All you do is pay your monthly subscription. Fair usage is a type of rationing that limits how much you can do when you had been promised that you can do whatever you want. To me this is going back on a promise. It’s reminiscent of the days of unlimited 3GB bundles on the dongle modem only for them to strike you with a fair usage notice. Are other networks doing the same? As the industry leader in the country, this is bound to influence other industry players to adopt the same standards and limits which is not good. Maybe it might be time to seek other options.

Regards

Beryl

Sent from my iPad

On 16 Feb 2021, at 9:47 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate.

On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Listers,

Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering.

Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-...

The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves <https://twitter.com/Safaricom_Care/status/1360876964651929600>, never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services.

That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers.

All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place.

So I have a few of questions:

1. Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users?

CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibili...

Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless.

1. Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers?

I hope lawyers here can help us with this.

1. 2. If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area. 3. Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places

Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day, Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020...

Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share

Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share

Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914 subscribers , 19.8 Poa % market share

Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824 subscribers ,8.8% market share

Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share

Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228 subscribers, 1.4 % market share

Consumers are speaking with their wallets.

As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device.

Best Regards

______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/arunnairp%40yahoo.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/otieno.barrack%40gmail...

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

-- Barrack O. Otieno +254721325277 +254733206359 Skype: barrack.otieno PGP ID: 0x2611D86A

The issues in my view are: a) whether the users were provided with clear and complete information about the terms and conditions for the internet services; b) whether the fair use policies are actually 'fair', clear and understandable; c) whether in their introduction, amendment or implementation of the policies, the ISP has been unfair, arbitrary or given false and misleading information to customers; d) whether the ISP is transparent about the implementation of these policies; e) whether users have been given adequate and reasonable notice of the existence of the policies, and of the proposed changes prior to their adoption; Previous terms by Safaricom listed below (that i could find online) do not include fair use policies, save for the new one in 2021. 2015 - TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR SAFARICOM INTERNET AT HOME (FIBRE TO THE HOME)SERVICE <https://www.safaricom.co.ke/images/Downloads/Terms_and_Conditions/terms_and_conditions_for_safaricom_internet_at_home_service.pdf> 2018 - TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR SAFARICOM HOME FIBRE ONE MONTH FREE PROMOTION <https://www.safaricom.co.ke/images/Downloads/Terms_and_Conditions/SAFARICOM_HOME_FIBRE_ONE_MONTH_FREE_PROMOTION_26_02_2018.pdf> FEB 2019 TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR SAFARICOM HOME FIBRE PREPAYMENT CAMPAIGN <https://www.safaricom.co.ke/images/Downloads/Terms_and_Conditions/TsCs_Safaricom_HomeFibre6+1_promo.pdf> 2018 - TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR SAFARICOM HOME FIBRE INTERNET PLUS SERVICE <https://www.safaricom.co.ke/images/Downloads/Terms_and_Conditions/Ts&Cs_SAFARICOM_HOME_FIBRE_INTERNET_PLUS_SERVICE.pdf> also here <https://www.safaricom.co.ke/about/media-center/publications/terms-and-conditions/safaricom-home-fibre-internet-plus-service> 2019 - TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR SAFARICOM SECURENET SERVICE <https://www.safaricom.co.ke/images/Downloads/Terms_and_Conditions/TsCs-Safaricom_SecureNet_Service.pdf> also here <https://www.safaricom.co.ke/about/media-center/publications/terms-and-conditions/safaricom-securenet-service> 2021 - TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR SAFARICOM HOME FIBRE SERVICE AND 4G HOME PLANS <https://www.safaricom.co.ke/about/media-center/publications/terms-and-conditions/safaricom-home-fibre-service-and-4g-home-plans> By making such a fundamental change to its terms and conditions, IMHO Safaricom owed its customers a higher duty of care, and could have done more than just an advertisement with a notice effecting the changes. Many users signed up with them with the primary consideration that no such policies existed/or at least were not disclosed. So, while one can say FUPs are justifiable for business and operational reasons, such fundamental changes to the terms and conditions shouldn't be done in such an arbitrary fashion. In the circumstances, we are called to question their mantra of being 'simple, transparent, and honest'. Regards, *Victor Kapiyo* Partner | *Lawmark Partners LLP* *Suite No. 8, Centro House, Westlands, Nairobi | **Web: www.lawmark.co.ke <http://www.lawmark.co.ke> * ==================================================== *“Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude” Zig Ziglar* On Thu, 18 Feb 2021 at 08:14, Andrew Alston via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

I’ve hesitated to climb into this but – here goes anyway (everything written in personal capacity)

Firstly – almost ALL ISP’s have FUP’s in some form or another – generally buried deep in the T&C’s – as someone stated to me – in the UK with certain ISP’s suddenly your line just gets slow and then when you call support you find yourself quietly diverted to the abuse department.

The fact is that FUP’s are a necessary evil.

1. They prevent customers from reselling one account to multiple other parties while sharing it using NAT – which impacts the financial viability of the service and make its more expensive for everyone else in the end 2. ISP’s operate on contention ratios – if you do not impose some form of FUP – you either have to put up the price or the contention ratios are going to get out of whack – and everyone else is going to suffer. 3. Globally most home accounts use well shy of half a terabyte a month – a terabyte of data is a LOT of data for a single home

So let’s just put some context in what a terabyte of data actually means – and I always use video as the prime gauge of this because it’s the easiest example.

Your average Netflix 4k film runs at ~25mbit at absolute maximum if you are watching 4K on an HDR enabled TV. That’s 22.5 Gigabytes of data every 2 hours – if you watch one 4K 2 hour movie every single day for a month you will eat 675gigs of data. If we drop this to 1080p – which is far more common – you are using ~7 megabit of bandwidth – or 6.3gigs every 2 hours – if you watch 300 hours of 1080p content in a month – or 10 hours a day – you still haven’t hit that cap.

Effectively – you could watch one 4K movie every day for a month – and still watch 150 40minute tv episodes in 1080p in a month – and have room to move.

To look at it from another perspective – installation of something like Ubuntu Linux over the net – you could still over 400 machines on that kinda data load in a month.

With regards to gaming – you may burn 100gig pulling down a game and game updates – but after that in game play you are using tiny amounts of bandwidth and could keep yourself playing easily for a month with space to spare.

On Zoom calls – if you ran zoom 24 hours a day – for a month – you’d use less than 70% of that cap.

Also – I might point out that the FUP’s slow your link down once you hit that cap – to a rate that is still useable if a little sluggish.

Basically what I’m saying in all of this – Safaricom’s FUP and T&C’s to me seem perfectly reasonable and designed to protect the network – with the alternative being – the price goes up for everyone or everyone suffers because of the few when the network congests. Bandwidth aint free – and you can’t have it both ways – the product still has to make financial sense to both the consumer and the provider

Andrew

*From: *kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston= liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of Adam Lane via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 07:36 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

There's a webinar on this topic today for those interested

A Public Policy Discussion on #HomeFibre and #FairUsage Policies in Kenya.

🗓️ Thursday, 18th February 2021

🕜 12:00PM - 1:30PM

Sign up here:

🔗 https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q

#LawyersHub #AfricaLawTech #ISP https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6

Speakers from CA, Safaricom, Liquid, KICTAnet,

*From:*Beryl Aidi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>

*To:*Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com>

*Cc:*Beryl Aidi <bee.aidi@gmail.com>

*Date:*2021-02-18 05:57:28

*Subject:*Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Thank you Sidney for this.

I don’t think Safaricom is being sincere in this fair usage limits. They promised that with Home Fibre one can stream, download or upload stuff without limits. All you do is pay your monthly subscription. Fair usage is a type of rationing that limits how much you can do when you had been promised that you can do whatever you want. To me this is going back on a promise. It’s reminiscent of the days of unlimited 3GB bundles on the dongle modem only for them to strike you with a fair usage notice. Are other networks doing the same? As the industry leader in the country, this is bound to influence other industry players to adopt the same standards and limits which is not good. Maybe it might be time to seek other options.

Regards

Beryl

Sent from my iPad

On 16 Feb 2021, at 9:47 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate.

On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Listers,

Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering.

Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-...

The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves <https://twitter.com/Safaricom_Care/status/1360876964651929600>, never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services.

That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers.

All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place.

So I have a few of questions:

1. Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users?

CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibili...

Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless.

1. Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers?

I hope lawyers here can help us with this.

1. 2. If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area. 3. Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places

Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day, Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020...

Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share

Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share

Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914 subscribers , 19.8 Poa % market share

Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824 subscribers ,8.8% market share

Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share

Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228 subscribers, 1.4 % market share

Consumers are speaking with their wallets.

As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device.

Best Regards

______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/vkapiyo%40gmail.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

Andrew Let me call this BS as it should be called. BS. Surely, of all people, you shouldn't be the one to justify FUP. I appreciate your honesty though. 😀 Here's a thought:- With all the tools available using Big Data and Analytics, aren't you all able to isolate the abusers and punish them instead of painting all of us with the same abuser tar brush? I think we are in the age of companies treating their customers with the respect they deserve and actually do right by them. What you have described is communal punishment. This is wrong and the regulator needs to take note. Regards *Ali Hussein* Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim <http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim> Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 8:13 AM Andrew Alston via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

I’ve hesitated to climb into this but – here goes anyway (everything written in personal capacity)

Firstly – almost ALL ISP’s have FUP’s in some form or another – generally buried deep in the T&C’s – as someone stated to me – in the UK with certain ISP’s suddenly your line just gets slow and then when you call support you find yourself quietly diverted to the abuse department.

The fact is that FUP’s are a necessary evil.

1. They prevent customers from reselling one account to multiple other parties while sharing it using NAT – which impacts the financial viability of the service and make its more expensive for everyone else in the end 2. ISP’s operate on contention ratios – if you do not impose some form of FUP – you either have to put up the price or the contention ratios are going to get out of whack – and everyone else is going to suffer. 3. Globally most home accounts use well shy of half a terabyte a month – a terabyte of data is a LOT of data for a single home

So let’s just put some context in what a terabyte of data actually means – and I always use video as the prime gauge of this because it’s the easiest example.

Your average Netflix 4k film runs at ~25mbit at absolute maximum if you are watching 4K on an HDR enabled TV. That’s 22.5 Gigabytes of data every 2 hours – if you watch one 4K 2 hour movie every single day for a month you will eat 675gigs of data. If we drop this to 1080p – which is far more common – you are using ~7 megabit of bandwidth – or 6.3gigs every 2 hours – if you watch 300 hours of 1080p content in a month – or 10 hours a day – you still haven’t hit that cap.

Effectively – you could watch one 4K movie every day for a month – and still watch 150 40minute tv episodes in 1080p in a month – and have room to move.

To look at it from another perspective – installation of something like Ubuntu Linux over the net – you could still over 400 machines on that kinda data load in a month.

With regards to gaming – you may burn 100gig pulling down a game and game updates – but after that in game play you are using tiny amounts of bandwidth and could keep yourself playing easily for a month with space to spare.

On Zoom calls – if you ran zoom 24 hours a day – for a month – you’d use less than 70% of that cap.

Also – I might point out that the FUP’s slow your link down once you hit that cap – to a rate that is still useable if a little sluggish.

Basically what I’m saying in all of this – Safaricom’s FUP and T&C’s to me seem perfectly reasonable and designed to protect the network – with the alternative being – the price goes up for everyone or everyone suffers because of the few when the network congests. Bandwidth aint free – and you can’t have it both ways – the product still has to make financial sense to both the consumer and the provider

Andrew

*From: *kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston= liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of Adam Lane via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 07:36 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

There's a webinar on this topic today for those interested

A Public Policy Discussion on #HomeFibre and #FairUsage Policies in Kenya.

🗓️ Thursday, 18th February 2021

🕜 12:00PM - 1:30PM

Sign up here:

🔗 https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q

#LawyersHub #AfricaLawTech #ISP https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6

Speakers from CA, Safaricom, Liquid, KICTAnet,

*From:*Beryl Aidi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>

*To:*Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com>

*Cc:*Beryl Aidi <bee.aidi@gmail.com>

*Date:*2021-02-18 05:57:28

*Subject:*Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Thank you Sidney for this.

I don’t think Safaricom is being sincere in this fair usage limits. They promised that with Home Fibre one can stream, download or upload stuff without limits. All you do is pay your monthly subscription. Fair usage is a type of rationing that limits how much you can do when you had been promised that you can do whatever you want. To me this is going back on a promise. It’s reminiscent of the days of unlimited 3GB bundles on the dongle modem only for them to strike you with a fair usage notice. Are other networks doing the same? As the industry leader in the country, this is bound to influence other industry players to adopt the same standards and limits which is not good. Maybe it might be time to seek other options.

Regards

Beryl

Sent from my iPad

On 16 Feb 2021, at 9:47 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate.

On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Listers,

Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering.

Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-...

The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves <https://twitter.com/Safaricom_Care/status/1360876964651929600>, never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services.

That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers.

All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place.

So I have a few of questions:

1. Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users?

CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibili...

Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless.

1. Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers?

I hope lawyers here can help us with this.

1. 2. If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area. 3. Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places

Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day, Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020...

Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share

Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share

Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914 subscribers , 19.8 Poa % market share

Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824 subscribers ,8.8% market share

Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share

Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228 subscribers, 1.4 % market share

Consumers are speaking with their wallets.

As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device.

Best Regards

______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

Andrew Wacha kizungu mingi (I think you are Kenyan enough to understand what I've just said). 😁 Let me put you on the spot. To come up with FUP's you already know whose doing what so that 'innocence' of telling us about privacy now is moot. You all use these tools to snoop on us. Period. Now do it for the benefit of the customer. Not yours. This is really very simple. You all are crying foul about costs blah blah...but when you were wooing us you didn't tell us about FUP... Do the right thing mate...Be on the right side of history. Regards *Ali Hussein* Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim <http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim> Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:19 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

Ali,

I respectfully disagree – FUP’s have been apart of the Internet since day one since they protect the integrity of the networks as a whole.

You have the option of buying an account without such an FUP – it just costs more – because someone has to cover the costs. Bandwidth doesn’t come free. This is the same reason why there are contention ratios (which I notice Safaricom also publishes).

You refer to big data analytics – yet if I were to propose that an ISP actively sniff and analyze user traffic – you’d be screaming about violations of privacy – because the type of analytics you are talking about would require deep packet inspection at levels you don’t even want to contemplate.

Let me be clear – you get what you pay for – and if every user decided to use their FUP allocated terabyte to its full capacity – for every 3240 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit – if every user ran at their maximum speeds on the 100mbit accounts – for every 100 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit. Trust me when I say – there is no world in which an ISP could afford to provide 10gigabit of bandwidth at a cost of effectively under $11k a month and still remain viable – which is what would happen if all those users maxed out.

So – let me ask you – would you prefer that ALL the users be penalized with significantly higher prices – or would you prefer that people abide by what is fair (and what is in this case, a FUP that is 4 times the global average usage for home user accounts – which is just north of 250gigabytes of data a month on global average)

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:11 *To: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Cc: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

Let me call this BS as it should be called. BS. Surely, of all people, you shouldn't be the one to justify FUP. I appreciate your honesty though. 😀

Here's a thought:-

With all the tools available using Big Data and Analytics, aren't you all able to isolate the abusers and punish them instead of painting all of us with the same abuser tar brush?

I think we are in the age of companies treating their customers with the respect they deserve and actually do right by them. What you have described is communal punishment. This is wrong and the regulator needs to take note.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 8:13 AM Andrew Alston via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

I’ve hesitated to climb into this but – here goes anyway (everything written in personal capacity)

Firstly – almost ALL ISP’s have FUP’s in some form or another – generally buried deep in the T&C’s – as someone stated to me – in the UK with certain ISP’s suddenly your line just gets slow and then when you call support you find yourself quietly diverted to the abuse department.

The fact is that FUP’s are a necessary evil.

1. They prevent customers from reselling one account to multiple other parties while sharing it using NAT – which impacts the financial viability of the service and make its more expensive for everyone else in the end 2. ISP’s operate on contention ratios – if you do not impose some form of FUP – you either have to put up the price or the contention ratios are going to get out of whack – and everyone else is going to suffer. 3. Globally most home accounts use well shy of half a terabyte a month – a terabyte of data is a LOT of data for a single home

So let’s just put some context in what a terabyte of data actually means – and I always use video as the prime gauge of this because it’s the easiest example.

Your average Netflix 4k film runs at ~25mbit at absolute maximum if you are watching 4K on an HDR enabled TV. That’s 22.5 Gigabytes of data every 2 hours – if you watch one 4K 2 hour movie every single day for a month you will eat 675gigs of data. If we drop this to 1080p – which is far more common – you are using ~7 megabit of bandwidth – or 6.3gigs every 2 hours – if you watch 300 hours of 1080p content in a month – or 10 hours a day – you still haven’t hit that cap.

Effectively – you could watch one 4K movie every day for a month – and still watch 150 40minute tv episodes in 1080p in a month – and have room to move.

To look at it from another perspective – installation of something like Ubuntu Linux over the net – you could still over 400 machines on that kinda data load in a month.

With regards to gaming – you may burn 100gig pulling down a game and game updates – but after that in game play you are using tiny amounts of bandwidth and could keep yourself playing easily for a month with space to spare.

On Zoom calls – if you ran zoom 24 hours a day – for a month – you’d use less than 70% of that cap.

Also – I might point out that the FUP’s slow your link down once you hit that cap – to a rate that is still useable if a little sluggish.

Basically what I’m saying in all of this – Safaricom’s FUP and T&C’s to me seem perfectly reasonable and designed to protect the network – with the alternative being – the price goes up for everyone or everyone suffers because of the few when the network congests. Bandwidth aint free – and you can’t have it both ways – the product still has to make financial sense to both the consumer and the provider

Andrew

*From: *kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston= liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of Adam Lane via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 07:36 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

There's a webinar on this topic today for those interested

A Public Policy Discussion on #HomeFibre and #FairUsage Policies in Kenya.

🗓️ Thursday, 18th February 2021

🕜 12:00PM - 1:30PM

Sign up here:

🔗 https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q

#LawyersHub #AfricaLawTech #ISP https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6

Speakers from CA, Safaricom, Liquid, KICTAnet,

*From:*Beryl Aidi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>

*To:*Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com>

*Cc:*Beryl Aidi <bee.aidi@gmail.com>

*Date:*2021-02-18 05:57:28

*Subject:*Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Thank you Sidney for this.

I don’t think Safaricom is being sincere in this fair usage limits. They promised that with Home Fibre one can stream, download or upload stuff without limits. All you do is pay your monthly subscription. Fair usage is a type of rationing that limits how much you can do when you had been promised that you can do whatever you want. To me this is going back on a promise. It’s reminiscent of the days of unlimited 3GB bundles on the dongle modem only for them to strike you with a fair usage notice. Are other networks doing the same? As the industry leader in the country, this is bound to influence other industry players to adopt the same standards and limits which is not good. Maybe it might be time to seek other options.

Regards

Beryl

Sent from my iPad

On 16 Feb 2021, at 9:47 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate.

On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Listers,

Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering.

Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-...

The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves <https://twitter.com/Safaricom_Care/status/1360876964651929600>, never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services.

That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers.

All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place.

So I have a few of questions:

1. Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users?

CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibili...

Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless.

1. Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers?

I hope lawyers here can help us with this.

1. 2. If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area. 3. Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places

Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day, Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020...

Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share

Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share

Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914 subscribers , 19.8 Poa % market share

Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824 subscribers ,8.8% market share

Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share

Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228 subscribers, 1.4 % market share

Consumers are speaking with their wallets.

As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device.

Best Regards

______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

Andrew I do appreciate your very candid responses and of course, I wouldnt expect you to agree with my 'conspiracy theories' about data. The fact that you can't run away from is this:- Most ISPs run a *Bait and switch *sales operations machine. This a morally suspect sales tactic that lures customers in with specific claims about the quality or low prices on items that turn out to be unavailable in order to upsell them on a similar, pricier item. It is considered a form of retail sales fraud, though it takes place in other contexts. So, when you are selling me bandwidth, don't hide the FUP in T&Cs. Tell me to my face. Then I decide whether I'm ok with it or not. This is the biggest issue here. Not whether FUPs are done or not. Regards *Ali Hussein* Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim <http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim> Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:47 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

Safaricom did tell you about the FUP – unlike most ISP’s in the world that never disclose what those FUP’s are.

Also – I’d be very careful about alleging that ISP’s are all looking at user data – particularly because it’s a patently false allegation that all data is analyzed on all links. Yes – some ISP’s probably do do that kinda DPI on every circuit – but it certainly isn’t the case for a large portion of them – because its not economically feasible to do it.

Again, someone would have to pay for those analytics engines – and having written a significant amount of code to detect ddos attacks using pure packet headers (metadata) – I can tell you flatly that this belief that an ISP is sniffing every packet and analyzing it – is a conspiracy theory with very little basis in fact.

To back this up – on a software based platform – the following is the processing pipeline for packet analytics of packet metadata

1. Receive the packet 2. Categorize the packet 1. By the Ethernet Protocol ID (IPv4, IPv6, possibly .1q tags) 2. By the Layer 4 Protocol byte (Specifically byte 9 of the IP header in V4 traffic) 3. Store the 32bit Source and Destination – combined with the Source and Destination port of the Layer 4 header dependent on if its UDP or TCP 4. Hash the whole lot and place it into a lookup table against the 5 way tuple. 3. Even if you vectorize that process – you are still looking at a coupla milliseconds per packet – times millions of packets a second. A modern server can do that kinda accounting at ~20gigabit/second if they bypass kernel which bloats things – but – they haven’t touched the data segment of the packet. 4. If you look at Cisco routers – if you do port mirroring – you are limited to mirroring the first 128 bytes of the packet – because the replication of anything beyond that kills performance, it can’t be done at line rate 5. If you look at Juniper routers – you can port mirror for analytics on the full packet – but at the cost of performance. 6. On hardware asic based routing – analytics such as you are referring to requires CPU punt – because the asics aren’t designed to do what you are proposing.

A 10gig circuit can be running in excess of a million packets a second – even if you are vectorizing the packet processing – just analyzing the headers to categorize it – before you attempt to hash it and bucket it – requires a minimum of 100 instructions post packet receipt – add the hashing and bucketing – you’re looking at a few thousand instructions to the CPU **per packet** - add the payload analytics – this goes up by orders of magnitude – last I checked – ISP’s don’t have super computers lying around.

If you want full DPI to the level of analytics you are proposing – you HAVE to analyze the full payload content of the packet – and while there are boxes that can do this – they cost **millions** (of dollars not KSH) – and ISP’s generally aren’t gonna spend that kinda money unless they have to – because the cost has to be passed to the users.

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:32 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

Wacha kizungu mingi (I think you are Kenyan enough to understand what I've just said). 😁

Let me put you on the spot. To come up with FUP's you already know whose doing what so that 'innocence' of telling us about privacy now is moot. You all use these tools to snoop on us. Period. Now do it for the benefit of the customer. Not yours. This is really very simple. You all are crying foul about costs blah blah...but when you were wooing us you didn't tell us about FUP...

Do the right thing mate...Be on the right side of history.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:19 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

Ali,

I respectfully disagree – FUP’s have been apart of the Internet since day one since they protect the integrity of the networks as a whole.

You have the option of buying an account without such an FUP – it just costs more – because someone has to cover the costs. Bandwidth doesn’t come free. This is the same reason why there are contention ratios (which I notice Safaricom also publishes).

You refer to big data analytics – yet if I were to propose that an ISP actively sniff and analyze user traffic – you’d be screaming about violations of privacy – because the type of analytics you are talking about would require deep packet inspection at levels you don’t even want to contemplate.

Let me be clear – you get what you pay for – and if every user decided to use their FUP allocated terabyte to its full capacity – for every 3240 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit – if every user ran at their maximum speeds on the 100mbit accounts – for every 100 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit. Trust me when I say – there is no world in which an ISP could afford to provide 10gigabit of bandwidth at a cost of effectively under $11k a month and still remain viable – which is what would happen if all those users maxed out.

So – let me ask you – would you prefer that ALL the users be penalized with significantly higher prices – or would you prefer that people abide by what is fair (and what is in this case, a FUP that is 4 times the global average usage for home user accounts – which is just north of 250gigabytes of data a month on global average)

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:11 *To: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Cc: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

Let me call this BS as it should be called. BS. Surely, of all people, you shouldn't be the one to justify FUP. I appreciate your honesty though. 😀

Here's a thought:-

With all the tools available using Big Data and Analytics, aren't you all able to isolate the abusers and punish them instead of painting all of us with the same abuser tar brush?

