ADSL is a service to provide high-speed internet at affordable prices. ADSL is a dedicated internet line that is to be shared by users. This sharing is to reduce the cost for the end-user.  The sharing in most countries is more than 1:50 for residential ADSL. These countries can do this because the behavior of users is very mixed. Some people use internet for a few emails per day, some people download a movie, people at work use internet during the day, while others use internet at night. Paltel is dimensioning the sharing based on 1:32 which is much better than most countries. However, due to the reselling and extremely heavy downloading by a few customers in Palestine this sharing cannot be maintained without a limitation to the bandwidth for the extreme users.

 

-          Is it all about “Capping”?

o   The new ADSL Initiative being provided is mainly for upgrading the speed for free and reducing the prices as well as delivering better quality. However, the new speeds shall be limited in order to enhance the quality delivered to 91% of the ADSL users.

 

-          Why doesn’t a user get the full line speed all the time?

o   Since ADSL is a shared internet service, Paltel provides its customers with an open access connection based on the speed that the customer has ordered. All customers share the internet in Paltel’s network that is based on 1:32 share. This implies that Paltel’s internet backbone is at a minimum the sum of all ADSL line speeds divided by 32. Paltel’s backbone for ADSL is however much larger than this. The ADSL service that Paltel sells is thus a service that provides ADSL users with a speed upto the line speed and with a minimum of the line speed divided by 32.

 

-          Why the ADSL Allowance Limitation?

o   Some subscribers are reselling the service to many homes; others keep downloading movies and huge files to put them on CDs and sell them. These resellers and abusers are eating the bandwidth that should be available for normal users and, thus, affecting the quality delivered to 90% of the ADSL Home users negatively.  

 

-          Who will be mostly affected by these limits?

o   PALTEL’s actual numbers show that just 9% of subscribers exceed these limits, while the rest of the users will not experience the limits. It should be mentioned here that most of the 9% are resellers and abusers that are eating others’ bandwidth and it is time to stop them. On the other hand, the vast majority of users will enjoy double their current speeds for the same prices or less, as well as better quality because they will find enough free bandwidth whenever they log in.

 

-          How are resellers and abusers affecting the quality delivered to normal users?

o   A home ADSL line is expected to serve a single user or a small group of users within the same home and the network is engineered accordingly based on international standards. With many resellers providing the service to 100s of users on the same line, it is impossible to determine the actual number of users connected to the network and, thus, the network cannot be engineered properly. Moreover, when a reseller is connecting many users on the same line, this line will be fully loaded and eating the bandwidth most of the time and when a normal user logs in, he will not find enough free bandwidth and will start suffering from slowness. Today, 65% of the total download volume is consumed by only 9% of the customers whom are mainly reselling and or redistributing the service, thus, effecting 91% of total ADSL users.

 

-          Why to stop resellers and abusers? Isn’t it their right to use their lines the way they like?

o   Home ADSL lines are intended for private and personal uses only and not for reselling purposes in any case. Simply, they are cheaper than dedicated lines because they are provided with high sharing ratios. When an ADSL line is resold to 10s of users, it will be fully utilized most of the time and this will leave low bandwidth for normal users who will suffer from slowness. If they intend to use the service commercially then they should go to commercial services and get registered as such. Paltel cannot tolerate their behavior at the expense of normal home users.

 

-          Does PALTEL have enough international capacity? Can’t the problem be solved by upgrading the international capacity?

o   On average ISPs in surrounding countries have between 7000 and 9000 ADSL subscribers per STM-1 and this works out to an average international capacity per subscriber between 17 and 22 Kbps. PALTEL actual number of subscribers per STM-1 is 4,350 and this works out to an average international capacity per subscriber of 36 Kbps. This means that the international capacity PALTEL has is more than enough and is much higher than all surrounding countries. PALTEL made several upgrades to overcome the problem until reaching this high level but the problem is still prevalent and users are still complaining.

 

-          Will the allowance limit be the same for all speeds?

o   No, each speed will have a different limit and most speeds will have more than one option. 256K, for example, will be limited at 7GB, while 512K will have two options: 10GB and 13GB.

 

-          What are the new prices and allowance limits of the different speeds and how are they compared to the old prices?

o   Below is a comparison between the old and new offerings:

-          Are these allowance limits in Gbits or Gbytes? What about speed measures?

o   Allowance limits are in Gbytes, while speeds are in bits per second (1 byte = 8 bits). