[lugm.org] Adventures @ Orange ISP

[KJBheenick]

You are not alone in thinking along the lines of putting more consumer
pressure on the ISP(s?) locally.
There was a newspaper article not so long ago that responded to another
article about Mauritius having done so wonderfully well in terms of
connectivity in L'Express of Sunday 1st May.
The article URL is http://lemauricien.com/mauricien/in110505.htm
In that article is also reference to an interview of Sarat Lallah about
optical fibre connectivity across the island and to the rest of the world
(http://www.techvideobytes.com/video/36028862010380537)

Apparently the LION2 cable will improve connectivity out of Mauritius some
time in 2012- but will it still be under the control of one local company or
will the ICTA step in to really liberalise access to bandwidth - if
Mauritius can spend so much on building roads which are still packed with
cars crawling at peak time, or money on carrying waste water, while our taps
run dry upstream, surely we would benefit from improving connectivity not
only to the rest of the world but also among ourselves in a more democratic
manner (or on a more level playing field?).

A community-led initiative (that also tries with all its might not to be
infiltrated and taken over my local politics) to address the issues of
connectivity from a more technical perspective would be most welcome. The
credibility of such an initiative would be a function of it remaining
objective about the challenges and possible solutions.
Krishan Bheenick
Food and Agricultural Research Council
Reduit

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at lugm.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at lugm.org] On Behalf
Of Nishal Goburdhan
Sent: Wednesday, May 18, 2011 12:07 PM
To: LUGM Discuss Mailing List
Subject: Re: [lugm.org] Adventures @ Orange ISP

On May 18, 2011, at 10:56 AM, Jochen Kirstätter wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> absolutely not surprising!

oh, i don't know.  people fat-finger configs all the time. 
what would be more upsetting is if they didn't fix it.

> Although that there has been a new sea cable connected during Feb 2010,
there are no real benefits for paying customers at all. Using MyT seems to
be a very lame choice for internet except that you like the TV and movie
package, too.

that's the LION cable, iirc, and it's for interconnections between the
Mascarene islands only;  ie.  it doesn't really improve MT's cost per mb to
the rest of the world.
as Mozammil says;  you don't really have CIR on home services.
complaining - at least singly - won't help...

what would help is if you collected a complete sample of 'complaints'.
one of the things that helped force the incumbent Telco back home into
improving its service was consumer pressure.
http://www.mybroadband.co.za collected user data and experiences and, with
the press, lobbied hard to improve services.
and although they whine a lot still :-)  the home users in ZA generally have
a much better connection experience than a few years ago.

can you find -- or build -- something that'll grow to a (semi-)respected
consumer front?
1,000 voices are greater than 1...

there are a bunch of ways to do this. 
 first, you need to explain to your (potential) user-base that your interest
is in experience, and information gathering.
which it should be! 
so start a location, service purchased, speed, timestamp,.... questionnaire.
or better yet, test.  
for transparency, don't get them to download something from your home - try
something indisputable.
i'd say MT's ftp site, but i can't see one in DNS;  perhaps something from
their website like:
http://www.mauritiustelecom.com/myt/pdf/guideMyTWatch.pdf   (a 22mb pdf)
map the local exchanges, and position the answers you've got from your
survey to their respective exchanges relative to their distance.
(since one of the things that you'll have to deal with is MT saying that the
distance and quality of the copper matters)
repeat for different times.   draw some analysis.
...that'll make a pretty picture - if you make it to the newspapers, they'd
love to print that!
work out the expected transfer time for the file above.  check how that mean
compares to the times that people report.
(don't forget to count in serialisation delays for the different sized
links) ....
(of course, there's a lot more that you need to do - and tune, but you get
the idea...)

the more i think about this, the more i see how this could be a really cool
project for a bored CS student ;-)


there are several things that could benefit from having a respected,
neutral, consumer-body present to the media.
for example, from my MT connection, a traceroute to www.emtel-ltd.com -
what's supposed to be local - goes through Belgium.  
if someone could explain, in real money terms, what this costs the Mauritian
economy i'm sure you'd find MT and Emtel under pressure to peer directly,
making life sweeter for all of us...
if that same respected consumer group could politely ask why other Mauritian
entities like SBM and Air Mauritius (i am sure there are more) don't host
their content in Mauritius, i'm quite certain that public pressure will make
the change, again, making things better for you.
and..well, lots more ideas, than i can type now...

i guess my question is - can the LUGM be (or grow) that respected neutral
consumer group for IT related matters?
i think you could;  of course it's a lot of work, but then the rewards would
be worth it, right?


> Emtel WiMAX and 3G data services are pretty stable compared to Orange
(whatsoever named) DSL.
> You might use http://speedtest.net/ for sporadic tests of your access
point. It's the standard test suite that AfriNIC uses to check Emtel WiMAX
installations.

i'm pretty certain that AfriNIC doesn't check Emtel WiMAX installs, or
anything like that.
but speedtest is still a good link.

--n.
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