I think we are in the age of companies treating their customers with the respect they deserve and actually do right by them. What you have described is communal punishment. This is wrong and the regulator needs to take note.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 8:13 AM Andrew Alston via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

I’ve hesitated to climb into this but – here goes anyway (everything written in personal capacity)

Firstly – almost ALL ISP’s have FUP’s in some form or another – generally buried deep in the T&C’s – as someone stated to me – in the UK with certain ISP’s suddenly your line just gets slow and then when you call support you find yourself quietly diverted to the abuse department.

The fact is that FUP’s are a necessary evil.

1. They prevent customers from reselling one account to multiple other parties while sharing it using NAT – which impacts the financial viability of the service and make its more expensive for everyone else in the end 2. ISP’s operate on contention ratios – if you do not impose some form of FUP – you either have to put up the price or the contention ratios are going to get out of whack – and everyone else is going to suffer. 3. Globally most home accounts use well shy of half a terabyte a month – a terabyte of data is a LOT of data for a single home

So let’s just put some context in what a terabyte of data actually means – and I always use video as the prime gauge of this because it’s the easiest example.

Your average Netflix 4k film runs at ~25mbit at absolute maximum if you are watching 4K on an HDR enabled TV. That’s 22.5 Gigabytes of data every 2 hours – if you watch one 4K 2 hour movie every single day for a month you will eat 675gigs of data. If we drop this to 1080p – which is far more common – you are using ~7 megabit of bandwidth – or 6.3gigs every 2 hours – if you watch 300 hours of 1080p content in a month – or 10 hours a day – you still haven’t hit that cap.

Effectively – you could watch one 4K movie every day for a month – and still watch 150 40minute tv episodes in 1080p in a month – and have room to move.

To look at it from another perspective – installation of something like Ubuntu Linux over the net – you could still over 400 machines on that kinda data load in a month.

With regards to gaming – you may burn 100gig pulling down a game and game updates – but after that in game play you are using tiny amounts of bandwidth and could keep yourself playing easily for a month with space to spare.

On Zoom calls – if you ran zoom 24 hours a day – for a month – you’d use less than 70% of that cap.

Also – I might point out that the FUP’s slow your link down once you hit that cap – to a rate that is still useable if a little sluggish.

Basically what I’m saying in all of this – Safaricom’s FUP and T&C’s to me seem perfectly reasonable and designed to protect the network – with the alternative being – the price goes up for everyone or everyone suffers because of the few when the network congests. Bandwidth aint free – and you can’t have it both ways – the product still has to make financial sense to both the consumer and the provider

Andrew

*From: *kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston= liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of Adam Lane via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 07:36 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

There's a webinar on this topic today for those interested

A Public Policy Discussion on #HomeFibre and #FairUsage Policies in Kenya.

🗓️ Thursday, 18th February 2021

🕜 12:00PM - 1:30PM

Sign up here:

🔗 https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q

#LawyersHub #AfricaLawTech #ISP https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6

Speakers from CA, Safaricom, Liquid, KICTAnet,

*From:*Beryl Aidi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>

*To:*Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com>

*Cc:*Beryl Aidi <bee.aidi@gmail.com>

*Date:*2021-02-18 05:57:28

*Subject:*Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Thank you Sidney for this.

I don’t think Safaricom is being sincere in this fair usage limits. They promised that with Home Fibre one can stream, download or upload stuff without limits. All you do is pay your monthly subscription. Fair usage is a type of rationing that limits how much you can do when you had been promised that you can do whatever you want. To me this is going back on a promise. It’s reminiscent of the days of unlimited 3GB bundles on the dongle modem only for them to strike you with a fair usage notice. Are other networks doing the same? As the industry leader in the country, this is bound to influence other industry players to adopt the same standards and limits which is not good. Maybe it might be time to seek other options.

Regards

Beryl

Sent from my iPad

On 16 Feb 2021, at 9:47 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate.

On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Listers,

Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering.

Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-...

The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves <https://twitter.com/Safaricom_Care/status/1360876964651929600>, never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services.

That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers.

All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place.

So I have a few of questions:

1. Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users?

CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibili...

Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless.

1. Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers?

I hope lawyers here can help us with this.

1. 2. If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area. 3. Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places

Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day, Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020...

Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share

Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share

Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914 subscribers , 19.8 Poa % market share

Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824 subscribers ,8.8% market share

Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share

Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228 subscribers, 1.4 % market share

Consumers are speaking with their wallets.

As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device.

Best Regards

______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

23K customers later...Who are now hooked to Home Fiber without FUP...Don't miss the point brother... Regards *Ali Hussein* Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim <http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim> Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:02 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

Except – as I have said – Safaricom did something very unusual – they DID tell you about the FUP’s when they were implemented – and with doing that – you have the option of walking away if you don’t like them.

I see what you are saying as a contradiction in terms – most ISP’s don’t disclose their FUP details – I happen to believe they should – but when Safaricom DID disclose their FUP details – in a very transparent manner as they implemented them – in full compliance with their contracts that let them implement them – we sit here and scream.

We are crucifying them for transparency while complaining that ISP’s aren’t transparent…

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:59 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

I do appreciate your very candid responses and of course, I wouldnt expect you to agree with my 'conspiracy theories' about data. The fact that you can't run away from is this:-

Most ISPs run a *Bait and switch *sales operations machine. This a morally suspect sales tactic that lures customers in with specific claims about the quality or low prices on items that turn out to be unavailable in order to upsell them on a similar, pricier item. It is considered a form of retail sales fraud, though it takes place in other contexts.

So, when you are selling me bandwidth, don't hide the FUP in T&Cs. Tell me to my face. Then I decide whether I'm ok with it or not. This is the biggest issue here. Not whether FUPs are done or not.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:47 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

Safaricom did tell you about the FUP – unlike most ISP’s in the world that never disclose what those FUP’s are.

Also – I’d be very careful about alleging that ISP’s are all looking at user data – particularly because it’s a patently false allegation that all data is analyzed on all links. Yes – some ISP’s probably do do that kinda DPI on every circuit – but it certainly isn’t the case for a large portion of them – because its not economically feasible to do it.

Again, someone would have to pay for those analytics engines – and having written a significant amount of code to detect ddos attacks using pure packet headers (metadata) – I can tell you flatly that this belief that an ISP is sniffing every packet and analyzing it – is a conspiracy theory with very little basis in fact.

To back this up – on a software based platform – the following is the processing pipeline for packet analytics of packet metadata

1. Receive the packet 2. Categorize the packet

1. By the Ethernet Protocol ID (IPv4, IPv6, possibly .1q tags) 2. By the Layer 4 Protocol byte (Specifically byte 9 of the IP header in V4 traffic) 3. Store the 32bit Source and Destination – combined with the Source and Destination port of the Layer 4 header dependent on if its UDP or TCP 4. Hash the whole lot and place it into a lookup table against the 5 way tuple.

1. Even if you vectorize that process – you are still looking at a coupla milliseconds per packet – times millions of packets a second. A modern server can do that kinda accounting at ~20gigabit/second if they bypass kernel which bloats things – but – they haven’t touched the data segment of the packet. 2. If you look at Cisco routers – if you do port mirroring – you are limited to mirroring the first 128 bytes of the packet – because the replication of anything beyond that kills performance, it can’t be done at line rate 3. If you look at Juniper routers – you can port mirror for analytics on the full packet – but at the cost of performance. 4. On hardware asic based routing – analytics such as you are referring to requires CPU punt – because the asics aren’t designed to do what you are proposing.

A 10gig circuit can be running in excess of a million packets a second – even if you are vectorizing the packet processing – just analyzing the headers to categorize it – before you attempt to hash it and bucket it – requires a minimum of 100 instructions post packet receipt – add the hashing and bucketing – you’re looking at a few thousand instructions to the CPU **per packet** - add the payload analytics – this goes up by orders of magnitude – last I checked – ISP’s don’t have super computers lying around.

If you want full DPI to the level of analytics you are proposing – you HAVE to analyze the full payload content of the packet – and while there are boxes that can do this – they cost **millions** (of dollars not KSH) – and ISP’s generally aren’t gonna spend that kinda money unless they have to – because the cost has to be passed to the users.

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:32 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

Wacha kizungu mingi (I think you are Kenyan enough to understand what I've just said). 😁

Let me put you on the spot. To come up with FUP's you already know whose doing what so that 'innocence' of telling us about privacy now is moot. You all use these tools to snoop on us. Period. Now do it for the benefit of the customer. Not yours. This is really very simple. You all are crying foul about costs blah blah...but when you were wooing us you didn't tell us about FUP...

Do the right thing mate...Be on the right side of history.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:19 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

Ali,

I respectfully disagree – FUP’s have been apart of the Internet since day one since they protect the integrity of the networks as a whole.

You have the option of buying an account without such an FUP – it just costs more – because someone has to cover the costs. Bandwidth doesn’t come free. This is the same reason why there are contention ratios (which I notice Safaricom also publishes).

You refer to big data analytics – yet if I were to propose that an ISP actively sniff and analyze user traffic – you’d be screaming about violations of privacy – because the type of analytics you are talking about would require deep packet inspection at levels you don’t even want to contemplate.

Let me be clear – you get what you pay for – and if every user decided to use their FUP allocated terabyte to its full capacity – for every 3240 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit – if every user ran at their maximum speeds on the 100mbit accounts – for every 100 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit. Trust me when I say – there is no world in which an ISP could afford to provide 10gigabit of bandwidth at a cost of effectively under $11k a month and still remain viable – which is what would happen if all those users maxed out.

So – let me ask you – would you prefer that ALL the users be penalized with significantly higher prices – or would you prefer that people abide by what is fair (and what is in this case, a FUP that is 4 times the global average usage for home user accounts – which is just north of 250gigabytes of data a month on global average)

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:11 *To: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Cc: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

Let me call this BS as it should be called. BS. Surely, of all people, you shouldn't be the one to justify FUP. I appreciate your honesty though. 😀

Here's a thought:-

With all the tools available using Big Data and Analytics, aren't you all able to isolate the abusers and punish them instead of painting all of us with the same abuser tar brush?

I think we are in the age of companies treating their customers with the respect they deserve and actually do right by them. What you have described is communal punishment. This is wrong and the regulator needs to take note.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 8:13 AM Andrew Alston via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

I’ve hesitated to climb into this but – here goes anyway (everything written in personal capacity)

Firstly – almost ALL ISP’s have FUP’s in some form or another – generally buried deep in the T&C’s – as someone stated to me – in the UK with certain ISP’s suddenly your line just gets slow and then when you call support you find yourself quietly diverted to the abuse department.

The fact is that FUP’s are a necessary evil.

1. They prevent customers from reselling one account to multiple other parties while sharing it using NAT – which impacts the financial viability of the service and make its more expensive for everyone else in the end 2. ISP’s operate on contention ratios – if you do not impose some form of FUP – you either have to put up the price or the contention ratios are going to get out of whack – and everyone else is going to suffer. 3. Globally most home accounts use well shy of half a terabyte a month – a terabyte of data is a LOT of data for a single home

So let’s just put some context in what a terabyte of data actually means – and I always use video as the prime gauge of this because it’s the easiest example.

Your average Netflix 4k film runs at ~25mbit at absolute maximum if you are watching 4K on an HDR enabled TV. That’s 22.5 Gigabytes of data every 2 hours – if you watch one 4K 2 hour movie every single day for a month you will eat 675gigs of data. If we drop this to 1080p – which is far more common – you are using ~7 megabit of bandwidth – or 6.3gigs every 2 hours – if you watch 300 hours of 1080p content in a month – or 10 hours a day – you still haven’t hit that cap.

Effectively – you could watch one 4K movie every day for a month – and still watch 150 40minute tv episodes in 1080p in a month – and have room to move.

To look at it from another perspective – installation of something like Ubuntu Linux over the net – you could still over 400 machines on that kinda data load in a month.

With regards to gaming – you may burn 100gig pulling down a game and game updates – but after that in game play you are using tiny amounts of bandwidth and could keep yourself playing easily for a month with space to spare.

On Zoom calls – if you ran zoom 24 hours a day – for a month – you’d use less than 70% of that cap.

Also – I might point out that the FUP’s slow your link down once you hit that cap – to a rate that is still useable if a little sluggish.

Basically what I’m saying in all of this – Safaricom’s FUP and T&C’s to me seem perfectly reasonable and designed to protect the network – with the alternative being – the price goes up for everyone or everyone suffers because of the few when the network congests. Bandwidth aint free – and you can’t have it both ways – the product still has to make financial sense to both the consumer and the provider

Andrew

*From: *kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston= liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of Adam Lane via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 07:36 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

There's a webinar on this topic today for those interested

A Public Policy Discussion on #HomeFibre and #FairUsage Policies in Kenya.

🗓️ Thursday, 18th February 2021

🕜 12:00PM - 1:30PM

Sign up here:

🔗 https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q

#LawyersHub #AfricaLawTech #ISP https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6

Speakers from CA, Safaricom, Liquid, KICTAnet,

*From:*Beryl Aidi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>

*To:*Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com>

*Cc:*Beryl Aidi <bee.aidi@gmail.com>

*Date:*2021-02-18 05:57:28

*Subject:*Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Thank you Sidney for this.

I don’t think Safaricom is being sincere in this fair usage limits. They promised that with Home Fibre one can stream, download or upload stuff without limits. All you do is pay your monthly subscription. Fair usage is a type of rationing that limits how much you can do when you had been promised that you can do whatever you want. To me this is going back on a promise. It’s reminiscent of the days of unlimited 3GB bundles on the dongle modem only for them to strike you with a fair usage notice. Are other networks doing the same? As the industry leader in the country, this is bound to influence other industry players to adopt the same standards and limits which is not good. Maybe it might be time to seek other options.

Regards

Beryl

Sent from my iPad

On 16 Feb 2021, at 9:47 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate.

On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Listers,

Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering.

Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-...

The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves <https://twitter.com/Safaricom_Care/status/1360876964651929600>, never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services.

That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers.

All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place.

So I have a few of questions:

1. Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users?

CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibili...

Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless.

1. Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers?

I hope lawyers here can help us with this.

1. 2. If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area. 3. Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places

Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day, Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020...

Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share

Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share

Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914 subscribers , 19.8 Poa % market share

Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824 subscribers ,8.8% market share

Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share

Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228 subscribers, 1.4 % market share

Consumers are speaking with their wallets.

As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device.

Best Regards

______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

Andrew Do you agree with my contention that Bait & Switch is morally reprehensible? Regards *Ali Hussein* Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim <http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim> Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:13 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

Well – the alternative is to do away with the FUP’s – quadruple the price to everyone – and I am sure you will agree that any company has the right to recover cost and make a reasonable profit?

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 11:11 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

23K customers later...Who are now hooked to Home Fiber without FUP...Don't miss the point brother...

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:02 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

Except – as I have said – Safaricom did something very unusual – they DID tell you about the FUP’s when they were implemented – and with doing that – you have the option of walking away if you don’t like them.

I see what you are saying as a contradiction in terms – most ISP’s don’t disclose their FUP details – I happen to believe they should – but when Safaricom DID disclose their FUP details – in a very transparent manner as they implemented them – in full compliance with their contracts that let them implement them – we sit here and scream.

We are crucifying them for transparency while complaining that ISP’s aren’t transparent…

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:59 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

I do appreciate your very candid responses and of course, I wouldnt expect you to agree with my 'conspiracy theories' about data. The fact that you can't run away from is this:-

Most ISPs run a *Bait and switch *sales operations machine. This a morally suspect sales tactic that lures customers in with specific claims about the quality or low prices on items that turn out to be unavailable in order to upsell them on a similar, pricier item. It is considered a form of retail sales fraud, though it takes place in other contexts.

So, when you are selling me bandwidth, don't hide the FUP in T&Cs. Tell me to my face. Then I decide whether I'm ok with it or not. This is the biggest issue here. Not whether FUPs are done or not.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:47 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

Safaricom did tell you about the FUP – unlike most ISP’s in the world that never disclose what those FUP’s are.

Also – I’d be very careful about alleging that ISP’s are all looking at user data – particularly because it’s a patently false allegation that all data is analyzed on all links. Yes – some ISP’s probably do do that kinda DPI on every circuit – but it certainly isn’t the case for a large portion of them – because its not economically feasible to do it.

Again, someone would have to pay for those analytics engines – and having written a significant amount of code to detect ddos attacks using pure packet headers (metadata) – I can tell you flatly that this belief that an ISP is sniffing every packet and analyzing it – is a conspiracy theory with very little basis in fact.

To back this up – on a software based platform – the following is the processing pipeline for packet analytics of packet metadata

1. Receive the packet 2. Categorize the packet

1. By the Ethernet Protocol ID (IPv4, IPv6, possibly .1q tags) 2. By the Layer 4 Protocol byte (Specifically byte 9 of the IP header in V4 traffic) 3. Store the 32bit Source and Destination – combined with the Source and Destination port of the Layer 4 header dependent on if its UDP or TCP 4. Hash the whole lot and place it into a lookup table against the 5 way tuple.

1. Even if you vectorize that process – you are still looking at a coupla milliseconds per packet – times millions of packets a second. A modern server can do that kinda accounting at ~20gigabit/second if they bypass kernel which bloats things – but – they haven’t touched the data segment of the packet. 2. If you look at Cisco routers – if you do port mirroring – you are limited to mirroring the first 128 bytes of the packet – because the replication of anything beyond that kills performance, it can’t be done at line rate 3. If you look at Juniper routers – you can port mirror for analytics on the full packet – but at the cost of performance. 4. On hardware asic based routing – analytics such as you are referring to requires CPU punt – because the asics aren’t designed to do what you are proposing.

A 10gig circuit can be running in excess of a million packets a second – even if you are vectorizing the packet processing – just analyzing the headers to categorize it – before you attempt to hash it and bucket it – requires a minimum of 100 instructions post packet receipt – add the hashing and bucketing – you’re looking at a few thousand instructions to the CPU **per packet** - add the payload analytics – this goes up by orders of magnitude – last I checked – ISP’s don’t have super computers lying around.

If you want full DPI to the level of analytics you are proposing – you HAVE to analyze the full payload content of the packet – and while there are boxes that can do this – they cost **millions** (of dollars not KSH) – and ISP’s generally aren’t gonna spend that kinda money unless they have to – because the cost has to be passed to the users.

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:32 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

Wacha kizungu mingi (I think you are Kenyan enough to understand what I've just said). 😁

Let me put you on the spot. To come up with FUP's you already know whose doing what so that 'innocence' of telling us about privacy now is moot. You all use these tools to snoop on us. Period. Now do it for the benefit of the customer. Not yours. This is really very simple. You all are crying foul about costs blah blah...but when you were wooing us you didn't tell us about FUP...

Do the right thing mate...Be on the right side of history.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:19 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

Ali,

I respectfully disagree – FUP’s have been apart of the Internet since day one since they protect the integrity of the networks as a whole.

You have the option of buying an account without such an FUP – it just costs more – because someone has to cover the costs. Bandwidth doesn’t come free. This is the same reason why there are contention ratios (which I notice Safaricom also publishes).

You refer to big data analytics – yet if I were to propose that an ISP actively sniff and analyze user traffic – you’d be screaming about violations of privacy – because the type of analytics you are talking about would require deep packet inspection at levels you don’t even want to contemplate.

Let me be clear – you get what you pay for – and if every user decided to use their FUP allocated terabyte to its full capacity – for every 3240 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit – if every user ran at their maximum speeds on the 100mbit accounts – for every 100 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit. Trust me when I say – there is no world in which an ISP could afford to provide 10gigabit of bandwidth at a cost of effectively under $11k a month and still remain viable – which is what would happen if all those users maxed out.

So – let me ask you – would you prefer that ALL the users be penalized with significantly higher prices – or would you prefer that people abide by what is fair (and what is in this case, a FUP that is 4 times the global average usage for home user accounts – which is just north of 250gigabytes of data a month on global average)

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:11 *To: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Cc: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

Let me call this BS as it should be called. BS. Surely, of all people, you shouldn't be the one to justify FUP. I appreciate your honesty though. 😀

Here's a thought:-

With all the tools available using Big Data and Analytics, aren't you all able to isolate the abusers and punish them instead of painting all of us with the same abuser tar brush?

I think we are in the age of companies treating their customers with the respect they deserve and actually do right by them. What you have described is communal punishment. This is wrong and the regulator needs to take note.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 8:13 AM Andrew Alston via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

I’ve hesitated to climb into this but – here goes anyway (everything written in personal capacity)

Firstly – almost ALL ISP’s have FUP’s in some form or another – generally buried deep in the T&C’s – as someone stated to me – in the UK with certain ISP’s suddenly your line just gets slow and then when you call support you find yourself quietly diverted to the abuse department.

The fact is that FUP’s are a necessary evil.

1. They prevent customers from reselling one account to multiple other parties while sharing it using NAT – which impacts the financial viability of the service and make its more expensive for everyone else in the end 2. ISP’s operate on contention ratios – if you do not impose some form of FUP – you either have to put up the price or the contention ratios are going to get out of whack – and everyone else is going to suffer. 3. Globally most home accounts use well shy of half a terabyte a month – a terabyte of data is a LOT of data for a single home

So let’s just put some context in what a terabyte of data actually means – and I always use video as the prime gauge of this because it’s the easiest example.

Your average Netflix 4k film runs at ~25mbit at absolute maximum if you are watching 4K on an HDR enabled TV. That’s 22.5 Gigabytes of data every 2 hours – if you watch one 4K 2 hour movie every single day for a month you will eat 675gigs of data. If we drop this to 1080p – which is far more common – you are using ~7 megabit of bandwidth – or 6.3gigs every 2 hours – if you watch 300 hours of 1080p content in a month – or 10 hours a day – you still haven’t hit that cap.

Effectively – you could watch one 4K movie every day for a month – and still watch 150 40minute tv episodes in 1080p in a month – and have room to move.

To look at it from another perspective – installation of something like Ubuntu Linux over the net – you could still over 400 machines on that kinda data load in a month.

With regards to gaming – you may burn 100gig pulling down a game and game updates – but after that in game play you are using tiny amounts of bandwidth and could keep yourself playing easily for a month with space to spare.

On Zoom calls – if you ran zoom 24 hours a day – for a month – you’d use less than 70% of that cap.

Also – I might point out that the FUP’s slow your link down once you hit that cap – to a rate that is still useable if a little sluggish.

Basically what I’m saying in all of this – Safaricom’s FUP and T&C’s to me seem perfectly reasonable and designed to protect the network – with the alternative being – the price goes up for everyone or everyone suffers because of the few when the network congests. Bandwidth aint free – and you can’t have it both ways – the product still has to make financial sense to both the consumer and the provider

Andrew

*From: *kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston= liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of Adam Lane via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 07:36 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

There's a webinar on this topic today for those interested

A Public Policy Discussion on #HomeFibre and #FairUsage Policies in Kenya.

🗓️ Thursday, 18th February 2021

🕜 12:00PM - 1:30PM

Sign up here:

🔗 https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q

#LawyersHub #AfricaLawTech #ISP https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6

Speakers from CA, Safaricom, Liquid, KICTAnet,

*From:*Beryl Aidi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>

*To:*Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com>

*Cc:*Beryl Aidi <bee.aidi@gmail.com>

*Date:*2021-02-18 05:57:28

*Subject:*Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Thank you Sidney for this.

I don’t think Safaricom is being sincere in this fair usage limits. They promised that with Home Fibre one can stream, download or upload stuff without limits. All you do is pay your monthly subscription. Fair usage is a type of rationing that limits how much you can do when you had been promised that you can do whatever you want. To me this is going back on a promise. It’s reminiscent of the days of unlimited 3GB bundles on the dongle modem only for them to strike you with a fair usage notice. Are other networks doing the same? As the industry leader in the country, this is bound to influence other industry players to adopt the same standards and limits which is not good. Maybe it might be time to seek other options.

Regards

Beryl

Sent from my iPad

On 16 Feb 2021, at 9:47 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate.

On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Listers,

Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering.

Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-...

The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves <https://twitter.com/Safaricom_Care/status/1360876964651929600>, never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services.

That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers.

All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place.

So I have a few of questions:

1. Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users?

CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibili...

Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless.

1. Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers?

I hope lawyers here can help us with this.

1. 2. If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area. 3. Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places

Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day, Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020...

Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share

Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share

Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914 subscribers , 19.8 Poa % market share

Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824 subscribers ,8.8% market share

Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share

Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228 subscribers, 1.4 % market share

Consumers are speaking with their wallets.

As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device.

Best Regards

______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

After 23k customers. Now if they had that policy in place and widely circulated when they were launching home fiber then I wouldn't be talking. Now, I agree, better late than never, but a customer whose been enjoying 'unlimited' for a year to now be told - "Boss...Vitu kwa ground ni different.." is a bit unfair... Wouldn't you agree? Regards *Ali Hussein* Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim <http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim> Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:18 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

Yes – I just don’t agree that that is what they have done – what they have implemented is an FUP that is industry standard – 4 times above the global average for a home user – does not kick you off the net when you cross it – merely slows you down – and imposes a very reasonable limit. And they did it in a totally transparent manner – that may well have resulted from them not anticipating the mass usage by a small percentage of users who are doing things that they should not be doing.

I would be curious to hear from the legitimate users of the service how many people have ever hit those FUP limits – and what they were doing to cross those limits

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 11:15 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

Do you agree with my contention that Bait & Switch is morally reprehensible?

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:13 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

Well – the alternative is to do away with the FUP’s – quadruple the price to everyone – and I am sure you will agree that any company has the right to recover cost and make a reasonable profit?

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 11:11 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

23K customers later...Who are now hooked to Home Fiber without FUP...Don't miss the point brother...

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:02 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

Except – as I have said – Safaricom did something very unusual – they DID tell you about the FUP’s when they were implemented – and with doing that – you have the option of walking away if you don’t like them.

I see what you are saying as a contradiction in terms – most ISP’s don’t disclose their FUP details – I happen to believe they should – but when Safaricom DID disclose their FUP details – in a very transparent manner as they implemented them – in full compliance with their contracts that let them implement them – we sit here and scream.

We are crucifying them for transparency while complaining that ISP’s aren’t transparent…

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:59 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

I do appreciate your very candid responses and of course, I wouldnt expect you to agree with my 'conspiracy theories' about data. The fact that you can't run away from is this:-

Most ISPs run a *Bait and switch *sales operations machine. This a morally suspect sales tactic that lures customers in with specific claims about the quality or low prices on items that turn out to be unavailable in order to upsell them on a similar, pricier item. It is considered a form of retail sales fraud, though it takes place in other contexts.

So, when you are selling me bandwidth, don't hide the FUP in T&Cs. Tell me to my face. Then I decide whether I'm ok with it or not. This is the biggest issue here. Not whether FUPs are done or not.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:47 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

Safaricom did tell you about the FUP – unlike most ISP’s in the world that never disclose what those FUP’s are.

Also – I’d be very careful about alleging that ISP’s are all looking at user data – particularly because it’s a patently false allegation that all data is analyzed on all links. Yes – some ISP’s probably do do that kinda DPI on every circuit – but it certainly isn’t the case for a large portion of them – because its not economically feasible to do it.

Again, someone would have to pay for those analytics engines – and having written a significant amount of code to detect ddos attacks using pure packet headers (metadata) – I can tell you flatly that this belief that an ISP is sniffing every packet and analyzing it – is a conspiracy theory with very little basis in fact.

To back this up – on a software based platform – the following is the processing pipeline for packet analytics of packet metadata

1. Receive the packet 2. Categorize the packet

1. By the Ethernet Protocol ID (IPv4, IPv6, possibly .1q tags) 2. By the Layer 4 Protocol byte (Specifically byte 9 of the IP header in V4 traffic) 3. Store the 32bit Source and Destination – combined with the Source and Destination port of the Layer 4 header dependent on if its UDP or TCP 4. Hash the whole lot and place it into a lookup table against the 5 way tuple.

1. Even if you vectorize that process – you are still looking at a coupla milliseconds per packet – times millions of packets a second. A modern server can do that kinda accounting at ~20gigabit/second if they bypass kernel which bloats things – but – they haven’t touched the data segment of the packet. 2. If you look at Cisco routers – if you do port mirroring – you are limited to mirroring the first 128 bytes of the packet – because the replication of anything beyond that kills performance, it can’t be done at line rate 3. If you look at Juniper routers – you can port mirror for analytics on the full packet – but at the cost of performance. 4. On hardware asic based routing – analytics such as you are referring to requires CPU punt – because the asics aren’t designed to do what you are proposing.

A 10gig circuit can be running in excess of a million packets a second – even if you are vectorizing the packet processing – just analyzing the headers to categorize it – before you attempt to hash it and bucket it – requires a minimum of 100 instructions post packet receipt – add the hashing and bucketing – you’re looking at a few thousand instructions to the CPU **per packet** - add the payload analytics – this goes up by orders of magnitude – last I checked – ISP’s don’t have super computers lying around.

If you want full DPI to the level of analytics you are proposing – you HAVE to analyze the full payload content of the packet – and while there are boxes that can do this – they cost **millions** (of dollars not KSH) – and ISP’s generally aren’t gonna spend that kinda money unless they have to – because the cost has to be passed to the users.

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:32 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

Wacha kizungu mingi (I think you are Kenyan enough to understand what I've just said). 😁

Let me put you on the spot. To come up with FUP's you already know whose doing what so that 'innocence' of telling us about privacy now is moot. You all use these tools to snoop on us. Period. Now do it for the benefit of the customer. Not yours. This is really very simple. You all are crying foul about costs blah blah...but when you were wooing us you didn't tell us about FUP...

Do the right thing mate...Be on the right side of history.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:19 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

Ali,

I respectfully disagree – FUP’s have been apart of the Internet since day one since they protect the integrity of the networks as a whole.

You have the option of buying an account without such an FUP – it just costs more – because someone has to cover the costs. Bandwidth doesn’t come free. This is the same reason why there are contention ratios (which I notice Safaricom also publishes).

You refer to big data analytics – yet if I were to propose that an ISP actively sniff and analyze user traffic – you’d be screaming about violations of privacy – because the type of analytics you are talking about would require deep packet inspection at levels you don’t even want to contemplate.

Let me be clear – you get what you pay for – and if every user decided to use their FUP allocated terabyte to its full capacity – for every 3240 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit – if every user ran at their maximum speeds on the 100mbit accounts – for every 100 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit. Trust me when I say – there is no world in which an ISP could afford to provide 10gigabit of bandwidth at a cost of effectively under $11k a month and still remain viable – which is what would happen if all those users maxed out.

So – let me ask you – would you prefer that ALL the users be penalized with significantly higher prices – or would you prefer that people abide by what is fair (and what is in this case, a FUP that is 4 times the global average usage for home user accounts – which is just north of 250gigabytes of data a month on global average)

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:11 *To: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Cc: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

Let me call this BS as it should be called. BS. Surely, of all people, you shouldn't be the one to justify FUP. I appreciate your honesty though. 😀

Here's a thought:-

With all the tools available using Big Data and Analytics, aren't you all able to isolate the abusers and punish them instead of painting all of us with the same abuser tar brush?

I think we are in the age of companies treating their customers with the respect they deserve and actually do right by them. What you have described is communal punishment. This is wrong and the regulator needs to take note.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 8:13 AM Andrew Alston via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

I’ve hesitated to climb into this but – here goes anyway (everything written in personal capacity)

Firstly – almost ALL ISP’s have FUP’s in some form or another – generally buried deep in the T&C’s – as someone stated to me – in the UK with certain ISP’s suddenly your line just gets slow and then when you call support you find yourself quietly diverted to the abuse department.

The fact is that FUP’s are a necessary evil.

1. They prevent customers from reselling one account to multiple other parties while sharing it using NAT – which impacts the financial viability of the service and make its more expensive for everyone else in the end 2. ISP’s operate on contention ratios – if you do not impose some form of FUP – you either have to put up the price or the contention ratios are going to get out of whack – and everyone else is going to suffer. 3. Globally most home accounts use well shy of half a terabyte a month – a terabyte of data is a LOT of data for a single home

So let’s just put some context in what a terabyte of data actually means – and I always use video as the prime gauge of this because it’s the easiest example.

Your average Netflix 4k film runs at ~25mbit at absolute maximum if you are watching 4K on an HDR enabled TV. That’s 22.5 Gigabytes of data every 2 hours – if you watch one 4K 2 hour movie every single day for a month you will eat 675gigs of data. If we drop this to 1080p – which is far more common – you are using ~7 megabit of bandwidth – or 6.3gigs every 2 hours – if you watch 300 hours of 1080p content in a month – or 10 hours a day – you still haven’t hit that cap.

Effectively – you could watch one 4K movie every day for a month – and still watch 150 40minute tv episodes in 1080p in a month – and have room to move.

To look at it from another perspective – installation of something like Ubuntu Linux over the net – you could still over 400 machines on that kinda data load in a month.

With regards to gaming – you may burn 100gig pulling down a game and game updates – but after that in game play you are using tiny amounts of bandwidth and could keep yourself playing easily for a month with space to spare.

On Zoom calls – if you ran zoom 24 hours a day – for a month – you’d use less than 70% of that cap.

Also – I might point out that the FUP’s slow your link down once you hit that cap – to a rate that is still useable if a little sluggish.

Basically what I’m saying in all of this – Safaricom’s FUP and T&C’s to me seem perfectly reasonable and designed to protect the network – with the alternative being – the price goes up for everyone or everyone suffers because of the few when the network congests. Bandwidth aint free – and you can’t have it both ways – the product still has to make financial sense to both the consumer and the provider

Andrew

*From: *kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston= liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of Adam Lane via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 07:36 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

There's a webinar on this topic today for those interested

A Public Policy Discussion on #HomeFibre and #FairUsage Policies in Kenya.

🗓️ Thursday, 18th February 2021

🕜 12:00PM - 1:30PM

Sign up here:

🔗 https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q

#LawyersHub #AfricaLawTech #ISP https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6

Speakers from CA, Safaricom, Liquid, KICTAnet,

*From:*Beryl Aidi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>

*To:*Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com>

*Cc:*Beryl Aidi <bee.aidi@gmail.com>

*Date:*2021-02-18 05:57:28

*Subject:*Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Thank you Sidney for this.

I don’t think Safaricom is being sincere in this fair usage limits. They promised that with Home Fibre one can stream, download or upload stuff without limits. All you do is pay your monthly subscription. Fair usage is a type of rationing that limits how much you can do when you had been promised that you can do whatever you want. To me this is going back on a promise. It’s reminiscent of the days of unlimited 3GB bundles on the dongle modem only for them to strike you with a fair usage notice. Are other networks doing the same? As the industry leader in the country, this is bound to influence other industry players to adopt the same standards and limits which is not good. Maybe it might be time to seek other options.

Regards

Beryl

Sent from my iPad

On 16 Feb 2021, at 9:47 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate.

On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Listers,

Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering.

Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-...

The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves <https://twitter.com/Safaricom_Care/status/1360876964651929600>, never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services.

That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers.

All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place.

So I have a few of questions:

1. Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users?

CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibili...

Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless.

1. Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers?

I hope lawyers here can help us with this.

1. 2. If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area. 3. Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places

Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day, Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020...

Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share

Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share

Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914 subscribers , 19.8 Poa % market share

Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824 subscribers ,8.8% market share

Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share

Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228 subscribers, 1.4 % market share

Consumers are speaking with their wallets.

As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device.

Best Regards

______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

Let me also point to the T&C’s which tell you not to do things that are illegal. That would include piracy and probably most forms of porn (I’m not sure exactly what the limitations are in Kenyan on porn) Remove those 2 things – and using a terabyte of data a month is probably a lot harder than most people realize. Andrew From: Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 11:29 To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS And by the way:- With whose yardstick are we measuring 'misuse' - When I was buying did you tell me and break down bandwidth usage? 1. Streaming - 10% 2. Zoom - 5% 3, Porn - 25% 😅 4. miscellaneous browsing - 25% 5. others - 35% C'mon guys...Let's get serious... Regards Ali Hussein Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim<http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim> Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:22 AM Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke<mailto:ali@hussein.me.ke>> wrote: After 23k customers. Now if they had that policy in place and widely circulated when they were launching home fiber then I wouldn't be talking. Now, I agree, better late than never, but a customer whose been enjoying 'unlimited' for a year to now be told - "Boss...Vitu kwa ground ni different.." is a bit unfair... Wouldn't you agree? Regards Ali Hussein Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim<http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim> Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:18 AM Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> wrote: Yes – I just don’t agree that that is what they have done – what they have implemented is an FUP that is industry standard – 4 times above the global average for a home user – does not kick you off the net when you cross it – merely slows you down – and imposes a very reasonable limit. And they did it in a totally transparent manner – that may well have resulted from them not anticipating the mass usage by a small percentage of users who are doing things that they should not be doing. I would be curious to hear from the legitimate users of the service how many people have ever hit those FUP limits – and what they were doing to cross those limits Andrew From: Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke<mailto:ali@hussein.me.ke>> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 11:15 To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Andrew Do you agree with my contention that Bait & Switch is morally reprehensible? Regards Ali Hussein Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim<http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim> Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:13 AM Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> wrote: Well – the alternative is to do away with the FUP’s – quadruple the price to everyone – and I am sure you will agree that any company has the right to recover cost and make a reasonable profit? Andrew From: Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke<mailto:ali@hussein.me.ke>> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 11:11 To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS 23K customers later...Who are now hooked to Home Fiber without FUP...Don't miss the point brother... Regards Ali Hussein Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim<http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim> Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:02 AM Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> wrote: Except – as I have said – Safaricom did something very unusual – they DID tell you about the FUP’s when they were implemented – and with doing that – you have the option of walking away if you don’t like them. I see what you are saying as a contradiction in terms – most ISP’s don’t disclose their FUP details – I happen to believe they should – but when Safaricom DID disclose their FUP details – in a very transparent manner as they implemented them – in full compliance with their contracts that let them implement them – we sit here and scream. We are crucifying them for transparency while complaining that ISP’s aren’t transparent… Andrew From: Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke<mailto:ali@hussein.me.ke>> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:59 To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Andrew I do appreciate your very candid responses and of course, I wouldnt expect you to agree with my 'conspiracy theories' about data. The fact that you can't run away from is this:- Most ISPs run a Bait and switch sales operations machine. This a morally suspect sales tactic that lures customers in with specific claims about the quality or low prices on items that turn out to be unavailable in order to upsell them on a similar, pricier item. It is considered a form of retail sales fraud, though it takes place in other contexts. So, when you are selling me bandwidth, don't hide the FUP in T&Cs. Tell me to my face. Then I decide whether I'm ok with it or not. This is the biggest issue here. Not whether FUPs are done or not. Regards Ali Hussein Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim<http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim> Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:47 AM Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> wrote: Safaricom did tell you about the FUP – unlike most ISP’s in the world that never disclose what those FUP’s are. Also – I’d be very careful about alleging that ISP’s are all looking at user data – particularly because it’s a patently false allegation that all data is analyzed on all links. Yes – some ISP’s probably do do that kinda DPI on every circuit – but it certainly isn’t the case for a large portion of them – because its not economically feasible to do it. Again, someone would have to pay for those analytics engines – and having written a significant amount of code to detect ddos attacks using pure packet headers (metadata) – I can tell you flatly that this belief that an ISP is sniffing every packet and analyzing it – is a conspiracy theory with very little basis in fact. To back this up – on a software based platform – the following is the processing pipeline for packet analytics of packet metadata 1. Receive the packet 2. Categorize the packet * By the Ethernet Protocol ID (IPv4, IPv6, possibly .1q tags) * By the Layer 4 Protocol byte (Specifically byte 9 of the IP header in V4 traffic) * Store the 32bit Source and Destination – combined with the Source and Destination port of the Layer 4 header dependent on if its UDP or TCP * Hash the whole lot and place it into a lookup table against the 5 way tuple. 1. Even if you vectorize that process – you are still looking at a coupla milliseconds per packet – times millions of packets a second. A modern server can do that kinda accounting at ~20gigabit/second if they bypass kernel which bloats things – but – they haven’t touched the data segment of the packet. 2. If you look at Cisco routers – if you do port mirroring – you are limited to mirroring the first 128 bytes of the packet – because the replication of anything beyond that kills performance, it can’t be done at line rate 3. If you look at Juniper routers – you can port mirror for analytics on the full packet – but at the cost of performance. 4. On hardware asic based routing – analytics such as you are referring to requires CPU punt – because the asics aren’t designed to do what you are proposing. A 10gig circuit can be running in excess of a million packets a second – even if you are vectorizing the packet processing – just analyzing the headers to categorize it – before you attempt to hash it and bucket it – requires a minimum of 100 instructions post packet receipt – add the hashing and bucketing – you’re looking at a few thousand instructions to the CPU *per packet* - add the payload analytics – this goes up by orders of magnitude – last I checked – ISP’s don’t have super computers lying around. If you want full DPI to the level of analytics you are proposing – you HAVE to analyze the full payload content of the packet – and while there are boxes that can do this – they cost *millions* (of dollars not KSH) – and ISP’s generally aren’t gonna spend that kinda money unless they have to – because the cost has to be passed to the users. Andrew From: Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke<mailto:ali@hussein.me.ke>> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:32 To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Andrew Wacha kizungu mingi (I think you are Kenyan enough to understand what I've just said). 😁 Let me put you on the spot. To come up with FUP's you already know whose doing what so that 'innocence' of telling us about privacy now is moot. You all use these tools to snoop on us. Period. Now do it for the benefit of the customer. Not yours. This is really very simple. You all are crying foul about costs blah blah...but when you were wooing us you didn't tell us about FUP... Do the right thing mate...Be on the right side of history. Regards Ali Hussein Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim<http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim> Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:19 AM Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> wrote: Ali, I respectfully disagree – FUP’s have been apart of the Internet since day one since they protect the integrity of the networks as a whole. You have the option of buying an account without such an FUP – it just costs more – because someone has to cover the costs. Bandwidth doesn’t come free. This is the same reason why there are contention ratios (which I notice Safaricom also publishes). You refer to big data analytics – yet if I were to propose that an ISP actively sniff and analyze user traffic – you’d be screaming about violations of privacy – because the type of analytics you are talking about would require deep packet inspection at levels you don’t even want to contemplate. Let me be clear – you get what you pay for – and if every user decided to use their FUP allocated terabyte to its full capacity – for every 3240 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit – if every user ran at their maximum speeds on the 100mbit accounts – for every 100 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit. Trust me when I say – there is no world in which an ISP could afford to provide 10gigabit of bandwidth at a cost of effectively under $11k a month and still remain viable – which is what would happen if all those users maxed out. So – let me ask you – would you prefer that ALL the users be penalized with significantly higher prices – or would you prefer that people abide by what is fair (and what is in this case, a FUP that is 4 times the global average usage for home user accounts – which is just north of 250gigabytes of data a month on global average) Andrew From: Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke<mailto:ali@hussein.me.ke>> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:11 To: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> Cc: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Andrew Let me call this BS as it should be called. BS. Surely, of all people, you shouldn't be the one to justify FUP. I appreciate your honesty though. 😀 Here's a thought:- With all the tools available using Big Data and Analytics, aren't you all able to isolate the abusers and punish them instead of painting all of us with the same abuser tar brush? I think we are in the age of companies treating their customers with the respect they deserve and actually do right by them. What you have described is communal punishment. This is wrong and the regulator needs to take note. Regards Ali Hussein Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim<http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim> Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 8:13 AM Andrew Alston via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: I’ve hesitated to climb into this but – here goes anyway (everything written in personal capacity) Firstly – almost ALL ISP’s have FUP’s in some form or another – generally buried deep in the T&C’s – as someone stated to me – in the UK with certain ISP’s suddenly your line just gets slow and then when you call support you find yourself quietly diverted to the abuse department. The fact is that FUP’s are a necessary evil. 1. They prevent customers from reselling one account to multiple other parties while sharing it using NAT – which impacts the financial viability of the service and make its more expensive for everyone else in the end 2. ISP’s operate on contention ratios – if you do not impose some form of FUP – you either have to put up the price or the contention ratios are going to get out of whack – and everyone else is going to suffer. 3. Globally most home accounts use well shy of half a terabyte a month – a terabyte of data is a LOT of data for a single home So let’s just put some context in what a terabyte of data actually means – and I always use video as the prime gauge of this because it’s the easiest example. Your average Netflix 4k film runs at ~25mbit at absolute maximum if you are watching 4K on an HDR enabled TV. That’s 22.5 Gigabytes of data every 2 hours – if you watch one 4K 2 hour movie every single day for a month you will eat 675gigs of data. If we drop this to 1080p – which is far more common – you are using ~7 megabit of bandwidth – or 6.3gigs every 2 hours – if you watch 300 hours of 1080p content in a month – or 10 hours a day – you still haven’t hit that cap. Effectively – you could watch one 4K movie every day for a month – and still watch 150 40minute tv episodes in 1080p in a month – and have room to move. To look at it from another perspective – installation of something like Ubuntu Linux over the net – you could still over 400 machines on that kinda data load in a month. With regards to gaming – you may burn 100gig pulling down a game and game updates – but after that in game play you are using tiny amounts of bandwidth and could keep yourself playing easily for a month with space to spare. On Zoom calls – if you ran zoom 24 hours a day – for a month – you’d use less than 70% of that cap. Also – I might point out that the FUP’s slow your link down once you hit that cap – to a rate that is still useable if a little sluggish. Basically what I’m saying in all of this – Safaricom’s FUP and T&C’s to me seem perfectly reasonable and designed to protect the network – with the alternative being – the price goes up for everyone or everyone suffers because of the few when the network congests. Bandwidth aint free – and you can’t have it both ways – the product still has to make financial sense to both the consumer and the provider Andrew From: kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston=liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> on behalf of Adam Lane via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 07:36 To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> Cc: Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com<mailto:adam.lane@huawei.com>> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS There's a webinar on this topic today for those interested A Public Policy Discussion on #HomeFibre and #FairUsage Policies in Kenya. 🗓️ Thursday, 18th February 2021 🕜 12:00PM - 1:30PM Sign up here: 🔗 https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q<https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q> #LawyersHub #AfricaLawTech #ISP https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6<https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6> Speakers from CA, Safaricom, Liquid, KICTAnet, From:Beryl Aidi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> To:Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com<mailto:adam.lane@huawei.com>> Cc:Beryl Aidi <bee.aidi@gmail.com<mailto:bee.aidi@gmail.com>> Date:2021-02-18 05:57:28 Subject:Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Thank you Sidney for this. I don’t think Safaricom is being sincere in this fair usage limits. They promised that with Home Fibre one can stream, download or upload stuff without limits. All you do is pay your monthly subscription. Fair usage is a type of rationing that limits how much you can do when you had been promised that you can do whatever you want. To me this is going back on a promise. It’s reminiscent of the days of unlimited 3GB bundles on the dongle modem only for them to strike you with a fair usage notice. Are other networks doing the same? As the industry leader in the country, this is bound to influence other industry players to adopt the same standards and limits which is not good. Maybe it might be time to seek other options. Regards Beryl Sent from my iPad On 16 Feb 2021, at 9:47 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate. On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: Listers, Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering. Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-fair-usage-limits/<https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-fair-usage-limits> The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves<https://twitter.com/Safaricom_Care/status/1360876964651929600>, never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services. That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers. All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place. So I have a few of questions: 1. Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users? CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibilities.pdf<https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibilities.pdf> Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless. 1. Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers? I hope lawyers here can help us with this. 1. 2. If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area. 3. Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day, Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020-2021.pdf<https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020-2021.pdf> Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914 subscribers , 19.8 Poa % market share Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824 subscribers ,8.8% market share Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228 subscribers, 1.4 % market share Consumers are speaking with their wallets. As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device. Best Regards ______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva<https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva> _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet> Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet<http://twitter.com/kictanet> Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/<https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet> Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com> The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications. _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet> Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet<http://twitter.com/kictanet> Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/<https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/> Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com> The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

My takeaway is that FUPs should be published as a requirement. Also don't torrent too much. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:04 AM Barrack Otieno via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

@Ali Hussein <ahussein@kictanet.or.ke> what if the Customer does not have sufficient Capacity to understand FUP, si unampea tu ajisomee na ajipange. By the way even fish can't come to a fisherman who doesnt have bait yet they are analogue ama namna gani?

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:59 AM Ali Hussein via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

...

Andrew

I do appreciate your very candid responses and of course, I wouldnt expect you to agree with my 'conspiracy theories' about data. The fact that you can't run away from is this:-

Most ISPs run a *Bait and switch *sales operations machine. This a morally suspect sales tactic that lures customers in with specific claims about the quality or low prices on items that turn out to be unavailable in order to upsell them on a similar, pricier item. It is considered a form of retail sales fraud, though it takes place in other contexts.

So, when you are selling me bandwidth, don't hide the FUP in T&Cs. Tell me to my face. Then I decide whether I'm ok with it or not. This is the biggest issue here. Not whether FUPs are done or not.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim <http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim>

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:47 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

...

Safaricom did tell you about the FUP – unlike most ISP’s in the world that never disclose what those FUP’s are.

Also – I’d be very careful about alleging that ISP’s are all looking at user data – particularly because it’s a patently false allegation that all data is analyzed on all links. Yes – some ISP’s probably do do that kinda DPI on every circuit – but it certainly isn’t the case for a large portion of them – because its not economically feasible to do it.

Again, someone would have to pay for those analytics engines – and having written a significant amount of code to detect ddos attacks using pure packet headers (metadata) – I can tell you flatly that this belief that an ISP is sniffing every packet and analyzing it – is a conspiracy theory with very little basis in fact.

To back this up – on a software based platform – the following is the processing pipeline for packet analytics of packet metadata

1. Receive the packet 2. Categorize the packet 1. By the Ethernet Protocol ID (IPv4, IPv6, possibly .1q tags) 2. By the Layer 4 Protocol byte (Specifically byte 9 of the IP header in V4 traffic) 3. Store the 32bit Source and Destination – combined with the Source and Destination port of the Layer 4 header dependent on if its UDP or TCP 4. Hash the whole lot and place it into a lookup table against the 5 way tuple. 3. Even if you vectorize that process – you are still looking at a coupla milliseconds per packet – times millions of packets a second. A modern server can do that kinda accounting at ~20gigabit/second if they bypass kernel which bloats things – but – they haven’t touched the data segment of the packet. 4. If you look at Cisco routers – if you do port mirroring – you are limited to mirroring the first 128 bytes of the packet – because the replication of anything beyond that kills performance, it can’t be done at line rate 5. If you look at Juniper routers – you can port mirror for analytics on the full packet – but at the cost of performance. 6. On hardware asic based routing – analytics such as you are referring to requires CPU punt – because the asics aren’t designed to do what you are proposing.

A 10gig circuit can be running in excess of a million packets a second – even if you are vectorizing the packet processing – just analyzing the headers to categorize it – before you attempt to hash it and bucket it – requires a minimum of 100 instructions post packet receipt – add the hashing and bucketing – you’re looking at a few thousand instructions to the CPU **per packet** - add the payload analytics – this goes up by orders of magnitude – last I checked – ISP’s don’t have super computers lying around.

If you want full DPI to the level of analytics you are proposing – you HAVE to analyze the full payload content of the packet – and while there are boxes that can do this – they cost **millions** (of dollars not KSH) – and ISP’s generally aren’t gonna spend that kinda money unless they have to – because the cost has to be passed to the users.

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:32 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

Wacha kizungu mingi (I think you are Kenyan enough to understand what I've just said). 😁

Let me put you on the spot. To come up with FUP's you already know whose doing what so that 'innocence' of telling us about privacy now is moot. You all use these tools to snoop on us. Period. Now do it for the benefit of the customer. Not yours. This is really very simple. You all are crying foul about costs blah blah...but when you were wooing us you didn't tell us about FUP...

Do the right thing mate...Be on the right side of history.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:19 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

Ali,

I respectfully disagree – FUP’s have been apart of the Internet since day one since they protect the integrity of the networks as a whole.

You have the option of buying an account without such an FUP – it just costs more – because someone has to cover the costs. Bandwidth doesn’t come free. This is the same reason why there are contention ratios (which I notice Safaricom also publishes).

You refer to big data analytics – yet if I were to propose that an ISP actively sniff and analyze user traffic – you’d be screaming about violations of privacy – because the type of analytics you are talking about would require deep packet inspection at levels you don’t even want to contemplate.

Let me be clear – you get what you pay for – and if every user decided to use their FUP allocated terabyte to its full capacity – for every 3240 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit – if every user ran at their maximum speeds on the 100mbit accounts – for every 100 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit. Trust me when I say – there is no world in which an ISP could afford to provide 10gigabit of bandwidth at a cost of effectively under $11k a month and still remain viable – which is what would happen if all those users maxed out.

So – let me ask you – would you prefer that ALL the users be penalized with significantly higher prices – or would you prefer that people abide by what is fair (and what is in this case, a FUP that is 4 times the global average usage for home user accounts – which is just north of 250gigabytes of data a month on global average)

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:11 *To: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Cc: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

Let me call this BS as it should be called. BS. Surely, of all people, you shouldn't be the one to justify FUP. I appreciate your honesty though. 😀

Here's a thought:-

With all the tools available using Big Data and Analytics, aren't you all able to isolate the abusers and punish them instead of painting all of us with the same abuser tar brush?

I think we are in the age of companies treating their customers with the respect they deserve and actually do right by them. What you have described is communal punishment. This is wrong and the regulator needs to take note.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 8:13 AM Andrew Alston via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

I’ve hesitated to climb into this but – here goes anyway (everything written in personal capacity)

Firstly – almost ALL ISP’s have FUP’s in some form or another – generally buried deep in the T&C’s – as someone stated to me – in the UK with certain ISP’s suddenly your line just gets slow and then when you call support you find yourself quietly diverted to the abuse department.

The fact is that FUP’s are a necessary evil.

1. They prevent customers from reselling one account to multiple other parties while sharing it using NAT – which impacts the financial viability of the service and make its more expensive for everyone else in the end 2. ISP’s operate on contention ratios – if you do not impose some form of FUP – you either have to put up the price or the contention ratios are going to get out of whack – and everyone else is going to suffer. 3. Globally most home accounts use well shy of half a terabyte a month – a terabyte of data is a LOT of data for a single home

So let’s just put some context in what a terabyte of data actually means – and I always use video as the prime gauge of this because it’s the easiest example.

Your average Netflix 4k film runs at ~25mbit at absolute maximum if you are watching 4K on an HDR enabled TV. That’s 22.5 Gigabytes of data every 2 hours – if you watch one 4K 2 hour movie every single day for a month you will eat 675gigs of data. If we drop this to 1080p – which is far more common – you are using ~7 megabit of bandwidth – or 6.3gigs every 2 hours – if you watch 300 hours of 1080p content in a month – or 10 hours a day – you still haven’t hit that cap.

Effectively – you could watch one 4K movie every day for a month – and still watch 150 40minute tv episodes in 1080p in a month – and have room to move.

To look at it from another perspective – installation of something like Ubuntu Linux over the net – you could still over 400 machines on that kinda data load in a month.

With regards to gaming – you may burn 100gig pulling down a game and game updates – but after that in game play you are using tiny amounts of bandwidth and could keep yourself playing easily for a month with space to spare.

On Zoom calls – if you ran zoom 24 hours a day – for a month – you’d use less than 70% of that cap.

Also – I might point out that the FUP’s slow your link down once you hit that cap – to a rate that is still useable if a little sluggish.

Basically what I’m saying in all of this – Safaricom’s FUP and T&C’s to me seem perfectly reasonable and designed to protect the network – with the alternative being – the price goes up for everyone or everyone suffers because of the few when the network congests. Bandwidth aint free – and you can’t have it both ways – the product still has to make financial sense to both the consumer and the provider

Andrew

*From: *kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston= liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of Adam Lane via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 07:36 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

There's a webinar on this topic today for those interested

A Public Policy Discussion on #HomeFibre and #FairUsage Policies in Kenya.

🗓️ Thursday, 18th February 2021

🕜 12:00PM - 1:30PM

Sign up here:

🔗 https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q

#LawyersHub #AfricaLawTech #ISP https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6

Speakers from CA, Safaricom, Liquid, KICTAnet,

*From:*Beryl Aidi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>

*To:*Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com>

*Cc:*Beryl Aidi <bee.aidi@gmail.com>

*Date:*2021-02-18 05:57:28

*Subject:*Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Thank you Sidney for this.

I don’t think Safaricom is being sincere in this fair usage limits. They promised that with Home Fibre one can stream, download or upload stuff without limits. All you do is pay your monthly subscription. Fair usage is a type of rationing that limits how much you can do when you had been promised that you can do whatever you want. To me this is going back on a promise. It’s reminiscent of the days of unlimited 3GB bundles on the dongle modem only for them to strike you with a fair usage notice. Are other networks doing the same? As the industry leader in the country, this is bound to influence other industry players to adopt the same standards and limits which is not good. Maybe it might be time to seek other options.

Regards

Beryl

Sent from my iPad

On 16 Feb 2021, at 9:47 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate.

On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Listers,

Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering.

Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-...

The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves <https://twitter.com/Safaricom_Care/status/1360876964651929600>, never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services.

That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers.

All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place.

So I have a few of questions:

1. Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users?

CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibili...

Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless.

1. Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers?

I hope lawyers here can help us with this.

1. 2. If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area. 3. Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places

Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day, Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020...

Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share

Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share

Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914 subscribers , 19.8 Poa % market share

Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824 subscribers ,8.8% market share

Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share

Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228 subscribers, 1.4 % market share

Consumers are speaking with their wallets.

As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device.

Best Regards

______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/barrack%40kictanet.or....

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

--

*Barrack Otieno* *Trustee* *Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTAnet)* *Skype:barrack.otieno* *+254721325277*

*https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrack-otieno-2101262b/ <https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrack-otieno-2101262b/>* *www.kictanet.or.ke <http://www.kictanet.or.ke>* _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/josiah.mugambi%40gmail...

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

-- Josiah Mugambi

Andrew Say what now? 😁 *Ali Hussein* Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim <http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim> Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:13 AM Andrew Alston via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

The comments about torrenting are interesting – because the one thing I still don’t know from the publication of those FUP’s are if the FUP applies to ingress data, egress data, or both (it definitely will account ingress.) It may account ingress and egress simultaneously as a single pool – or account them separately – and it would be useful to know that.

If its ingress only – torrenting is going to hurt a lot less than ingress/egress combined – since a large amount of data usage with torrenting is the upload- which is egress – and which a lot of ISP’s won’t limit since unless you’re a content provider there is little need to limit it

Andrew

*From: *kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston= liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of Josiah Mugambi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 11:08 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *Josiah Mugambi <josiah.mugambi@gmail.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

My takeaway is that FUPs should be published as a requirement. Also don't torrent too much.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:04 AM Barrack Otieno via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

@Ali Hussein <ahussein@kictanet.or.ke> what if the Customer does not have sufficient Capacity to understand FUP, si unampea tu ajisomee na ajipange. By the way even fish can't come to a fisherman who doesnt have bait yet they are analogue ama namna gani?

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:59 AM Ali Hussein via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Andrew

I do appreciate your very candid responses and of course, I wouldnt expect you to agree with my 'conspiracy theories' about data. The fact that you can't run away from is this:-

Most ISPs run a *Bait and switch *sales operations machine. This a morally suspect sales tactic that lures customers in with specific claims about the quality or low prices on items that turn out to be unavailable in order to upsell them on a similar, pricier item. It is considered a form of retail sales fraud, though it takes place in other contexts.

So, when you are selling me bandwidth, don't hide the FUP in T&Cs. Tell me to my face. Then I decide whether I'm ok with it or not. This is the biggest issue here. Not whether FUPs are done or not.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:47 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

Safaricom did tell you about the FUP – unlike most ISP’s in the world that never disclose what those FUP’s are.

Also – I’d be very careful about alleging that ISP’s are all looking at user data – particularly because it’s a patently false allegation that all data is analyzed on all links. Yes – some ISP’s probably do do that kinda DPI on every circuit – but it certainly isn’t the case for a large portion of them – because its not economically feasible to do it.

Again, someone would have to pay for those analytics engines – and having written a significant amount of code to detect ddos attacks using pure packet headers (metadata) – I can tell you flatly that this belief that an ISP is sniffing every packet and analyzing it – is a conspiracy theory with very little basis in fact.

To back this up – on a software based platform – the following is the processing pipeline for packet analytics of packet metadata

1. Receive the packet 2. Categorize the packet

1. By the Ethernet Protocol ID (IPv4, IPv6, possibly .1q tags) 2. By the Layer 4 Protocol byte (Specifically byte 9 of the IP header in V4 traffic) 3. Store the 32bit Source and Destination – combined with the Source and Destination port of the Layer 4 header dependent on if its UDP or TCP 4. Hash the whole lot and place it into a lookup table against the 5 way tuple.

1. Even if you vectorize that process – you are still looking at a coupla milliseconds per packet – times millions of packets a second. A modern server can do that kinda accounting at ~20gigabit/second if they bypass kernel which bloats things – but – they haven’t touched the data segment of the packet. 2. If you look at Cisco routers – if you do port mirroring – you are limited to mirroring the first 128 bytes of the packet – because the replication of anything beyond that kills performance, it can’t be done at line rate 3. If you look at Juniper routers – you can port mirror for analytics on the full packet – but at the cost of performance. 4. On hardware asic based routing – analytics such as you are referring to requires CPU punt – because the asics aren’t designed to do what you are proposing.

A 10gig circuit can be running in excess of a million packets a second – even if you are vectorizing the packet processing – just analyzing the headers to categorize it – before you attempt to hash it and bucket it – requires a minimum of 100 instructions post packet receipt – add the hashing and bucketing – you’re looking at a few thousand instructions to the CPU **per packet** - add the payload analytics – this goes up by orders of magnitude – last I checked – ISP’s don’t have super computers lying around.

If you want full DPI to the level of analytics you are proposing – you HAVE to analyze the full payload content of the packet – and while there are boxes that can do this – they cost **millions** (of dollars not KSH) – and ISP’s generally aren’t gonna spend that kinda money unless they have to – because the cost has to be passed to the users.

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:32 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

Wacha kizungu mingi (I think you are Kenyan enough to understand what I've just said). 😁

Let me put you on the spot. To come up with FUP's you already know whose doing what so that 'innocence' of telling us about privacy now is moot. You all use these tools to snoop on us. Period. Now do it for the benefit of the customer. Not yours. This is really very simple. You all are crying foul about costs blah blah...but when you were wooing us you didn't tell us about FUP...

Do the right thing mate...Be on the right side of history.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:19 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

Ali,

I respectfully disagree – FUP’s have been apart of the Internet since day one since they protect the integrity of the networks as a whole.

You have the option of buying an account without such an FUP – it just costs more – because someone has to cover the costs. Bandwidth doesn’t come free. This is the same reason why there are contention ratios (which I notice Safaricom also publishes).

You refer to big data analytics – yet if I were to propose that an ISP actively sniff and analyze user traffic – you’d be screaming about violations of privacy – because the type of analytics you are talking about would require deep packet inspection at levels you don’t even want to contemplate.

Let me be clear – you get what you pay for – and if every user decided to use their FUP allocated terabyte to its full capacity – for every 3240 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit – if every user ran at their maximum speeds on the 100mbit accounts – for every 100 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit. Trust me when I say – there is no world in which an ISP could afford to provide 10gigabit of bandwidth at a cost of effectively under $11k a month and still remain viable – which is what would happen if all those users maxed out.

So – let me ask you – would you prefer that ALL the users be penalized with significantly higher prices – or would you prefer that people abide by what is fair (and what is in this case, a FUP that is 4 times the global average usage for home user accounts – which is just north of 250gigabytes of data a month on global average)

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:11 *To: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Cc: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

Let me call this BS as it should be called. BS. Surely, of all people, you shouldn't be the one to justify FUP. I appreciate your honesty though. 😀

Here's a thought:-

With all the tools available using Big Data and Analytics, aren't you all able to isolate the abusers and punish them instead of painting all of us with the same abuser tar brush?

I think we are in the age of companies treating their customers with the respect they deserve and actually do right by them. What you have described is communal punishment. This is wrong and the regulator needs to take note.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 8:13 AM Andrew Alston via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

I’ve hesitated to climb into this but – here goes anyway (everything written in personal capacity)

Firstly – almost ALL ISP’s have FUP’s in some form or another – generally buried deep in the T&C’s – as someone stated to me – in the UK with certain ISP’s suddenly your line just gets slow and then when you call support you find yourself quietly diverted to the abuse department.

The fact is that FUP’s are a necessary evil.

1. They prevent customers from reselling one account to multiple other parties while sharing it using NAT – which impacts the financial viability of the service and make its more expensive for everyone else in the end 2. ISP’s operate on contention ratios – if you do not impose some form of FUP – you either have to put up the price or the contention ratios are going to get out of whack – and everyone else is going to suffer. 3. Globally most home accounts use well shy of half a terabyte a month – a terabyte of data is a LOT of data for a single home

So let’s just put some context in what a terabyte of data actually means – and I always use video as the prime gauge of this because it’s the easiest example.

Your average Netflix 4k film runs at ~25mbit at absolute maximum if you are watching 4K on an HDR enabled TV. That’s 22.5 Gigabytes of data every 2 hours – if you watch one 4K 2 hour movie every single day for a month you will eat 675gigs of data. If we drop this to 1080p – which is far more common – you are using ~7 megabit of bandwidth – or 6.3gigs every 2 hours – if you watch 300 hours of 1080p content in a month – or 10 hours a day – you still haven’t hit that cap.

Effectively – you could watch one 4K movie every day for a month – and still watch 150 40minute tv episodes in 1080p in a month – and have room to move.

To look at it from another perspective – installation of something like Ubuntu Linux over the net – you could still over 400 machines on that kinda data load in a month.

With regards to gaming – you may burn 100gig pulling down a game and game updates – but after that in game play you are using tiny amounts of bandwidth and could keep yourself playing easily for a month with space to spare.

On Zoom calls – if you ran zoom 24 hours a day – for a month – you’d use less than 70% of that cap.

Also – I might point out that the FUP’s slow your link down once you hit that cap – to a rate that is still useable if a little sluggish.

Basically what I’m saying in all of this – Safaricom’s FUP and T&C’s to me seem perfectly reasonable and designed to protect the network – with the alternative being – the price goes up for everyone or everyone suffers because of the few when the network congests. Bandwidth aint free – and you can’t have it both ways – the product still has to make financial sense to both the consumer and the provider

Andrew

*From: *kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston= liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of Adam Lane via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 07:36 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

There's a webinar on this topic today for those interested

A Public Policy Discussion on #HomeFibre and #FairUsage Policies in Kenya.

🗓️ Thursday, 18th February 2021

🕜 12:00PM - 1:30PM

Sign up here:

🔗 https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q

#LawyersHub #AfricaLawTech #ISP https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6

Speakers from CA, Safaricom, Liquid, KICTAnet,

*From:*Beryl Aidi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>

*To:*Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com>

*Cc:*Beryl Aidi <bee.aidi@gmail.com>

*Date:*2021-02-18 05:57:28

*Subject:*Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Thank you Sidney for this.

I don’t think Safaricom is being sincere in this fair usage limits. They promised that with Home Fibre one can stream, download or upload stuff without limits. All you do is pay your monthly subscription. Fair usage is a type of rationing that limits how much you can do when you had been promised that you can do whatever you want. To me this is going back on a promise. It’s reminiscent of the days of unlimited 3GB bundles on the dongle modem only for them to strike you with a fair usage notice. Are other networks doing the same? As the industry leader in the country, this is bound to influence other industry players to adopt the same standards and limits which is not good. Maybe it might be time to seek other options.

Regards

Beryl

Sent from my iPad

On 16 Feb 2021, at 9:47 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate.

On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Listers,

Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering.

Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-...

The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves <https://twitter.com/Safaricom_Care/status/1360876964651929600>, never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services.

That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers.

All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place.

So I have a few of questions:

1. Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users?

CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibili...

Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless.

1. Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers?

I hope lawyers here can help us with this.

1. 2. If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area. 3. Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places

Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day, Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020...

Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share

Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share

Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914 subscribers , 19.8 Poa % market share

Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824 subscribers ,8.8% market share

Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share

Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228 subscribers, 1.4 % market share

Consumers are speaking with their wallets.

As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device.

Best Regards

______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/barrack%40kictanet.or....

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

--

*Barrack Otieno*

*Trustee*

*Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTAnet)*

*Skype:barrack.otieno*

*+254721325277*

*https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrack-otieno-2101262b/ <https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrack-otieno-2101262b/>*

*www.kictanet.or.ke <http://www.kictanet.or.ke>*

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/josiah.mugambi%40gmail...

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

--

Josiah Mugambi _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

Unless you’re watching more than 60 hours of tv a month – you won’t have a problem with Netflix 4k 😊 Andrew From: kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston=liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of tevin mwenda via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 11:44 To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> Cc: tevin mwenda <tevinmwenda@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Thank you very much for this debate. I am learning a lot on Fair Use Policy. I guess no more watching Netflix in 4K High definition. Kind Regards Tevin Mwenda Gitonga On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:07 AM Josiah Mugambi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: My takeaway is that FUPs should be published as a requirement. Also don't torrent too much. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:04 AM Barrack Otieno via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: @Ali Hussein<mailto:ahussein@kictanet.or.ke> what if the Customer does not have sufficient Capacity to understand FUP, si unampea tu ajisomee na ajipange. By the way even fish can't come to a fisherman who doesnt have bait yet they are analogue ama namna gani? On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:59 AM Ali Hussein via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: Andrew I do appreciate your very candid responses and of course, I wouldnt expect you to agree with my 'conspiracy theories' about data. The fact that you can't run away from is this:- Most ISPs run a Bait and switch sales operations machine. This a morally suspect sales tactic that lures customers in with specific claims about the quality or low prices on items that turn out to be unavailable in order to upsell them on a similar, pricier item. It is considered a form of retail sales fraud, though it takes place in other contexts. So, when you are selling me bandwidth, don't hide the FUP in T&Cs. Tell me to my face. Then I decide whether I'm ok with it or not. This is the biggest issue here. Not whether FUPs are done or not. Regards Ali Hussein Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim<http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim> Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:47 AM Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> wrote: Safaricom did tell you about the FUP – unlike most ISP’s in the world that never disclose what those FUP’s are. Also – I’d be very careful about alleging that ISP’s are all looking at user data – particularly because it’s a patently false allegation that all data is analyzed on all links. Yes – some ISP’s probably do do that kinda DPI on every circuit – but it certainly isn’t the case for a large portion of them – because its not economically feasible to do it. Again, someone would have to pay for those analytics engines – and having written a significant amount of code to detect ddos attacks using pure packet headers (metadata) – I can tell you flatly that this belief that an ISP is sniffing every packet and analyzing it – is a conspiracy theory with very little basis in fact. To back this up – on a software based platform – the following is the processing pipeline for packet analytics of packet metadata 1. Receive the packet 2. Categorize the packet * By the Ethernet Protocol ID (IPv4, IPv6, possibly .1q tags) * By the Layer 4 Protocol byte (Specifically byte 9 of the IP header in V4 traffic) * Store the 32bit Source and Destination – combined with the Source and Destination port of the Layer 4 header dependent on if its UDP or TCP * Hash the whole lot and place it into a lookup table against the 5 way tuple. 1. Even if you vectorize that process – you are still looking at a coupla milliseconds per packet – times millions of packets a second. A modern server can do that kinda accounting at ~20gigabit/second if they bypass kernel which bloats things – but – they haven’t touched the data segment of the packet. 2. If you look at Cisco routers – if you do port mirroring – you are limited to mirroring the first 128 bytes of the packet – because the replication of anything beyond that kills performance, it can’t be done at line rate 3. If you look at Juniper routers – you can port mirror for analytics on the full packet – but at the cost of performance. 4. On hardware asic based routing – analytics such as you are referring to requires CPU punt – because the asics aren’t designed to do what you are proposing. A 10gig circuit can be running in excess of a million packets a second – even if you are vectorizing the packet processing – just analyzing the headers to categorize it – before you attempt to hash it and bucket it – requires a minimum of 100 instructions post packet receipt – add the hashing and bucketing – you’re looking at a few thousand instructions to the CPU *per packet* - add the payload analytics – this goes up by orders of magnitude – last I checked – ISP’s don’t have super computers lying around. If you want full DPI to the level of analytics you are proposing – you HAVE to analyze the full payload content of the packet – and while there are boxes that can do this – they cost *millions* (of dollars not KSH) – and ISP’s generally aren’t gonna spend that kinda money unless they have to – because the cost has to be passed to the users. Andrew From: Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke<mailto:ali@hussein.me.ke>> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:32 To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Andrew Wacha kizungu mingi (I think you are Kenyan enough to understand what I've just said). 😁 Let me put you on the spot. To come up with FUP's you already know whose doing what so that 'innocence' of telling us about privacy now is moot. You all use these tools to snoop on us. Period. Now do it for the benefit of the customer. Not yours. This is really very simple. You all are crying foul about costs blah blah...but when you were wooing us you didn't tell us about FUP... Do the right thing mate...Be on the right side of history. Regards Ali Hussein Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim<http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim> Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:19 AM Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> wrote: Ali, I respectfully disagree – FUP’s have been apart of the Internet since day one since they protect the integrity of the networks as a whole. You have the option of buying an account without such an FUP – it just costs more – because someone has to cover the costs. Bandwidth doesn’t come free. This is the same reason why there are contention ratios (which I notice Safaricom also publishes). You refer to big data analytics – yet if I were to propose that an ISP actively sniff and analyze user traffic – you’d be screaming about violations of privacy – because the type of analytics you are talking about would require deep packet inspection at levels you don’t even want to contemplate. Let me be clear – you get what you pay for – and if every user decided to use their FUP allocated terabyte to its full capacity – for every 3240 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit – if every user ran at their maximum speeds on the 100mbit accounts – for every 100 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit. Trust me when I say – there is no world in which an ISP could afford to provide 10gigabit of bandwidth at a cost of effectively under $11k a month and still remain viable – which is what would happen if all those users maxed out. So – let me ask you – would you prefer that ALL the users be penalized with significantly higher prices – or would you prefer that people abide by what is fair (and what is in this case, a FUP that is 4 times the global average usage for home user accounts – which is just north of 250gigabytes of data a month on global average) Andrew From: Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke<mailto:ali@hussein.me.ke>> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:11 To: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> Cc: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Andrew Let me call this BS as it should be called. BS. Surely, of all people, you shouldn't be the one to justify FUP. I appreciate your honesty though. 😀 Here's a thought:- With all the tools available using Big Data and Analytics, aren't you all able to isolate the abusers and punish them instead of painting all of us with the same abuser tar brush? I think we are in the age of companies treating their customers with the respect they deserve and actually do right by them. What you have described is communal punishment. This is wrong and the regulator needs to take note. Regards Ali Hussein Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim<http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim> Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 8:13 AM Andrew Alston via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: I’ve hesitated to climb into this but – here goes anyway (everything written in personal capacity) Firstly – almost ALL ISP’s have FUP’s in some form or another – generally buried deep in the T&C’s – as someone stated to me – in the UK with certain ISP’s suddenly your line just gets slow and then when you call support you find yourself quietly diverted to the abuse department. The fact is that FUP’s are a necessary evil. 1. They prevent customers from reselling one account to multiple other parties while sharing it using NAT – which impacts the financial viability of the service and make its more expensive for everyone else in the end 2. ISP’s operate on contention ratios – if you do not impose some form of FUP – you either have to put up the price or the contention ratios are going to get out of whack – and everyone else is going to suffer. 3. Globally most home accounts use well shy of half a terabyte a month – a terabyte of data is a LOT of data for a single home So let’s just put some context in what a terabyte of data actually means – and I always use video as the prime gauge of this because it’s the easiest example. Your average Netflix 4k film runs at ~25mbit at absolute maximum if you are watching 4K on an HDR enabled TV. That’s 22.5 Gigabytes of data every 2 hours – if you watch one 4K 2 hour movie every single day for a month you will eat 675gigs of data. If we drop this to 1080p – which is far more common – you are using ~7 megabit of bandwidth – or 6.3gigs every 2 hours – if you watch 300 hours of 1080p content in a month – or 10 hours a day – you still haven’t hit that cap. Effectively – you could watch one 4K movie every day for a month – and still watch 150 40minute tv episodes in 1080p in a month – and have room to move. To look at it from another perspective – installation of something like Ubuntu Linux over the net – you could still over 400 machines on that kinda data load in a month. With regards to gaming – you may burn 100gig pulling down a game and game updates – but after that in game play you are using tiny amounts of bandwidth and could keep yourself playing easily for a month with space to spare. On Zoom calls – if you ran zoom 24 hours a day – for a month – you’d use less than 70% of that cap. Also – I might point out that the FUP’s slow your link down once you hit that cap – to a rate that is still useable if a little sluggish. Basically what I’m saying in all of this – Safaricom’s FUP and T&C’s to me seem perfectly reasonable and designed to protect the network – with the alternative being – the price goes up for everyone or everyone suffers because of the few when the network congests. Bandwidth aint free – and you can’t have it both ways – the product still has to make financial sense to both the consumer and the provider Andrew From: kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston=liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> on behalf of Adam Lane via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 07:36 To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> Cc: Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com<mailto:adam.lane@huawei.com>> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS There's a webinar on this topic today for those interested A Public Policy Discussion on #HomeFibre and #FairUsage Policies in Kenya. 🗓️ Thursday, 18th February 2021 🕜 12:00PM - 1:30PM Sign up here: 🔗 https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q<https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q> #LawyersHub #AfricaLawTech #ISP https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6<https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6> Speakers from CA, Safaricom, Liquid, KICTAnet, From:Beryl Aidi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> To:Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com<mailto:adam.lane@huawei.com>> Cc:Beryl Aidi <bee.aidi@gmail.com<mailto:bee.aidi@gmail.com>> Date:2021-02-18 05:57:28 Subject:Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Thank you Sidney for this. I don’t think Safaricom is being sincere in this fair usage limits. They promised that with Home Fibre one can stream, download or upload stuff without limits. All you do is pay your monthly subscription. Fair usage is a type of rationing that limits how much you can do when you had been promised that you can do whatever you want. To me this is going back on a promise. It’s reminiscent of the days of unlimited 3GB bundles on the dongle modem only for them to strike you with a fair usage notice. Are other networks doing the same? As the industry leader in the country, this is bound to influence other industry players to adopt the same standards and limits which is not good. Maybe it might be time to seek other options. Regards Beryl Sent from my iPad On 16 Feb 2021, at 9:47 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate. On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: Listers, Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering. Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-fair-usage-limits/<https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-fair-usage-limits> The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves<https://twitter.com/Safaricom_Care/status/1360876964651929600>, never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services. That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers. All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place. So I have a few of questions: 1. Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users? CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibilities.pdf<https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibilities.pdf> Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless. 1. Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers? I hope lawyers here can help us with this. 1. 2. If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area. 3. Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day, Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020-2021.pdf<https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020-2021.pdf> Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914 subscribers , 19.8 Poa % market share Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824 subscribers ,8.8% market share Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228 subscribers, 1.4 % market share Consumers are speaking with their wallets. As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device. Best Regards ______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva<https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva> _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet> Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet<http://twitter.com/kictanet> Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/<https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet> Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com> The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications. _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet> Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet<http://twitter.com/kictanet> Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/<https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/> Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com> The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications. _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet> Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet<http://twitter.com/kictanet> Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/<https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/> Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/barrack%40kictanet.or.ke<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/barrack%40kictanet.or.ke> The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications. -- Barrack Otieno Trustee Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTAnet) Skype:barrack.otieno +254721325277 https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrack-otieno-2101262b/<https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrack-otieno-2101262b/> www.kictanet.or.ke<http://www.kictanet.or.ke> _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet> Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet<http://twitter.com/kictanet> Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/<https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/> Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/josiah.mugambi%40gmail.com<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/josiah.mugambi%40gmail.com> The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications. -- Josiah Mugambi _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet> Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet<http://twitter.com/kictanet> Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/<https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/> Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/tevinmwenda%40gmail.com<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/tevinmwenda%40gmail.com> The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

I think the argument is quite simple. While FUPs are a necessary control on bandwidth usage, the provider needs to be very clear on this at the 1st instance. FUPs are not supposed to be tacked deep in the T&Cs as that amounts to dishonesty. Where one is selecting the package option (for Safaricom I believe there is a list of these where you are asked to select by putting a checkmark in a box), there should also be clearly shown the FUP that will be applied on that package. It should be that simple. After that, something like what Safaricom has done now - quoting Alston "(see section 12 of the 2019 T&C’s and identical wording exists in all the other copies)" - should not be a big issue as the clients will be in the know already. T&Cs are usually legalese that no one reads, just like those license legalese that appear when you are installing software and you click next, next and agree. Who reads that? For software, you must "Agree" else it doesn't install. The same should apply to "Services" like broadband from ISPs. Put the FUP details below each package so that by the time a client appends their signature and commits their money, they know what they are signing for, Alternatively, on the subscription forms, put the T&Cs on pages 1 and 2 and the packages on page 3, so that by the time a client signs, they are supposed to have read and understood pages 1 to the last page they are signing on. Just for the record, I know my ISP (not Safaricom) has FUPs as well, but not as aggressive as Safaricom's. If I hit the FUP, I am throttled for that day, but at midnight everything resets and I am back to normal. PS: Hey @AKH, @Barrack, bwana Alston disclaimed that "I’ve hesitated to climb into this but – here goes anyway (everything written in personal capacity)" - so he is not speaking on behalf of ISPs, much less SCOM :-) On Thu, 18 Feb 2021 at 11:53, geoffrey gitagia via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

I barely watch 4k coz of bandwidth requirements , but my net consumption is usually around 300 GB , plus my only big B/W hog is CCTV backup for 2 cameras.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:49 AM Andrew Alston via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

...

Unless you’re watching more than 60 hours of tv a month – you won’t have a problem with Netflix 4k 😊

Andrew

*From: *kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston= liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of tevin mwenda via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 11:44 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *tevin mwenda <tevinmwenda@gmail.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Thank you very much for this debate. I am learning a lot on Fair Use Policy. I guess no more watching Netflix in 4K High definition.

Kind Regards

Tevin Mwenda Gitonga

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:07 AM Josiah Mugambi via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

My takeaway is that FUPs should be published as a requirement. Also don't torrent too much.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:04 AM Barrack Otieno via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

@Ali Hussein <ahussein@kictanet.or.ke> what if the Customer does not have sufficient Capacity to understand FUP, si unampea tu ajisomee na ajipange. By the way even fish can't come to a fisherman who doesnt have bait yet they are analogue ama namna gani?

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:59 AM Ali Hussein via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Andrew

I do appreciate your very candid responses and of course, I wouldnt expect you to agree with my 'conspiracy theories' about data. The fact that you can't run away from is this:-

Most ISPs run a *Bait and switch *sales operations machine. This a morally suspect sales tactic that lures customers in with specific claims about the quality or low prices on items that turn out to be unavailable in order to upsell them on a similar, pricier item. It is considered a form of retail sales fraud, though it takes place in other contexts.

So, when you are selling me bandwidth, don't hide the FUP in T&Cs. Tell me to my face. Then I decide whether I'm ok with it or not. This is the biggest issue here. Not whether FUPs are done or not.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:47 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

Safaricom did tell you about the FUP – unlike most ISP’s in the world that never disclose what those FUP’s are.

Also – I’d be very careful about alleging that ISP’s are all looking at user data – particularly because it’s a patently false allegation that all data is analyzed on all links. Yes – some ISP’s probably do do that kinda DPI on every circuit – but it certainly isn’t the case for a large portion of them – because its not economically feasible to do it.

Again, someone would have to pay for those analytics engines – and having written a significant amount of code to detect ddos attacks using pure packet headers (metadata) – I can tell you flatly that this belief that an ISP is sniffing every packet and analyzing it – is a conspiracy theory with very little basis in fact.

To back this up – on a software based platform – the following is the processing pipeline for packet analytics of packet metadata

1. Receive the packet 2. Categorize the packet

1. By the Ethernet Protocol ID (IPv4, IPv6, possibly .1q tags) 2. By the Layer 4 Protocol byte (Specifically byte 9 of the IP header in V4 traffic) 3. Store the 32bit Source and Destination – combined with the Source and Destination port of the Layer 4 header dependent on if its UDP or TCP 4. Hash the whole lot and place it into a lookup table against the 5 way tuple.

1. Even if you vectorize that process – you are still looking at a coupla milliseconds per packet – times millions of packets a second. A modern server can do that kinda accounting at ~20gigabit/second if they bypass kernel which bloats things – but – they haven’t touched the data segment of the packet. 2. If you look at Cisco routers – if you do port mirroring – you are limited to mirroring the first 128 bytes of the packet – because the replication of anything beyond that kills performance, it can’t be done at line rate 3. If you look at Juniper routers – you can port mirror for analytics on the full packet – but at the cost of performance. 4. On hardware asic based routing – analytics such as you are referring to requires CPU punt – because the asics aren’t designed to do what you are proposing.

A 10gig circuit can be running in excess of a million packets a second – even if you are vectorizing the packet processing – just analyzing the headers to categorize it – before you attempt to hash it and bucket it – requires a minimum of 100 instructions post packet receipt – add the hashing and bucketing – you’re looking at a few thousand instructions to the CPU **per packet** - add the payload analytics – this goes up by orders of magnitude – last I checked – ISP’s don’t have super computers lying around.

If you want full DPI to the level of analytics you are proposing – you HAVE to analyze the full payload content of the packet – and while there are boxes that can do this – they cost **millions** (of dollars not KSH) – and ISP’s generally aren’t gonna spend that kinda money unless they have to – because the cost has to be passed to the users.

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:32 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

Wacha kizungu mingi (I think you are Kenyan enough to understand what I've just said). 😁

Let me put you on the spot. To come up with FUP's you already know whose doing what so that 'innocence' of telling us about privacy now is moot. You all use these tools to snoop on us. Period. Now do it for the benefit of the customer. Not yours. This is really very simple. You all are crying foul about costs blah blah...but when you were wooing us you didn't tell us about FUP...

Do the right thing mate...Be on the right side of history.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:19 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

Ali,

I respectfully disagree – FUP’s have been apart of the Internet since day one since they protect the integrity of the networks as a whole.

You have the option of buying an account without such an FUP – it just costs more – because someone has to cover the costs. Bandwidth doesn’t come free. This is the same reason why there are contention ratios (which I notice Safaricom also publishes).

You refer to big data analytics – yet if I were to propose that an ISP actively sniff and analyze user traffic – you’d be screaming about violations of privacy – because the type of analytics you are talking about would require deep packet inspection at levels you don’t even want to contemplate.

Let me be clear – you get what you pay for – and if every user decided to use their FUP allocated terabyte to its full capacity – for every 3240 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit – if every user ran at their maximum speeds on the 100mbit accounts – for every 100 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit. Trust me when I say – there is no world in which an ISP could afford to provide 10gigabit of bandwidth at a cost of effectively under $11k a month and still remain viable – which is what would happen if all those users maxed out.

So – let me ask you – would you prefer that ALL the users be penalized with significantly higher prices – or would you prefer that people abide by what is fair (and what is in this case, a FUP that is 4 times the global average usage for home user accounts – which is just north of 250gigabytes of data a month on global average)

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:11 *To: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Cc: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

Let me call this BS as it should be called. BS. Surely, of all people, you shouldn't be the one to justify FUP. I appreciate your honesty though. 😀

Here's a thought:-

With all the tools available using Big Data and Analytics, aren't you all able to isolate the abusers and punish them instead of painting all of us with the same abuser tar brush?

I think we are in the age of companies treating their customers with the respect they deserve and actually do right by them. What you have described is communal punishment. This is wrong and the regulator needs to take note.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 8:13 AM Andrew Alston via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

I’ve hesitated to climb into this but – here goes anyway (everything written in personal capacity)

Firstly – almost ALL ISP’s have FUP’s in some form or another – generally buried deep in the T&C’s – as someone stated to me – in the UK with certain ISP’s suddenly your line just gets slow and then when you call support you find yourself quietly diverted to the abuse department.

The fact is that FUP’s are a necessary evil.

1. They prevent customers from reselling one account to multiple other parties while sharing it using NAT – which impacts the financial viability of the service and make its more expensive for everyone else in the end 2. ISP’s operate on contention ratios – if you do not impose some form of FUP – you either have to put up the price or the contention ratios are going to get out of whack – and everyone else is going to suffer. 3. Globally most home accounts use well shy of half a terabyte a month – a terabyte of data is a LOT of data for a single home

So let’s just put some context in what a terabyte of data actually means – and I always use video as the prime gauge of this because it’s the easiest example.

Your average Netflix 4k film runs at ~25mbit at absolute maximum if you are watching 4K on an HDR enabled TV. That’s 22.5 Gigabytes of data every 2 hours – if you watch one 4K 2 hour movie every single day for a month you will eat 675gigs of data. If we drop this to 1080p – which is far more common – you are using ~7 megabit of bandwidth – or 6.3gigs every 2 hours – if you watch 300 hours of 1080p content in a month – or 10 hours a day – you still haven’t hit that cap.

Effectively – you could watch one 4K movie every day for a month – and still watch 150 40minute tv episodes in 1080p in a month – and have room to move.

To look at it from another perspective – installation of something like Ubuntu Linux over the net – you could still over 400 machines on that kinda data load in a month.

With regards to gaming – you may burn 100gig pulling down a game and game updates – but after that in game play you are using tiny amounts of bandwidth and could keep yourself playing easily for a month with space to spare.

On Zoom calls – if you ran zoom 24 hours a day – for a month – you’d use less than 70% of that cap.

Also – I might point out that the FUP’s slow your link down once you hit that cap – to a rate that is still useable if a little sluggish.

Basically what I’m saying in all of this – Safaricom’s FUP and T&C’s to me seem perfectly reasonable and designed to protect the network – with the alternative being – the price goes up for everyone or everyone suffers because of the few when the network congests. Bandwidth aint free – and you can’t have it both ways – the product still has to make financial sense to both the consumer and the provider

Andrew

*From: *kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston= liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of Adam Lane via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 07:36 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

There's a webinar on this topic today for those interested

A Public Policy Discussion on #HomeFibre and #FairUsage Policies in Kenya.

🗓️ Thursday, 18th February 2021

🕜 12:00PM - 1:30PM

Sign up here:

🔗 https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q

#LawyersHub #AfricaLawTech #ISP https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6

Speakers from CA, Safaricom, Liquid, KICTAnet,

*From:*Beryl Aidi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>

*To:*Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com>

*Cc:*Beryl Aidi <bee.aidi@gmail.com>

*Date:*2021-02-18 05:57:28

*Subject:*Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Thank you Sidney for this.

I don’t think Safaricom is being sincere in this fair usage limits. They promised that with Home Fibre one can stream, download or upload stuff without limits. All you do is pay your monthly subscription. Fair usage is a type of rationing that limits how much you can do when you had been promised that you can do whatever you want. To me this is going back on a promise. It’s reminiscent of the days of unlimited 3GB bundles on the dongle modem only for them to strike you with a fair usage notice. Are other networks doing the same? As the industry leader in the country, this is bound to influence other industry players to adopt the same standards and limits which is not good. Maybe it might be time to seek other options.

Regards

Beryl

Sent from my iPad

On 16 Feb 2021, at 9:47 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate.

On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Listers,

Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering.

Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-...

The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves <https://twitter.com/Safaricom_Care/status/1360876964651929600>, never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services.

That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers.

All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place.

So I have a few of questions:

1. Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users?

CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibili...

Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless.

1. Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers?

I hope lawyers here can help us with this.

1. 2. If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area. 3. Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places

Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day, Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020...

Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share

Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share

Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914 subscribers , 19.8 Poa % market share

Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824 subscribers ,8.8% market share

Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share

Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228 subscribers, 1.4 % market share

Consumers are speaking with their wallets.

As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device.

Best Regards

______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/barrack%40kictanet.or....

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

--

*Barrack Otieno*

*Trustee*

*Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTAnet)*

*Skype:barrack.otieno*

*+254721325277*

*https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrack-otieno-2101262b/ <https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrack-otieno-2101262b/>*

*www.kictanet.or.ke <http://www.kictanet.or.ke>*

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/josiah.mugambi%40gmail...

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

--

Josiah Mugambi

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/tevinmwenda%40gmail.co...

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/ggitagia%40gmail.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

-- GG

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/odhiambo%40gmail.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

-- Best regards, Odhiambo WASHINGTON, Nairobi,KE +254 7 3200 0004/+254 7 2274 3223 "Oh, the cruft.", grep ^[^#] :-)

@Victor Kapiyo <vkapiyo@kictanet.or.ke> let me try and answer the question "How are users supposed to know they have reached or almost reached their limits? ISPs should provide this information to users" ISPs have (access to) systems that monitor all traffic. By monitor, I mean the systems are able to categorise the type of traffic and aggregate the bytes/MBs/GBs used. I think it is trivial for them to avail this information to the clients. The same way they throttle you once you hit the data cap, they can easily trigger an email to you when you reach N% (say 75%) of the FUPs data cap then you can decide on what to do. Question is - will they do it? Are they obliged to do it?? The example below is a graph that one ISP has of a client's usage. I have access to this via a web portal. Funnily, I never know about the existence of this web portal for years - because I probably did not read every letter and word of the T&Cs for the service - like who does that? :-) [image: ispsmon.png] On Thu, 18 Feb 2021 at 12:47, Victor Kapiyo via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Very interesting. How are users supposed to know they have reached or almost reached their limits? ISPs should provide this information to users.

ISPs need to be held accountable for what they advertise e.g. a 20mbps connection, and be required to provide as such, and have a transparent mechanism for users to know what amount of data they're consuming. We might as well treat home fibre as we do data bundles, so that we always know our speed and consumption. How can a user dispute an 'unfair' FUP by an ISP if there's no independent way of verifying consumption?

While i applaud Safcom for their transparency, which other ISPs should emulate, it's best practice for consumers to be provided with clear information of what they're purchasing at the time of contracting.

As consumers, we always have the option to change providers, and have the freedom to contract. However, the playing field needs to be level. ISPs have an unfair advantage over their customers, who are the weaker party in these contracts.

The Communications Authority should step in to protect the rights of consumers, and check these unfair trade practices which are being openly implemented by ISPs to the detriment of consumers. The silence of CA on this issue, is in my view is worrying.

Victor

On Thu, 18 Feb 2021, 11:54 geoffrey gitagia via kictanet, < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

...

I barely watch 4k coz of bandwidth requirements , but my net consumption is usually around 300 GB , plus my only big B/W hog is CCTV backup for 2 cameras.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:49 AM Andrew Alston via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

...

Unless you’re watching more than 60 hours of tv a month – you won’t have a problem with Netflix 4k 😊

Andrew

*From: *kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston= liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of tevin mwenda via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 11:44 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *tevin mwenda <tevinmwenda@gmail.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Thank you very much for this debate. I am learning a lot on Fair Use Policy. I guess no more watching Netflix in 4K High definition.

Kind Regards

Tevin Mwenda Gitonga

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:07 AM Josiah Mugambi via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

My takeaway is that FUPs should be published as a requirement. Also don't torrent too much.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:04 AM Barrack Otieno via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

@Ali Hussein <ahussein@kictanet.or.ke> what if the Customer does not have sufficient Capacity to understand FUP, si unampea tu ajisomee na ajipange. By the way even fish can't come to a fisherman who doesnt have bait yet they are analogue ama namna gani?

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:59 AM Ali Hussein via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Andrew

I do appreciate your very candid responses and of course, I wouldnt expect you to agree with my 'conspiracy theories' about data. The fact that you can't run away from is this:-

Most ISPs run a *Bait and switch *sales operations machine. This a morally suspect sales tactic that lures customers in with specific claims about the quality or low prices on items that turn out to be unavailable in order to upsell them on a similar, pricier item. It is considered a form of retail sales fraud, though it takes place in other contexts.

So, when you are selling me bandwidth, don't hide the FUP in T&Cs. Tell me to my face. Then I decide whether I'm ok with it or not. This is the biggest issue here. Not whether FUPs are done or not.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:47 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

Safaricom did tell you about the FUP – unlike most ISP’s in the world that never disclose what those FUP’s are.

Also – I’d be very careful about alleging that ISP’s are all looking at user data – particularly because it’s a patently false allegation that all data is analyzed on all links. Yes – some ISP’s probably do do that kinda DPI on every circuit – but it certainly isn’t the case for a large portion of them – because its not economically feasible to do it.

Again, someone would have to pay for those analytics engines – and having written a significant amount of code to detect ddos attacks using pure packet headers (metadata) – I can tell you flatly that this belief that an ISP is sniffing every packet and analyzing it – is a conspiracy theory with very little basis in fact.

To back this up – on a software based platform – the following is the processing pipeline for packet analytics of packet metadata

1. Receive the packet 2. Categorize the packet

1. By the Ethernet Protocol ID (IPv4, IPv6, possibly .1q tags) 2. By the Layer 4 Protocol byte (Specifically byte 9 of the IP header in V4 traffic) 3. Store the 32bit Source and Destination – combined with the Source and Destination port of the Layer 4 header dependent on if its UDP or TCP 4. Hash the whole lot and place it into a lookup table against the 5 way tuple.

1. Even if you vectorize that process – you are still looking at a coupla milliseconds per packet – times millions of packets a second. A modern server can do that kinda accounting at ~20gigabit/second if they bypass kernel which bloats things – but – they haven’t touched the data segment of the packet. 2. If you look at Cisco routers – if you do port mirroring – you are limited to mirroring the first 128 bytes of the packet – because the replication of anything beyond that kills performance, it can’t be done at line rate 3. If you look at Juniper routers – you can port mirror for analytics on the full packet – but at the cost of performance. 4. On hardware asic based routing – analytics such as you are referring to requires CPU punt – because the asics aren’t designed to do what you are proposing.

A 10gig circuit can be running in excess of a million packets a second – even if you are vectorizing the packet processing – just analyzing the headers to categorize it – before you attempt to hash it and bucket it – requires a minimum of 100 instructions post packet receipt – add the hashing and bucketing – you’re looking at a few thousand instructions to the CPU **per packet** - add the payload analytics – this goes up by orders of magnitude – last I checked – ISP’s don’t have super computers lying around.

If you want full DPI to the level of analytics you are proposing – you HAVE to analyze the full payload content of the packet – and while there are boxes that can do this – they cost **millions** (of dollars not KSH) – and ISP’s generally aren’t gonna spend that kinda money unless they have to – because the cost has to be passed to the users.

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:32 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

Wacha kizungu mingi (I think you are Kenyan enough to understand what I've just said). 😁

Let me put you on the spot. To come up with FUP's you already know whose doing what so that 'innocence' of telling us about privacy now is moot. You all use these tools to snoop on us. Period. Now do it for the benefit of the customer. Not yours. This is really very simple. You all are crying foul about costs blah blah...but when you were wooing us you didn't tell us about FUP...

Do the right thing mate...Be on the right side of history.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:19 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

Ali,

I respectfully disagree – FUP’s have been apart of the Internet since day one since they protect the integrity of the networks as a whole.

You have the option of buying an account without such an FUP – it just costs more – because someone has to cover the costs. Bandwidth doesn’t come free. This is the same reason why there are contention ratios (which I notice Safaricom also publishes).

You refer to big data analytics – yet if I were to propose that an ISP actively sniff and analyze user traffic – you’d be screaming about violations of privacy – because the type of analytics you are talking about would require deep packet inspection at levels you don’t even want to contemplate.

Let me be clear – you get what you pay for – and if every user decided to use their FUP allocated terabyte to its full capacity – for every 3240 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit – if every user ran at their maximum speeds on the 100mbit accounts – for every 100 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit. Trust me when I say – there is no world in which an ISP could afford to provide 10gigabit of bandwidth at a cost of effectively under $11k a month and still remain viable – which is what would happen if all those users maxed out.

So – let me ask you – would you prefer that ALL the users be penalized with significantly higher prices – or would you prefer that people abide by what is fair (and what is in this case, a FUP that is 4 times the global average usage for home user accounts – which is just north of 250gigabytes of data a month on global average)

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:11 *To: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Cc: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

Let me call this BS as it should be called. BS. Surely, of all people, you shouldn't be the one to justify FUP. I appreciate your honesty though. 😀

Here's a thought:-

With all the tools available using Big Data and Analytics, aren't you all able to isolate the abusers and punish them instead of painting all of us with the same abuser tar brush?

I think we are in the age of companies treating their customers with the respect they deserve and actually do right by them. What you have described is communal punishment. This is wrong and the regulator needs to take note.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 8:13 AM Andrew Alston via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

I’ve hesitated to climb into this but – here goes anyway (everything written in personal capacity)

Firstly – almost ALL ISP’s have FUP’s in some form or another – generally buried deep in the T&C’s – as someone stated to me – in the UK with certain ISP’s suddenly your line just gets slow and then when you call support you find yourself quietly diverted to the abuse department.

The fact is that FUP’s are a necessary evil.

1. They prevent customers from reselling one account to multiple other parties while sharing it using NAT – which impacts the financial viability of the service and make its more expensive for everyone else in the end 2. ISP’s operate on contention ratios – if you do not impose some form of FUP – you either have to put up the price or the contention ratios are going to get out of whack – and everyone else is going to suffer. 3. Globally most home accounts use well shy of half a terabyte a month – a terabyte of data is a LOT of data for a single home

So let’s just put some context in what a terabyte of data actually means – and I always use video as the prime gauge of this because it’s the easiest example.

Your average Netflix 4k film runs at ~25mbit at absolute maximum if you are watching 4K on an HDR enabled TV. That’s 22.5 Gigabytes of data every 2 hours – if you watch one 4K 2 hour movie every single day for a month you will eat 675gigs of data. If we drop this to 1080p – which is far more common – you are using ~7 megabit of bandwidth – or 6.3gigs every 2 hours – if you watch 300 hours of 1080p content in a month – or 10 hours a day – you still haven’t hit that cap.

Effectively – you could watch one 4K movie every day for a month – and still watch 150 40minute tv episodes in 1080p in a month – and have room to move.

To look at it from another perspective – installation of something like Ubuntu Linux over the net – you could still over 400 machines on that kinda data load in a month.

With regards to gaming – you may burn 100gig pulling down a game and game updates – but after that in game play you are using tiny amounts of bandwidth and could keep yourself playing easily for a month with space to spare.

On Zoom calls – if you ran zoom 24 hours a day – for a month – you’d use less than 70% of that cap.

Also – I might point out that the FUP’s slow your link down once you hit that cap – to a rate that is still useable if a little sluggish.

Basically what I’m saying in all of this – Safaricom’s FUP and T&C’s to me seem perfectly reasonable and designed to protect the network – with the alternative being – the price goes up for everyone or everyone suffers because of the few when the network congests. Bandwidth aint free – and you can’t have it both ways – the product still has to make financial sense to both the consumer and the provider

Andrew

*From: *kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston= liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of Adam Lane via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 07:36 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

There's a webinar on this topic today for those interested

A Public Policy Discussion on #HomeFibre and #FairUsage Policies in Kenya.

🗓️ Thursday, 18th February 2021

🕜 12:00PM - 1:30PM

Sign up here:

🔗 https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q

#LawyersHub #AfricaLawTech #ISP https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6

Speakers from CA, Safaricom, Liquid, KICTAnet,

*From:*Beryl Aidi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>

*To:*Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com>

*Cc:*Beryl Aidi <bee.aidi@gmail.com>

*Date:*2021-02-18 05:57:28

*Subject:*Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Thank you Sidney for this.

I don’t think Safaricom is being sincere in this fair usage limits. They promised that with Home Fibre one can stream, download or upload stuff without limits. All you do is pay your monthly subscription. Fair usage is a type of rationing that limits how much you can do when you had been promised that you can do whatever you want. To me this is going back on a promise. It’s reminiscent of the days of unlimited 3GB bundles on the dongle modem only for them to strike you with a fair usage notice. Are other networks doing the same? As the industry leader in the country, this is bound to influence other industry players to adopt the same standards and limits which is not good. Maybe it might be time to seek other options.

Regards

Beryl

Sent from my iPad

On 16 Feb 2021, at 9:47 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate.

On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Listers,

Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering.

Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-...

The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves <https://twitter.com/Safaricom_Care/status/1360876964651929600>, never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services.

That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers.

All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place.

So I have a few of questions:

1. Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users?

CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibili...

Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless.

1. Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers?

I hope lawyers here can help us with this.

1. 2. If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area. 3. Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places

Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day, Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020...

Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share

Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share

Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914 subscribers , 19.8 Poa % market share

Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824 subscribers ,8.8% market share

Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share

Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228 subscribers, 1.4 % market share

Consumers are speaking with their wallets.

As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device.

Best Regards

______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/barrack%40kictanet.or....

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

--

*Barrack Otieno*

*Trustee*

*Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTAnet)*

*Skype:barrack.otieno*

*+254721325277*

*https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrack-otieno-2101262b/ <https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrack-otieno-2101262b/>*

*www.kictanet.or.ke <http://www.kictanet.or.ke>*

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/josiah.mugambi%40gmail...

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

--

Josiah Mugambi

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/tevinmwenda%40gmail.co...

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/ggitagia%40gmail.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

-- GG

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/vkapiyo%40gmail.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/odhiambo%40gmail.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

-- Best regards, Odhiambo WASHINGTON, Nairobi,KE +254 7 3200 0004/+254 7 2274 3223 "Oh, the cruft.", grep ^[^#] :-)

Btw – in terms of sizing of the data – At 5.184 billion samples per month – if you are storing each sample as a 64bit float (which is common) – you are consuming 41 terabytes of data per month just in the sampling – excluding overhead to serialize the data and store it – storing for 12 months would be close to half a petabyte of uncompressed data unless you are doing rollup – then add redundancy x 2 – now you are up to 1.5 petabytes of disk space. Obviously there is compression that can be employed etc – the point is – this isn’t as simple as people are making out Andrew From: kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston=liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of Odhiambo Washington via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 13:13 To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> Cc: Odhiambo Washington <odhiambo@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS @Victor Kapiyo<mailto:vkapiyo@kictanet.or.ke> let me try and answer the question "How are users supposed to know they have reached or almost reached their limits? ISPs should provide this information to users" ISPs have (access to) systems that monitor all traffic. By monitor, I mean the systems are able to categorise the type of traffic and aggregate the bytes/MBs/GBs used. I think it is trivial for them to avail this information to the clients. The same way they throttle you once you hit the data cap, they can easily trigger an email to you when you reach N% (say 75%) of the FUPs data cap then you can decide on what to do. Question is - will they do it? Are they obliged to do it?? The example below is a graph that one ISP has of a client's usage. I have access to this via a web portal. Funnily, I never know about the existence of this web portal for years - because I probably did not read every letter and word of the T&Cs for the service - like who does that? :-) [cid:image001.png@01D705FA.40693AC0] On Thu, 18 Feb 2021 at 12:47, Victor Kapiyo via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: Very interesting. How are users supposed to know they have reached or almost reached their limits? ISPs should provide this information to users. ISPs need to be held accountable for what they advertise e.g. a 20mbps connection, and be required to provide as such, and have a transparent mechanism for users to know what amount of data they're consuming. We might as well treat home fibre as we do data bundles, so that we always know our speed and consumption. How can a user dispute an 'unfair' FUP by an ISP if there's no independent way of verifying consumption? While i applaud Safcom for their transparency, which other ISPs should emulate, it's best practice for consumers to be provided with clear information of what they're purchasing at the time of contracting. As consumers, we always have the option to change providers, and have the freedom to contract. However, the playing field needs to be level. ISPs have an unfair advantage over their customers, who are the weaker party in these contracts. The Communications Authority should step in to protect the rights of consumers, and check these unfair trade practices which are being openly implemented by ISPs to the detriment of consumers. The silence of CA on this issue, is in my view is worrying. Victor On Thu, 18 Feb 2021, 11:54 geoffrey gitagia via kictanet, <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: I barely watch 4k coz of bandwidth requirements , but my net consumption is usually around 300 GB , plus my only big B/W hog is CCTV backup for 2 cameras. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:49 AM Andrew Alston via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: Unless you’re watching more than 60 hours of tv a month – you won’t have a problem with Netflix 4k 😊 Andrew From: kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston=liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> on behalf of tevin mwenda via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 11:44 To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> Cc: tevin mwenda <tevinmwenda@gmail.com<mailto:tevinmwenda@gmail.com>> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Thank you very much for this debate. I am learning a lot on Fair Use Policy. I guess no more watching Netflix in 4K High definition. Kind Regards Tevin Mwenda Gitonga On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:07 AM Josiah Mugambi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: My takeaway is that FUPs should be published as a requirement. Also don't torrent too much. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:04 AM Barrack Otieno via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: @Ali Hussein<mailto:ahussein@kictanet.or.ke> what if the Customer does not have sufficient Capacity to understand FUP, si unampea tu ajisomee na ajipange. By the way even fish can't come to a fisherman who doesnt have bait yet they are analogue ama namna gani? On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:59 AM Ali Hussein via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: Andrew I do appreciate your very candid responses and of course, I wouldnt expect you to agree with my 'conspiracy theories' about data. The fact that you can't run away from is this:- Most ISPs run a Bait and switch sales operations machine. This a morally suspect sales tactic that lures customers in with specific claims about the quality or low prices on items that turn out to be unavailable in order to upsell them on a similar, pricier item. It is considered a form of retail sales fraud, though it takes place in other contexts. So, when you are selling me bandwidth, don't hide the FUP in T&Cs. Tell me to my face. Then I decide whether I'm ok with it or not. This is the biggest issue here. Not whether FUPs are done or not. Regards Ali Hussein Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim<http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim> Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:47 AM Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> wrote: Safaricom did tell you about the FUP – unlike most ISP’s in the world that never disclose what those FUP’s are. Also – I’d be very careful about alleging that ISP’s are all looking at user data – particularly because it’s a patently false allegation that all data is analyzed on all links. Yes – some ISP’s probably do do that kinda DPI on every circuit – but it certainly isn’t the case for a large portion of them – because its not economically feasible to do it. Again, someone would have to pay for those analytics engines – and having written a significant amount of code to detect ddos attacks using pure packet headers (metadata) – I can tell you flatly that this belief that an ISP is sniffing every packet and analyzing it – is a conspiracy theory with very little basis in fact. To back this up – on a software based platform – the following is the processing pipeline for packet analytics of packet metadata 1. Receive the packet 2. Categorize the packet * By the Ethernet Protocol ID (IPv4, IPv6, possibly .1q tags) * By the Layer 4 Protocol byte (Specifically byte 9 of the IP header in V4 traffic) * Store the 32bit Source and Destination – combined with the Source and Destination port of the Layer 4 header dependent on if its UDP or TCP * Hash the whole lot and place it into a lookup table against the 5 way tuple. 1. Even if you vectorize that process – you are still looking at a coupla milliseconds per packet – times millions of packets a second. A modern server can do that kinda accounting at ~20gigabit/second if they bypass kernel which bloats things – but – they haven’t touched the data segment of the packet. 2. If you look at Cisco routers – if you do port mirroring – you are limited to mirroring the first 128 bytes of the packet – because the replication of anything beyond that kills performance, it can’t be done at line rate 3. If you look at Juniper routers – you can port mirror for analytics on the full packet – but at the cost of performance. 4. On hardware asic based routing – analytics such as you are referring to requires CPU punt – because the asics aren’t designed to do what you are proposing. A 10gig circuit can be running in excess of a million packets a second – even if you are vectorizing the packet processing – just analyzing the headers to categorize it – before you attempt to hash it and bucket it – requires a minimum of 100 instructions post packet receipt – add the hashing and bucketing – you’re looking at a few thousand instructions to the CPU *per packet* - add the payload analytics – this goes up by orders of magnitude – last I checked – ISP’s don’t have super computers lying around. If you want full DPI to the level of analytics you are proposing – you HAVE to analyze the full payload content of the packet – and while there are boxes that can do this – they cost *millions* (of dollars not KSH) – and ISP’s generally aren’t gonna spend that kinda money unless they have to – because the cost has to be passed to the users. Andrew From: Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke<mailto:ali@hussein.me.ke>> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:32 To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Andrew Wacha kizungu mingi (I think you are Kenyan enough to understand what I've just said). 😁 Let me put you on the spot. To come up with FUP's you already know whose doing what so that 'innocence' of telling us about privacy now is moot. You all use these tools to snoop on us. Period. Now do it for the benefit of the customer. Not yours. This is really very simple. You all are crying foul about costs blah blah...but when you were wooing us you didn't tell us about FUP... Do the right thing mate...Be on the right side of history. Regards Ali Hussein Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim<http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim> Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:19 AM Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> wrote: Ali, I respectfully disagree – FUP’s have been apart of the Internet since day one since they protect the integrity of the networks as a whole. You have the option of buying an account without such an FUP – it just costs more – because someone has to cover the costs. Bandwidth doesn’t come free. This is the same reason why there are contention ratios (which I notice Safaricom also publishes). You refer to big data analytics – yet if I were to propose that an ISP actively sniff and analyze user traffic – you’d be screaming about violations of privacy – because the type of analytics you are talking about would require deep packet inspection at levels you don’t even want to contemplate. Let me be clear – you get what you pay for – and if every user decided to use their FUP allocated terabyte to its full capacity – for every 3240 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit – if every user ran at their maximum speeds on the 100mbit accounts – for every 100 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit. Trust me when I say – there is no world in which an ISP could afford to provide 10gigabit of bandwidth at a cost of effectively under $11k a month and still remain viable – which is what would happen if all those users maxed out. So – let me ask you – would you prefer that ALL the users be penalized with significantly higher prices – or would you prefer that people abide by what is fair (and what is in this case, a FUP that is 4 times the global average usage for home user accounts – which is just north of 250gigabytes of data a month on global average) Andrew From: Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke<mailto:ali@hussein.me.ke>> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:11 To: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> Cc: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Andrew Let me call this BS as it should be called. BS. Surely, of all people, you shouldn't be the one to justify FUP. I appreciate your honesty though. 😀 Here's a thought:- With all the tools available using Big Data and Analytics, aren't you all able to isolate the abusers and punish them instead of painting all of us with the same abuser tar brush? I think we are in the age of companies treating their customers with the respect they deserve and actually do right by them. What you have described is communal punishment. This is wrong and the regulator needs to take note. Regards Ali Hussein Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim<http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim> Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 8:13 AM Andrew Alston via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: I’ve hesitated to climb into this but – here goes anyway (everything written in personal capacity) Firstly – almost ALL ISP’s have FUP’s in some form or another – generally buried deep in the T&C’s – as someone stated to me – in the UK with certain ISP’s suddenly your line just gets slow and then when you call support you find yourself quietly diverted to the abuse department. The fact is that FUP’s are a necessary evil. 1. They prevent customers from reselling one account to multiple other parties while sharing it using NAT – which impacts the financial viability of the service and make its more expensive for everyone else in the end 2. ISP’s operate on contention ratios – if you do not impose some form of FUP – you either have to put up the price or the contention ratios are going to get out of whack – and everyone else is going to suffer. 3. Globally most home accounts use well shy of half a terabyte a month – a terabyte of data is a LOT of data for a single home So let’s just put some context in what a terabyte of data actually means – and I always use video as the prime gauge of this because it’s the easiest example. Your average Netflix 4k film runs at ~25mbit at absolute maximum if you are watching 4K on an HDR enabled TV. That’s 22.5 Gigabytes of data every 2 hours – if you watch one 4K 2 hour movie every single day for a month you will eat 675gigs of data. If we drop this to 1080p – which is far more common – you are using ~7 megabit of bandwidth – or 6.3gigs every 2 hours – if you watch 300 hours of 1080p content in a month – or 10 hours a day – you still haven’t hit that cap. Effectively – you could watch one 4K movie every day for a month – and still watch 150 40minute tv episodes in 1080p in a month – and have room to move. To look at it from another perspective – installation of something like Ubuntu Linux over the net – you could still over 400 machines on that kinda data load in a month. With regards to gaming – you may burn 100gig pulling down a game and game updates – but after that in game play you are using tiny amounts of bandwidth and could keep yourself playing easily for a month with space to spare. On Zoom calls – if you ran zoom 24 hours a day – for a month – you’d use less than 70% of that cap. Also – I might point out that the FUP’s slow your link down once you hit that cap – to a rate that is still useable if a little sluggish. Basically what I’m saying in all of this – Safaricom’s FUP and T&C’s to me seem perfectly reasonable and designed to protect the network – with the alternative being – the price goes up for everyone or everyone suffers because of the few when the network congests. Bandwidth aint free – and you can’t have it both ways – the product still has to make financial sense to both the consumer and the provider Andrew From: kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston=liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> on behalf of Adam Lane via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 07:36 To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> Cc: Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com<mailto:adam.lane@huawei.com>> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS There's a webinar on this topic today for those interested A Public Policy Discussion on #HomeFibre and #FairUsage Policies in Kenya. 🗓️ Thursday, 18th February 2021 🕜 12:00PM - 1:30PM Sign up here: 🔗 https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q<https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q> #LawyersHub #AfricaLawTech #ISP https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6<https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6> Speakers from CA, Safaricom, Liquid, KICTAnet, From:Beryl Aidi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> To:Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com<mailto:adam.lane@huawei.com>> Cc:Beryl Aidi <bee.aidi@gmail.com<mailto:bee.aidi@gmail.com>> Date:2021-02-18 05:57:28 Subject:Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Thank you Sidney for this. I don’t think Safaricom is being sincere in this fair usage limits. They promised that with Home Fibre one can stream, download or upload stuff without limits. All you do is pay your monthly subscription. Fair usage is a type of rationing that limits how much you can do when you had been promised that you can do whatever you want. To me this is going back on a promise. It’s reminiscent of the days of unlimited 3GB bundles on the dongle modem only for them to strike you with a fair usage notice. Are other networks doing the same? As the industry leader in the country, this is bound to influence other industry players to adopt the same standards and limits which is not good. Maybe it might be time to seek other options. Regards Beryl Sent from my iPad On 16 Feb 2021, at 9:47 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate. On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: Listers, Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering. Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-fair-usage-limits/<https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-fair-usage-limits> The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves<https://twitter.com/Safaricom_Care/status/1360876964651929600>, never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services. That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers. All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place. So I have a few of questions: 1. Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users? CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibilities.pdf<https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibilities.pdf> Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless. 1. Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers? I hope lawyers here can help us with this. 1. 2. If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area. 3. Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day, Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020-2021.pdf<https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020-2021.pdf> Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914 subscribers , 19.8 Poa % market share Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824 subscribers ,8.8% market share Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228 subscribers, 1.4 % market share Consumers are speaking with their wallets. As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device. Best Regards ______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva<https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva> _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet> Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet<http://twitter.com/kictanet> Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/<https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet> Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com> The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications. _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet> Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet<http://twitter.com/kictanet> Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/<https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/> Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com> The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications. _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet> Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet<http://twitter.com/kictanet> Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/<https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/> Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/barrack%40kictanet.or.ke<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/barrack%40kictanet.or.ke> The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications. -- Barrack Otieno Trustee Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTAnet) Skype:barrack.otieno +254721325277 https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrack-otieno-2101262b/<https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrack-otieno-2101262b/> www.kictanet.or.ke<http://www.kictanet.or.ke> _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet> Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet<http://twitter.com/kictanet> Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/<https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/> Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/josiah.mugambi%40gmail.com<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/josiah.mugambi%40gmail.com> The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications. -- Josiah Mugambi _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet> Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet<http://twitter.com/kictanet> Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/<https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/> Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/tevinmwenda%40gmail.com<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/tevinmwenda%40gmail.com> The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications. _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet> Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet<http://twitter.com/kictanet> Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/<https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/> Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/ggitagia%40gmail.com<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/ggitagia%40gmail.com> The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications. -- GG _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet> Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet<http://twitter.com/kictanet> Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/<https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/> Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/vkapiyo%40gmail.com<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/vkapiyo%40gmail.com> The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications. _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet> Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet<http://twitter.com/kictanet> Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/<https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/> Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/odhiambo%40gmail.com<https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/odhiambo%40gmail.com> The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications. -- Best regards, Odhiambo WASHINGTON, Nairobi,KE +254 7 3200 0004/+254 7 2274 3223 "Oh, the cruft.", grep ^[^#] :-)

ISPs have (access to) systems that monitor all traffic. By monitor, I mean the systems are able to categorise the type of traffic and aggregate the bytes/MBs/GBs used. I think it is trivial for them to avail this information to the clients. @Odhiambo Washington<mailto:odhiambo@gmail.com> shall I assume you are speaking kifaransa? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Grace Githaiga Twitter: @ggithaiga Skype: gracegithaiga Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gracegithaiga ...the most important office in a democracy is the citizen. So, you see, that’s what our democracy demands. It needs you!----Barrack Obama. ________________________________ From: kictanet <kictanet-bounces+ggithaiga=hotmail.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of Odhiambo Washington via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Sent: 18 February 2021 1:10 PM To: ggithaiga@hotmail.com <ggithaiga@hotmail.com> Cc: Odhiambo Washington <odhiambo@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS @Victor Kapiyo<mailto:vkapiyo@kictanet.or.ke> let me try and answer the question "How are users supposed to know they have reached or almost reached their limits? ISPs should provide this information to users" ISPs have (access to) systems that monitor all traffic. By monitor, I mean the systems are able to categorise the type of traffic and aggregate the bytes/MBs/GBs used. I think it is trivial for them to avail this information to the clients. The same way they throttle you once you hit the data cap, they can easily trigger an email to you when you reach N% (say 75%) of the FUPs data cap then you can decide on what to do. Question is - will they do it? Are they obliged to do it?? The example below is a graph that one ISP has of a client's usage. I have access to this via a web portal. Funnily, I never know about the existence of this web portal for years - because I probably did not read every letter and word of the T&Cs for the service - like who does that? :-) [ispsmon.png] On Thu, 18 Feb 2021 at 12:47, Victor Kapiyo via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: Very interesting. How are users supposed to know they have reached or almost reached their limits? ISPs should provide this information to users. ISPs need to be held accountable for what they advertise e.g. a 20mbps connection, and be required to provide as such, and have a transparent mechanism for users to know what amount of data they're consuming. We might as well treat home fibre as we do data bundles, so that we always know our speed and consumption. How can a user dispute an 'unfair' FUP by an ISP if there's no independent way of verifying consumption? While i applaud Safcom for their transparency, which other ISPs should emulate, it's best practice for consumers to be provided with clear information of what they're purchasing at the time of contracting. As consumers, we always have the option to change providers, and have the freedom to contract. However, the playing field needs to be level. ISPs have an unfair advantage over their customers, who are the weaker party in these contracts. The Communications Authority should step in to protect the rights of consumers, and check these unfair trade practices which are being openly implemented by ISPs to the detriment of consumers. The silence of CA on this issue, is in my view is worrying. Victor On Thu, 18 Feb 2021, 11:54 geoffrey gitagia via kictanet, <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: I barely watch 4k coz of bandwidth requirements , but my net consumption is usually around 300 GB , plus my only big B/W hog is CCTV backup for 2 cameras. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:49 AM Andrew Alston via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: Unless you’re watching more than 60 hours of tv a month – you won’t have a problem with Netflix 4k 😊 Andrew From: kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston=liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> on behalf of tevin mwenda via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 11:44 To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> Cc: tevin mwenda <tevinmwenda@gmail.com<mailto:tevinmwenda@gmail.com>> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Thank you very much for this debate. I am learning a lot on Fair Use Policy. I guess no more watching Netflix in 4K High definition. Kind Regards Tevin Mwenda Gitonga On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:07 AM Josiah Mugambi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: My takeaway is that FUPs should be published as a requirement. Also don't torrent too much. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:04 AM Barrack Otieno via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: @Ali Hussein<mailto:ahussein@kictanet.or.ke> what if the Customer does not have sufficient Capacity to understand FUP, si unampea tu ajisomee na ajipange. By the way even fish can't come to a fisherman who doesnt have bait yet they are analogue ama namna gani? On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:59 AM Ali Hussein via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: Andrew I do appreciate your very candid responses and of course, I wouldnt expect you to agree with my 'conspiracy theories' about data. The fact that you can't run away from is this:- Most ISPs run a Bait and switch sales operations machine. This a morally suspect sales tactic that lures customers in with specific claims about the quality or low prices on items that turn out to be unavailable in order to upsell them on a similar, pricier item. It is considered a form of retail sales fraud, though it takes place in other contexts. So, when you are selling me bandwidth, don't hide the FUP in T&Cs. Tell me to my face. Then I decide whether I'm ok with it or not. This is the biggest issue here. Not whether FUPs are done or not. Regards Ali Hussein Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:47 AM Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> wrote: Safaricom did tell you about the FUP – unlike most ISP’s in the world that never disclose what those FUP’s are. Also – I’d be very careful about alleging that ISP’s are all looking at user data – particularly because it’s a patently false allegation that all data is analyzed on all links. Yes – some ISP’s probably do do that kinda DPI on every circuit – but it certainly isn’t the case for a large portion of them – because its not economically feasible to do it. Again, someone would have to pay for those analytics engines – and having written a significant amount of code to detect ddos attacks using pure packet headers (metadata) – I can tell you flatly that this belief that an ISP is sniffing every packet and analyzing it – is a conspiracy theory with very little basis in fact. To back this up – on a software based platform – the following is the processing pipeline for packet analytics of packet metadata 1. Receive the packet 2. Categorize the packet * By the Ethernet Protocol ID (IPv4, IPv6, possibly .1q tags) * By the Layer 4 Protocol byte (Specifically byte 9 of the IP header in V4 traffic) * Store the 32bit Source and Destination – combined with the Source and Destination port of the Layer 4 header dependent on if its UDP or TCP * Hash the whole lot and place it into a lookup table against the 5 way tuple. 1. Even if you vectorize that process – you are still looking at a coupla milliseconds per packet – times millions of packets a second. A modern server can do that kinda accounting at ~20gigabit/second if they bypass kernel which bloats things – but – they haven’t touched the data segment of the packet. 2. If you look at Cisco routers – if you do port mirroring – you are limited to mirroring the first 128 bytes of the packet – because the replication of anything beyond that kills performance, it can’t be done at line rate 3. If you look at Juniper routers – you can port mirror for analytics on the full packet – but at the cost of performance. 4. On hardware asic based routing – analytics such as you are referring to requires CPU punt – because the asics aren’t designed to do what you are proposing. A 10gig circuit can be running in excess of a million packets a second – even if you are vectorizing the packet processing – just analyzing the headers to categorize it – before you attempt to hash it and bucket it – requires a minimum of 100 instructions post packet receipt – add the hashing and bucketing – you’re looking at a few thousand instructions to the CPU *per packet* - add the payload analytics – this goes up by orders of magnitude – last I checked – ISP’s don’t have super computers lying around. If you want full DPI to the level of analytics you are proposing – you HAVE to analyze the full payload content of the packet – and while there are boxes that can do this – they cost *millions* (of dollars not KSH) – and ISP’s generally aren’t gonna spend that kinda money unless they have to – because the cost has to be passed to the users. Andrew From: Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke<mailto:ali@hussein.me.ke>> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:32 To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Andrew Wacha kizungu mingi (I think you are Kenyan enough to understand what I've just said). 😁 Let me put you on the spot. To come up with FUP's you already know whose doing what so that 'innocence' of telling us about privacy now is moot. You all use these tools to snoop on us. Period. Now do it for the benefit of the customer. Not yours. This is really very simple. You all are crying foul about costs blah blah...but when you were wooing us you didn't tell us about FUP... Do the right thing mate...Be on the right side of history. Regards Ali Hussein Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:19 AM Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> wrote: Ali, I respectfully disagree – FUP’s have been apart of the Internet since day one since they protect the integrity of the networks as a whole. You have the option of buying an account without such an FUP – it just costs more – because someone has to cover the costs. Bandwidth doesn’t come free. This is the same reason why there are contention ratios (which I notice Safaricom also publishes). You refer to big data analytics – yet if I were to propose that an ISP actively sniff and analyze user traffic – you’d be screaming about violations of privacy – because the type of analytics you are talking about would require deep packet inspection at levels you don’t even want to contemplate. Let me be clear – you get what you pay for – and if every user decided to use their FUP allocated terabyte to its full capacity – for every 3240 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit – if every user ran at their maximum speeds on the 100mbit accounts – for every 100 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit. Trust me when I say – there is no world in which an ISP could afford to provide 10gigabit of bandwidth at a cost of effectively under $11k a month and still remain viable – which is what would happen if all those users maxed out. So – let me ask you – would you prefer that ALL the users be penalized with significantly higher prices – or would you prefer that people abide by what is fair (and what is in this case, a FUP that is 4 times the global average usage for home user accounts – which is just north of 250gigabytes of data a month on global average) Andrew From: Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke<mailto:ali@hussein.me.ke>> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:11 To: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> Cc: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Andrew Let me call this BS as it should be called. BS. Surely, of all people, you shouldn't be the one to justify FUP. I appreciate your honesty though. 😀 Here's a thought:- With all the tools available using Big Data and Analytics, aren't you all able to isolate the abusers and punish them instead of painting all of us with the same abuser tar brush? I think we are in the age of companies treating their customers with the respect they deserve and actually do right by them. What you have described is communal punishment. This is wrong and the regulator needs to take note. Regards Ali Hussein Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 8:13 AM Andrew Alston via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: I’ve hesitated to climb into this but – here goes anyway (everything written in personal capacity) Firstly – almost ALL ISP’s have FUP’s in some form or another – generally buried deep in the T&C’s – as someone stated to me – in the UK with certain ISP’s suddenly your line just gets slow and then when you call support you find yourself quietly diverted to the abuse department. The fact is that FUP’s are a necessary evil. 1. They prevent customers from reselling one account to multiple other parties while sharing it using NAT – which impacts the financial viability of the service and make its more expensive for everyone else in the end 2. ISP’s operate on contention ratios – if you do not impose some form of FUP – you either have to put up the price or the contention ratios are going to get out of whack – and everyone else is going to suffer. 3. Globally most home accounts use well shy of half a terabyte a month – a terabyte of data is a LOT of data for a single home So let’s just put some context in what a terabyte of data actually means – and I always use video as the prime gauge of this because it’s the easiest example. Your average Netflix 4k film runs at ~25mbit at absolute maximum if you are watching 4K on an HDR enabled TV. That’s 22.5 Gigabytes of data every 2 hours – if you watch one 4K 2 hour movie every single day for a month you will eat 675gigs of data. If we drop this to 1080p – which is far more common – you are using ~7 megabit of bandwidth – or 6.3gigs every 2 hours – if you watch 300 hours of 1080p content in a month – or 10 hours a day – you still haven’t hit that cap. Effectively – you could watch one 4K movie every day for a month – and still watch 150 40minute tv episodes in 1080p in a month – and have room to move. To look at it from another perspective – installation of something like Ubuntu Linux over the net – you could still over 400 machines on that kinda data load in a month. With regards to gaming – you may burn 100gig pulling down a game and game updates – but after that in game play you are using tiny amounts of bandwidth and could keep yourself playing easily for a month with space to spare. On Zoom calls – if you ran zoom 24 hours a day – for a month – you’d use less than 70% of that cap. Also – I might point out that the FUP’s slow your link down once you hit that cap – to a rate that is still useable if a little sluggish. Basically what I’m saying in all of this – Safaricom’s FUP and T&C’s to me seem perfectly reasonable and designed to protect the network – with the alternative being – the price goes up for everyone or everyone suffers because of the few when the network congests. Bandwidth aint free – and you can’t have it both ways – the product still has to make financial sense to both the consumer and the provider Andrew From: kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston=liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> on behalf of Adam Lane via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 07:36 To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> Cc: Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com<mailto:adam.lane@huawei.com>> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS There's a webinar on this topic today for those interested A Public Policy Discussion on #HomeFibre and #FairUsage Policies in Kenya. 🗓️ Thursday, 18th February 2021 🕜 12:00PM - 1:30PM Sign up here: 🔗 https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q #LawyersHub #AfricaLawTech #ISP https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6 Speakers from CA, Safaricom, Liquid, KICTAnet, From:Beryl Aidi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> To:Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com<mailto:adam.lane@huawei.com>> Cc:Beryl Aidi <bee.aidi@gmail.com<mailto:bee.aidi@gmail.com>> Date:2021-02-18 05:57:28 Subject:Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Thank you Sidney for this. I don’t think Safaricom is being sincere in this fair usage limits. They promised that with Home Fibre one can stream, download or upload stuff without limits. All you do is pay your monthly subscription. Fair usage is a type of rationing that limits how much you can do when you had been promised that you can do whatever you want. To me this is going back on a promise. It’s reminiscent of the days of unlimited 3GB bundles on the dongle modem only for them to strike you with a fair usage notice. Are other networks doing the same? As the industry leader in the country, this is bound to influence other industry players to adopt the same standards and limits which is not good. Maybe it might be time to seek other options. Regards Beryl Sent from my iPad On 16 Feb 2021, at 9:47 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate. On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: Listers, Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering. Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-fair-usage-limits/<https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-fair-usage-limits> The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves<https://twitter.com/Safaricom_Care/status/1360876964651929600>, never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services. That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers. All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place. So I have a few of questions: 1. Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users? CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibili... Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless. 1. Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers? I hope lawyers here can help us with this. 1. 2. If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area. 3. Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day, Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020... Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914 subscribers , 19.8 Poa % market share Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824 subscribers ,8.8% market share Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228 subscribers, 1.4 % market share Consumers are speaking with their wallets. As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device. Best Regards ______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/<https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet> Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications. _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/ Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications. _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/ Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/barrack%40kictanet.or.... The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications. -- Barrack Otieno Trustee Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTAnet) Skype:barrack.otieno +254721325277 https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrack-otieno-2101262b/ www.kictanet.or.ke<http://www.kictanet.or.ke> _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/ Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/josiah.mugambi%40gmail... The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications. -- Josiah Mugambi _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/ Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/tevinmwenda%40gmail.co... The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications. _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/ Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/ggitagia%40gmail.com The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications. -- GG _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/ Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/vkapiyo%40gmail.com The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications. _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/ Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/odhiambo%40gmail.com The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications. -- Best regards, Odhiambo WASHINGTON, Nairobi,KE +254 7 3200 0004/+254 7 2274 3223 "Oh, the cruft.", grep ^[^#] :-)

@Odhiambo Washington <odhiambo@gmail.com> thank you. This is the kind of transparency i am talking about. *Victor Kapiyo* Partner | *Lawmark Partners LLP* *Suite No. 8, Centro House, Westlands, Nairobi | **Web: www.lawmark.co.ke <http://www.lawmark.co.ke> * ==================================================== *“Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude” Zig Ziglar* On Thu, 18 Feb 2021 at 13:11, Odhiambo Washington <odhiambo@gmail.com> wrote:

@Victor Kapiyo <vkapiyo@kictanet.or.ke> let me try and answer the question "How are users supposed to know they have reached or almost reached their limits? ISPs should provide this information to users"

ISPs have (access to) systems that monitor all traffic. By monitor, I mean the systems are able to categorise the type of traffic and aggregate the bytes/MBs/GBs used. I think it is trivial for them to avail this information to the clients. The same way they throttle you once you hit the data cap, they can easily trigger an email to you when you reach N% (say 75%) of the FUPs data cap then you can decide on what to do.

Question is - will they do it? Are they obliged to do it??

The example below is a graph that one ISP has of a client's usage. I have access to this via a web portal. Funnily, I never know about the existence of this web portal for years - because I probably did not read every letter and word of the T&Cs for the service - like who does that? :-)

[image: ispsmon.png]

On Thu, 18 Feb 2021 at 12:47, Victor Kapiyo via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

...

Very interesting. How are users supposed to know they have reached or almost reached their limits? ISPs should provide this information to users.

ISPs need to be held accountable for what they advertise e.g. a 20mbps connection, and be required to provide as such, and have a transparent mechanism for users to know what amount of data they're consuming. We might as well treat home fibre as we do data bundles, so that we always know our speed and consumption. How can a user dispute an 'unfair' FUP by an ISP if there's no independent way of verifying consumption?

While i applaud Safcom for their transparency, which other ISPs should emulate, it's best practice for consumers to be provided with clear information of what they're purchasing at the time of contracting.

As consumers, we always have the option to change providers, and have the freedom to contract. However, the playing field needs to be level. ISPs have an unfair advantage over their customers, who are the weaker party in these contracts.

The Communications Authority should step in to protect the rights of consumers, and check these unfair trade practices which are being openly implemented by ISPs to the detriment of consumers. The silence of CA on this issue, is in my view is worrying.

Victor

On Thu, 18 Feb 2021, 11:54 geoffrey gitagia via kictanet, < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

...

I barely watch 4k coz of bandwidth requirements , but my net consumption is usually around 300 GB , plus my only big B/W hog is CCTV backup for 2 cameras.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:49 AM Andrew Alston via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

...

Unless you’re watching more than 60 hours of tv a month – you won’t have a problem with Netflix 4k 😊

Andrew

*From: *kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston= liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of tevin mwenda via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 11:44 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *tevin mwenda <tevinmwenda@gmail.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Thank you very much for this debate. I am learning a lot on Fair Use Policy. I guess no more watching Netflix in 4K High definition.

Kind Regards

Tevin Mwenda Gitonga

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:07 AM Josiah Mugambi via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

My takeaway is that FUPs should be published as a requirement. Also don't torrent too much.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:04 AM Barrack Otieno via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

@Ali Hussein <ahussein@kictanet.or.ke> what if the Customer does not have sufficient Capacity to understand FUP, si unampea tu ajisomee na ajipange. By the way even fish can't come to a fisherman who doesnt have bait yet they are analogue ama namna gani?

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:59 AM Ali Hussein via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Andrew

I do appreciate your very candid responses and of course, I wouldnt expect you to agree with my 'conspiracy theories' about data. The fact that you can't run away from is this:-

Most ISPs run a *Bait and switch *sales operations machine. This a morally suspect sales tactic that lures customers in with specific claims about the quality or low prices on items that turn out to be unavailable in order to upsell them on a similar, pricier item. It is considered a form of retail sales fraud, though it takes place in other contexts.

So, when you are selling me bandwidth, don't hide the FUP in T&Cs. Tell me to my face. Then I decide whether I'm ok with it or not. This is the biggest issue here. Not whether FUPs are done or not.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:47 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

Safaricom did tell you about the FUP – unlike most ISP’s in the world that never disclose what those FUP’s are.

Also – I’d be very careful about alleging that ISP’s are all looking at user data – particularly because it’s a patently false allegation that all data is analyzed on all links. Yes – some ISP’s probably do do that kinda DPI on every circuit – but it certainly isn’t the case for a large portion of them – because its not economically feasible to do it.

Again, someone would have to pay for those analytics engines – and having written a significant amount of code to detect ddos attacks using pure packet headers (metadata) – I can tell you flatly that this belief that an ISP is sniffing every packet and analyzing it – is a conspiracy theory with very little basis in fact.

To back this up – on a software based platform – the following is the processing pipeline for packet analytics of packet metadata

1. Receive the packet 2. Categorize the packet

1. By the Ethernet Protocol ID (IPv4, IPv6, possibly .1q tags) 2. By the Layer 4 Protocol byte (Specifically byte 9 of the IP header in V4 traffic) 3. Store the 32bit Source and Destination – combined with the Source and Destination port of the Layer 4 header dependent on if its UDP or TCP 4. Hash the whole lot and place it into a lookup table against the 5 way tuple.

1. Even if you vectorize that process – you are still looking at a coupla milliseconds per packet – times millions of packets a second. A modern server can do that kinda accounting at ~20gigabit/second if they bypass kernel which bloats things – but – they haven’t touched the data segment of the packet. 2. If you look at Cisco routers – if you do port mirroring – you are limited to mirroring the first 128 bytes of the packet – because the replication of anything beyond that kills performance, it can’t be done at line rate 3. If you look at Juniper routers – you can port mirror for analytics on the full packet – but at the cost of performance. 4. On hardware asic based routing – analytics such as you are referring to requires CPU punt – because the asics aren’t designed to do what you are proposing.

A 10gig circuit can be running in excess of a million packets a second – even if you are vectorizing the packet processing – just analyzing the headers to categorize it – before you attempt to hash it and bucket it – requires a minimum of 100 instructions post packet receipt – add the hashing and bucketing – you’re looking at a few thousand instructions to the CPU **per packet** - add the payload analytics – this goes up by orders of magnitude – last I checked – ISP’s don’t have super computers lying around.

If you want full DPI to the level of analytics you are proposing – you HAVE to analyze the full payload content of the packet – and while there are boxes that can do this – they cost **millions** (of dollars not KSH) – and ISP’s generally aren’t gonna spend that kinda money unless they have to – because the cost has to be passed to the users.

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:32 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

Wacha kizungu mingi (I think you are Kenyan enough to understand what I've just said). 😁

Let me put you on the spot. To come up with FUP's you already know whose doing what so that 'innocence' of telling us about privacy now is moot. You all use these tools to snoop on us. Period. Now do it for the benefit of the customer. Not yours. This is really very simple. You all are crying foul about costs blah blah...but when you were wooing us you didn't tell us about FUP...

Do the right thing mate...Be on the right side of history.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:19 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

Ali,

I respectfully disagree – FUP’s have been apart of the Internet since day one since they protect the integrity of the networks as a whole.

You have the option of buying an account without such an FUP – it just costs more – because someone has to cover the costs. Bandwidth doesn’t come free. This is the same reason why there are contention ratios (which I notice Safaricom also publishes).

You refer to big data analytics – yet if I were to propose that an ISP actively sniff and analyze user traffic – you’d be screaming about violations of privacy – because the type of analytics you are talking about would require deep packet inspection at levels you don’t even want to contemplate.

Let me be clear – you get what you pay for – and if every user decided to use their FUP allocated terabyte to its full capacity – for every 3240 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit – if every user ran at their maximum speeds on the 100mbit accounts – for every 100 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit. Trust me when I say – there is no world in which an ISP could afford to provide 10gigabit of bandwidth at a cost of effectively under $11k a month and still remain viable – which is what would happen if all those users maxed out.

So – let me ask you – would you prefer that ALL the users be penalized with significantly higher prices – or would you prefer that people abide by what is fair (and what is in this case, a FUP that is 4 times the global average usage for home user accounts – which is just north of 250gigabytes of data a month on global average)

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:11 *To: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Cc: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

Let me call this BS as it should be called. BS. Surely, of all people, you shouldn't be the one to justify FUP. I appreciate your honesty though. 😀

Here's a thought:-

With all the tools available using Big Data and Analytics, aren't you all able to isolate the abusers and punish them instead of painting all of us with the same abuser tar brush?

I think we are in the age of companies treating their customers with the respect they deserve and actually do right by them. What you have described is communal punishment. This is wrong and the regulator needs to take note.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 8:13 AM Andrew Alston via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

I’ve hesitated to climb into this but – here goes anyway (everything written in personal capacity)

Firstly – almost ALL ISP’s have FUP’s in some form or another – generally buried deep in the T&C’s – as someone stated to me – in the UK with certain ISP’s suddenly your line just gets slow and then when you call support you find yourself quietly diverted to the abuse department.

The fact is that FUP’s are a necessary evil.

1. They prevent customers from reselling one account to multiple other parties while sharing it using NAT – which impacts the financial viability of the service and make its more expensive for everyone else in the end 2. ISP’s operate on contention ratios – if you do not impose some form of FUP – you either have to put up the price or the contention ratios are going to get out of whack – and everyone else is going to suffer. 3. Globally most home accounts use well shy of half a terabyte a month – a terabyte of data is a LOT of data for a single home

So let’s just put some context in what a terabyte of data actually means – and I always use video as the prime gauge of this because it’s the easiest example.

Your average Netflix 4k film runs at ~25mbit at absolute maximum if you are watching 4K on an HDR enabled TV. That’s 22.5 Gigabytes of data every 2 hours – if you watch one 4K 2 hour movie every single day for a month you will eat 675gigs of data. If we drop this to 1080p – which is far more common – you are using ~7 megabit of bandwidth – or 6.3gigs every 2 hours – if you watch 300 hours of 1080p content in a month – or 10 hours a day – you still haven’t hit that cap.

Effectively – you could watch one 4K movie every day for a month – and still watch 150 40minute tv episodes in 1080p in a month – and have room to move.

To look at it from another perspective – installation of something like Ubuntu Linux over the net – you could still over 400 machines on that kinda data load in a month.

With regards to gaming – you may burn 100gig pulling down a game and game updates – but after that in game play you are using tiny amounts of bandwidth and could keep yourself playing easily for a month with space to spare.

On Zoom calls – if you ran zoom 24 hours a day – for a month – you’d use less than 70% of that cap.

Also – I might point out that the FUP’s slow your link down once you hit that cap – to a rate that is still useable if a little sluggish.

Basically what I’m saying in all of this – Safaricom’s FUP and T&C’s to me seem perfectly reasonable and designed to protect the network – with the alternative being – the price goes up for everyone or everyone suffers because of the few when the network congests. Bandwidth aint free – and you can’t have it both ways – the product still has to make financial sense to both the consumer and the provider

Andrew

*From: *kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston= liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of Adam Lane via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 07:36 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

There's a webinar on this topic today for those interested

A Public Policy Discussion on #HomeFibre and #FairUsage Policies in Kenya.

🗓️ Thursday, 18th February 2021

🕜 12:00PM - 1:30PM

Sign up here:

🔗 https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q

#LawyersHub #AfricaLawTech #ISP https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6

Speakers from CA, Safaricom, Liquid, KICTAnet,

*From:*Beryl Aidi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>

*To:*Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com>

*Cc:*Beryl Aidi <bee.aidi@gmail.com>

*Date:*2021-02-18 05:57:28

*Subject:*Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Thank you Sidney for this.

I don’t think Safaricom is being sincere in this fair usage limits. They promised that with Home Fibre one can stream, download or upload stuff without limits. All you do is pay your monthly subscription. Fair usage is a type of rationing that limits how much you can do when you had been promised that you can do whatever you want. To me this is going back on a promise. It’s reminiscent of the days of unlimited 3GB bundles on the dongle modem only for them to strike you with a fair usage notice. Are other networks doing the same? As the industry leader in the country, this is bound to influence other industry players to adopt the same standards and limits which is not good. Maybe it might be time to seek other options.

Regards

Beryl

Sent from my iPad

On 16 Feb 2021, at 9:47 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate.

On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Listers,

Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering.

Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-...

The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves <https://twitter.com/Safaricom_Care/status/1360876964651929600> , never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services.

That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers.

All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place.

So I have a few of questions:

1. Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users?

CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibili...

Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless.

1. Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers?

I hope lawyers here can help us with this.

1. 2. If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area. 3. Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places

Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day, Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020...

Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share

Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share

Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914 subscribers , 19.8 Poa % market share

Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824 subscribers ,8.8% market share

Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share

Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228 subscribers, 1.4 % market share

Consumers are speaking with their wallets.

As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device.

Best Regards

______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/barrack%40kictanet.or....

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

--

*Barrack Otieno*

*Trustee*

*Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTAnet)*

*Skype:barrack.otieno*

*+254721325277*

*https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrack-otieno-2101262b/ <https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrack-otieno-2101262b/>*

*www.kictanet.or.ke <http://www.kictanet.or.ke>*

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/josiah.mugambi%40gmail...

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

--

Josiah Mugambi

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/tevinmwenda%40gmail.co...

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/ggitagia%40gmail.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

-- GG

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/vkapiyo%40gmail.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/odhiambo%40gmail.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

-- Best regards, Odhiambo WASHINGTON, Nairobi,KE +254 7 3200 0004/+254 7 2274 3223 "Oh, the cruft.", grep ^[^#] :-)

Ali I find it most amusing that on this list we ask for transparency but seem only happy when the 'transparency' and its outcome favors us. Demonizing a practice any techie in an isp has unwittingly had to perform sometimes even in our homes doesn't negate the fact that 1: doing dpi for all packets just Jack's up the cost for customers, opens up interesting privacy issues and is just not feasible. (i sell some of that kit and can tell you as Andrew said most isp's would have to close) 2: safaricom are extremely honest and transparent with their customers who are within their right to move to another isp with more opaque and agreeable terms 3: there is still alot of innovation to be done in all the affected spaces under discussion. If for instance you know an easier way to inspect and classify packets that would be super. It's always easy to complain but in this specific case and I urge anyone here running an isp to probably follow safaricom example or ask their isp for clear fup policies for customers to make informed choices. Ie the issue to me seems to be that other isp's are not publishing their policies and we are picking on the one that does. Gitau 3: Get Outlook for Android<https://aka.ms/ghei36> ________________________________ From: kictanet <kictanet-bounces+jgitau=gmail.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of Ali Hussein via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2021 10:58:48 AM To: JGitau <jgitau@gmail.com> Cc: Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke>; KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Andrew I do appreciate your very candid responses and of course, I wouldnt expect you to agree with my 'conspiracy theories' about data. The fact that you can't run away from is this:- Most ISPs run a Bait and switch sales operations machine. This a morally suspect sales tactic that lures customers in with specific claims about the quality or low prices on items that turn out to be unavailable in order to upsell them on a similar, pricier item. It is considered a form of retail sales fraud, though it takes place in other contexts. So, when you are selling me bandwidth, don't hide the FUP in T&Cs. Tell me to my face. Then I decide whether I'm ok with it or not. This is the biggest issue here. Not whether FUPs are done or not. Regards Ali Hussein Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim<http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim> Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:47 AM Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> wrote: Safaricom did tell you about the FUP – unlike most ISP’s in the world that never disclose what those FUP’s are. Also – I’d be very careful about alleging that ISP’s are all looking at user data – particularly because it’s a patently false allegation that all data is analyzed on all links. Yes – some ISP’s probably do do that kinda DPI on every circuit – but it certainly isn’t the case for a large portion of them – because its not economically feasible to do it. Again, someone would have to pay for those analytics engines – and having written a significant amount of code to detect ddos attacks using pure packet headers (metadata) – I can tell you flatly that this belief that an ISP is sniffing every packet and analyzing it – is a conspiracy theory with very little basis in fact. To back this up – on a software based platform – the following is the processing pipeline for packet analytics of packet metadata 1. Receive the packet 2. Categorize the packet * By the Ethernet Protocol ID (IPv4, IPv6, possibly .1q tags) * By the Layer 4 Protocol byte (Specifically byte 9 of the IP header in V4 traffic) * Store the 32bit Source and Destination – combined with the Source and Destination port of the Layer 4 header dependent on if its UDP or TCP * Hash the whole lot and place it into a lookup table against the 5 way tuple. 3. Even if you vectorize that process – you are still looking at a coupla milliseconds per packet – times millions of packets a second. A modern server can do that kinda accounting at ~20gigabit/second if they bypass kernel which bloats things – but – they haven’t touched the data segment of the packet. 4. If you look at Cisco routers – if you do port mirroring – you are limited to mirroring the first 128 bytes of the packet – because the replication of anything beyond that kills performance, it can’t be done at line rate 5. If you look at Juniper routers – you can port mirror for analytics on the full packet – but at the cost of performance. 6. On hardware asic based routing – analytics such as you are referring to requires CPU punt – because the asics aren’t designed to do what you are proposing. A 10gig circuit can be running in excess of a million packets a second – even if you are vectorizing the packet processing – just analyzing the headers to categorize it – before you attempt to hash it and bucket it – requires a minimum of 100 instructions post packet receipt – add the hashing and bucketing – you’re looking at a few thousand instructions to the CPU *per packet* - add the payload analytics – this goes up by orders of magnitude – last I checked – ISP’s don’t have super computers lying around. If you want full DPI to the level of analytics you are proposing – you HAVE to analyze the full payload content of the packet – and while there are boxes that can do this – they cost *millions* (of dollars not KSH) – and ISP’s generally aren’t gonna spend that kinda money unless they have to – because the cost has to be passed to the users. Andrew From: Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke<mailto:ali@hussein.me.ke>> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:32 To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Andrew Wacha kizungu mingi (I think you are Kenyan enough to understand what I've just said). 😁 Let me put you on the spot. To come up with FUP's you already know whose doing what so that 'innocence' of telling us about privacy now is moot. You all use these tools to snoop on us. Period. Now do it for the benefit of the customer. Not yours. This is really very simple. You all are crying foul about costs blah blah...but when you were wooing us you didn't tell us about FUP... Do the right thing mate...Be on the right side of history. Regards Ali Hussein Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:19 AM Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> wrote: Ali, I respectfully disagree – FUP’s have been apart of the Internet since day one since they protect the integrity of the networks as a whole. You have the option of buying an account without such an FUP – it just costs more – because someone has to cover the costs. Bandwidth doesn’t come free. This is the same reason why there are contention ratios (which I notice Safaricom also publishes). You refer to big data analytics – yet if I were to propose that an ISP actively sniff and analyze user traffic – you’d be screaming about violations of privacy – because the type of analytics you are talking about would require deep packet inspection at levels you don’t even want to contemplate. Let me be clear – you get what you pay for – and if every user decided to use their FUP allocated terabyte to its full capacity – for every 3240 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit – if every user ran at their maximum speeds on the 100mbit accounts – for every 100 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit. Trust me when I say – there is no world in which an ISP could afford to provide 10gigabit of bandwidth at a cost of effectively under $11k a month and still remain viable – which is what would happen if all those users maxed out. So – let me ask you – would you prefer that ALL the users be penalized with significantly higher prices – or would you prefer that people abide by what is fair (and what is in this case, a FUP that is 4 times the global average usage for home user accounts – which is just north of 250gigabytes of data a month on global average) Andrew From: Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke<mailto:ali@hussein.me.ke>> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:11 To: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> Cc: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Andrew Let me call this BS as it should be called. BS. Surely, of all people, you shouldn't be the one to justify FUP. I appreciate your honesty though. 😀 Here's a thought:- With all the tools available using Big Data and Analytics, aren't you all able to isolate the abusers and punish them instead of painting all of us with the same abuser tar brush? I think we are in the age of companies treating their customers with the respect they deserve and actually do right by them. What you have described is communal punishment. This is wrong and the regulator needs to take note. Regards Ali Hussein Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 8:13 AM Andrew Alston via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: I’ve hesitated to climb into this but – here goes anyway (everything written in personal capacity) Firstly – almost ALL ISP’s have FUP’s in some form or another – generally buried deep in the T&C’s – as someone stated to me – in the UK with certain ISP’s suddenly your line just gets slow and then when you call support you find yourself quietly diverted to the abuse department. The fact is that FUP’s are a necessary evil. 1. They prevent customers from reselling one account to multiple other parties while sharing it using NAT – which impacts the financial viability of the service and make its more expensive for everyone else in the end 2. ISP’s operate on contention ratios – if you do not impose some form of FUP – you either have to put up the price or the contention ratios are going to get out of whack – and everyone else is going to suffer. 3. Globally most home accounts use well shy of half a terabyte a month – a terabyte of data is a LOT of data for a single home So let’s just put some context in what a terabyte of data actually means – and I always use video as the prime gauge of this because it’s the easiest example. Your average Netflix 4k film runs at ~25mbit at absolute maximum if you are watching 4K on an HDR enabled TV. That’s 22.5 Gigabytes of data every 2 hours – if you watch one 4K 2 hour movie every single day for a month you will eat 675gigs of data. If we drop this to 1080p – which is far more common – you are using ~7 megabit of bandwidth – or 6.3gigs every 2 hours – if you watch 300 hours of 1080p content in a month – or 10 hours a day – you still haven’t hit that cap. Effectively – you could watch one 4K movie every day for a month – and still watch 150 40minute tv episodes in 1080p in a month – and have room to move. To look at it from another perspective – installation of something like Ubuntu Linux over the net – you could still over 400 machines on that kinda data load in a month. With regards to gaming – you may burn 100gig pulling down a game and game updates – but after that in game play you are using tiny amounts of bandwidth and could keep yourself playing easily for a month with space to spare. On Zoom calls – if you ran zoom 24 hours a day – for a month – you’d use less than 70% of that cap. Also – I might point out that the FUP’s slow your link down once you hit that cap – to a rate that is still useable if a little sluggish. Basically what I’m saying in all of this – Safaricom’s FUP and T&C’s to me seem perfectly reasonable and designed to protect the network – with the alternative being – the price goes up for everyone or everyone suffers because of the few when the network congests. Bandwidth aint free – and you can’t have it both ways – the product still has to make financial sense to both the consumer and the provider Andrew From: kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston=liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> on behalf of Adam Lane via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> Date: Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 07:36 To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com>> Cc: Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com<mailto:adam.lane@huawei.com>> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS There's a webinar on this topic today for those interested A Public Policy Discussion on #HomeFibre and #FairUsage Policies in Kenya. 🗓️ Thursday, 18th February 2021 🕜 12:00PM - 1:30PM Sign up here: 🔗 https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q #LawyersHub #AfricaLawTech #ISP https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6 Speakers from CA, Safaricom, Liquid, KICTAnet, From:Beryl Aidi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> To:Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com<mailto:adam.lane@huawei.com>> Cc:Beryl Aidi <bee.aidi@gmail.com<mailto:bee.aidi@gmail.com>> Date:2021-02-18 05:57:28 Subject:Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS Thank you Sidney for this. I don’t think Safaricom is being sincere in this fair usage limits. They promised that with Home Fibre one can stream, download or upload stuff without limits. All you do is pay your monthly subscription. Fair usage is a type of rationing that limits how much you can do when you had been promised that you can do whatever you want. To me this is going back on a promise. It’s reminiscent of the days of unlimited 3GB bundles on the dongle modem only for them to strike you with a fair usage notice. Are other networks doing the same? As the industry leader in the country, this is bound to influence other industry players to adopt the same standards and limits which is not good. Maybe it might be time to seek other options. Regards Beryl Sent from my iPad On 16 Feb 2021, at 9:47 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate. On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote: Listers, Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering. Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-fair-usage-limits/<https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-fair-usage-limits> The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves<https://twitter.com/Safaricom_Care/status/1360876964651929600>, never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services. That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers. All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place. So I have a few of questions: 1. Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users? CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibili... Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless. 1. Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers? I hope lawyers here can help us with this. 1. 2. If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area. 3. Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day, Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020... Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914 subscribers , 19.8 Poa % market share Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824 subscribers ,8.8% market share Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228 subscribers, 1.4 % market share Consumers are speaking with their wallets. As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device. Best Regards ______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/<https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet> Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications. _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/ Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

Here's a useful piece on fair use policies: https://www.broadbandgenie.co.uk/broadband/help/guide-to-fair-usage-policies Looks like the trend is to move away from FUPs and basically for ISPs to actually advertise what they actually offer and provide the service I.e. advertise unlimited and provide truly unlimited with no restrictions at whatever the cost. So really an ISP shouldn't call its offering 'unlimited' if they have restrictions e.g. data caps or FUPs. ISPs could implement max daily data caps, notify users of caps, or give their customers the option to pay for additional data once they hit the specified limits. I also think the FUPs need to be fair. Throttling someone from 100mbps to 3mpbs without any option, is quite aggressive, IMHO. Anyway, the regulation of how ISPs enforce these policies will be critical moving forward to ensure consumer protection. Otherwise, we remain a bandit digital economy. Victor On Thu, 18 Feb 2021, 21:17 Ali Hussein via kictanet, < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

John

Maybe I have had a long but I’ve honestly not understood you statement below.

*I find it most amusing that on this list we ask for transparency but seem only happy when the 'transparency' and its outcome favors us. *

Please elaborate. It seems we are being demonized for asking for transparency *before* the fact not after the fact. Is this really so hard to understand and appreciate?

As for you Andrew, I have no more words for you brother. We can agree to disagree.

*Ali Hussein* *Digital Transformation *

+254 0713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit." ~ Aristotle

Sent from my iPad

On 18 Feb 2021, at 2:27 PM, John Gitau <jgitau@gmail.com> wrote:

 Ali I find it most amusing that on this list we ask for transparency but seem only happy when the 'transparency' and its outcome favors us.

Demonizing a practice any techie in an isp has unwittingly had to perform sometimes even in our homes doesn't negate the fact that 1: doing dpi for all packets just Jack's up the cost for customers, opens up interesting privacy issues and is just not feasible. (i sell some of that kit and can tell you as Andrew said most isp's would have to close)

2: safaricom are extremely honest and transparent with their customers who are within their right to move to another isp with more opaque and agreeable terms

3: there is still alot of innovation to be done in all the affected spaces under discussion. If for instance you know an easier way to inspect and classify packets that would be super.

It's always easy to complain but in this specific case and I urge anyone here running an isp to probably follow safaricom example or ask their isp for clear fup policies for customers to make informed choices. Ie the issue to me seems to be that other isp's are not publishing their policies and we are picking on the one that does.

Gitau

3:

Get Outlook for Android <https://aka.ms/ghei36> ------------------------------ *From:* kictanet <kictanet-bounces+jgitau=gmail.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of Ali Hussein via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Sent:* Thursday, February 18, 2021 10:58:48 AM *To:* JGitau <jgitau@gmail.com> *Cc:* Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke>; KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Subject:* Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

I do appreciate your very candid responses and of course, I wouldnt expect you to agree with my 'conspiracy theories' about data. The fact that you can't run away from is this:-

Most ISPs run a *Bait and switch *sales operations machine. This a morally suspect sales tactic that lures customers in with specific claims about the quality or low prices on items that turn out to be unavailable in order to upsell them on a similar, pricier item. It is considered a form of retail sales fraud, though it takes place in other contexts.

So, when you are selling me bandwidth, don't hide the FUP in T&Cs. Tell me to my face. Then I decide whether I'm ok with it or not. This is the biggest issue here. Not whether FUPs are done or not.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim <http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim>

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:47 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

Safaricom did tell you about the FUP – unlike most ISP’s in the world that never disclose what those FUP’s are.

Also – I’d be very careful about alleging that ISP’s are all looking at user data – particularly because it’s a patently false allegation that all data is analyzed on all links. Yes – some ISP’s probably do do that kinda DPI on every circuit – but it certainly isn’t the case for a large portion of them – because its not economically feasible to do it.

Again, someone would have to pay for those analytics engines – and having written a significant amount of code to detect ddos attacks using pure packet headers (metadata) – I can tell you flatly that this belief that an ISP is sniffing every packet and analyzing it – is a conspiracy theory with very little basis in fact.

To back this up – on a software based platform – the following is the processing pipeline for packet analytics of packet metadata

1. Receive the packet 2. Categorize the packet 1. By the Ethernet Protocol ID (IPv4, IPv6, possibly .1q tags) 2. By the Layer 4 Protocol byte (Specifically byte 9 of the IP header in V4 traffic) 3. Store the 32bit Source and Destination – combined with the Source and Destination port of the Layer 4 header dependent on if its UDP or TCP 4. Hash the whole lot and place it into a lookup table against the 5 way tuple. 3. Even if you vectorize that process – you are still looking at a coupla milliseconds per packet – times millions of packets a second. A modern server can do that kinda accounting at ~20gigabit/second if they bypass kernel which bloats things – but – they haven’t touched the data segment of the packet. 4. If you look at Cisco routers – if you do port mirroring – you are limited to mirroring the first 128 bytes of the packet – because the replication of anything beyond that kills performance, it can’t be done at line rate 5. If you look at Juniper routers – you can port mirror for analytics on the full packet – but at the cost of performance. 6. On hardware asic based routing – analytics such as you are referring to requires CPU punt – because the asics aren’t designed to do what you are proposing.

A 10gig circuit can be running in excess of a million packets a second – even if you are vectorizing the packet processing – just analyzing the headers to categorize it – before you attempt to hash it and bucket it – requires a minimum of 100 instructions post packet receipt – add the hashing and bucketing – you’re looking at a few thousand instructions to the CPU **per packet** - add the payload analytics – this goes up by orders of magnitude – last I checked – ISP’s don’t have super computers lying around.

If you want full DPI to the level of analytics you are proposing – you HAVE to analyze the full payload content of the packet – and while there are boxes that can do this – they cost **millions** (of dollars not KSH) – and ISP’s generally aren’t gonna spend that kinda money unless they have to – because the cost has to be passed to the users.

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:32 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

Wacha kizungu mingi (I think you are Kenyan enough to understand what I've just said). 😁

Let me put you on the spot. To come up with FUP's you already know whose doing what so that 'innocence' of telling us about privacy now is moot. You all use these tools to snoop on us. Period. Now do it for the benefit of the customer. Not yours. This is really very simple. You all are crying foul about costs blah blah...but when you were wooing us you didn't tell us about FUP...

Do the right thing mate...Be on the right side of history.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:19 AM Andrew Alston < Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> wrote:

Ali,

I respectfully disagree – FUP’s have been apart of the Internet since day one since they protect the integrity of the networks as a whole.

You have the option of buying an account without such an FUP – it just costs more – because someone has to cover the costs. Bandwidth doesn’t come free. This is the same reason why there are contention ratios (which I notice Safaricom also publishes).

You refer to big data analytics – yet if I were to propose that an ISP actively sniff and analyze user traffic – you’d be screaming about violations of privacy – because the type of analytics you are talking about would require deep packet inspection at levels you don’t even want to contemplate.

Let me be clear – you get what you pay for – and if every user decided to use their FUP allocated terabyte to its full capacity – for every 3240 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit – if every user ran at their maximum speeds on the 100mbit accounts – for every 100 users you would need a 10gigabit circuit. Trust me when I say – there is no world in which an ISP could afford to provide 10gigabit of bandwidth at a cost of effectively under $11k a month and still remain viable – which is what would happen if all those users maxed out.

So – let me ask you – would you prefer that ALL the users be penalized with significantly higher prices – or would you prefer that people abide by what is fair (and what is in this case, a FUP that is 4 times the global average usage for home user accounts – which is just north of 250gigabytes of data a month on global average)

Andrew

*From: *Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 10:11 *To: *KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Cc: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Andrew

Let me call this BS as it should be called. BS. Surely, of all people, you shouldn't be the one to justify FUP. I appreciate your honesty though. 😀

Here's a thought:-

With all the tools available using Big Data and Analytics, aren't you all able to isolate the abusers and punish them instead of painting all of us with the same abuser tar brush?

I think we are in the age of companies treating their customers with the respect they deserve and actually do right by them. What you have described is communal punishment. This is wrong and the regulator needs to take note.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 8:13 AM Andrew Alston via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

I’ve hesitated to climb into this but – here goes anyway (everything written in personal capacity)

Firstly – almost ALL ISP’s have FUP’s in some form or another – generally buried deep in the T&C’s – as someone stated to me – in the UK with certain ISP’s suddenly your line just gets slow and then when you call support you find yourself quietly diverted to the abuse department.

The fact is that FUP’s are a necessary evil.

1. They prevent customers from reselling one account to multiple other parties while sharing it using NAT – which impacts the financial viability of the service and make its more expensive for everyone else in the end 2. ISP’s operate on contention ratios – if you do not impose some form of FUP – you either have to put up the price or the contention ratios are going to get out of whack – and everyone else is going to suffer. 3. Globally most home accounts use well shy of half a terabyte a month – a terabyte of data is a LOT of data for a single home

So let’s just put some context in what a terabyte of data actually means – and I always use video as the prime gauge of this because it’s the easiest example.

Your average Netflix 4k film runs at ~25mbit at absolute maximum if you are watching 4K on an HDR enabled TV. That’s 22.5 Gigabytes of data every 2 hours – if you watch one 4K 2 hour movie every single day for a month you will eat 675gigs of data. If we drop this to 1080p – which is far more common – you are using ~7 megabit of bandwidth – or 6.3gigs every 2 hours – if you watch 300 hours of 1080p content in a month – or 10 hours a day – you still haven’t hit that cap.

Effectively – you could watch one 4K movie every day for a month – and still watch 150 40minute tv episodes in 1080p in a month – and have room to move.

To look at it from another perspective – installation of something like Ubuntu Linux over the net – you could still over 400 machines on that kinda data load in a month.

With regards to gaming – you may burn 100gig pulling down a game and game updates – but after that in game play you are using tiny amounts of bandwidth and could keep yourself playing easily for a month with space to spare.

On Zoom calls – if you ran zoom 24 hours a day – for a month – you’d use less than 70% of that cap.

Also – I might point out that the FUP’s slow your link down once you hit that cap – to a rate that is still useable if a little sluggish.

Basically what I’m saying in all of this – Safaricom’s FUP and T&C’s to me seem perfectly reasonable and designed to protect the network – with the alternative being – the price goes up for everyone or everyone suffers because of the few when the network congests. Bandwidth aint free – and you can’t have it both ways – the product still has to make financial sense to both the consumer and the provider

Andrew

*From: *kictanet <kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston= liquidtelecom.com@lists.kictanet.or.ke> on behalf of Adam Lane via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Date: *Thursday, 18 February 2021 at 07:36 *To: *Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston@liquidtelecom.com> *Cc: *Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com> *Subject: *Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

There's a webinar on this topic today for those interested

A Public Policy Discussion on #HomeFibre and #FairUsage Policies in Kenya.

🗓️ Thursday, 18th February 2021

🕜 12:00PM - 1:30PM

Sign up here:

🔗 https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q

#LawyersHub #AfricaLawTech #ISP https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6

Speakers from CA, Safaricom, Liquid, KICTAnet,

*From:*Beryl Aidi via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>

*To:*Adam Lane <adam.lane@huawei.com>

*Cc:*Beryl Aidi <bee.aidi@gmail.com>

*Date:*2021-02-18 05:57:28

*Subject:*Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Thank you Sidney for this.

I don’t think Safaricom is being sincere in this fair usage limits. They promised that with Home Fibre one can stream, download or upload stuff without limits. All you do is pay your monthly subscription. Fair usage is a type of rationing that limits how much you can do when you had been promised that you can do whatever you want. To me this is going back on a promise. It’s reminiscent of the days of unlimited 3GB bundles on the dongle modem only for them to strike you with a fair usage notice. Are other networks doing the same? As the industry leader in the country, this is bound to influence other industry players to adopt the same standards and limits which is not good. Maybe it might be time to seek other options.

Regards

Beryl

Sent from my iPad

On 16 Feb 2021, at 9:47 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate.

On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Listers,

Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering.

Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-...

The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves <https://twitter.com/Safaricom_Care/status/1360876964651929600>, never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services.

That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers.

All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place.

So I have a few of questions:

1. Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users?

CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibili...

Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless.

1. Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers?

I hope lawyers here can help us with this.

1. 2. If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area. 3. Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places

Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day, Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020...

Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share

Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share

Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914 subscribers , 19.8 Poa % market share

Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824 subscribers ,8.8% market share

Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share

Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228 subscribers, 1.4 % market share

Consumers are speaking with their wallets.

As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device.

Best Regards

______________________ Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/bee.aidi%40gmail.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/

Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/vkapiyo%40gmail.com

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.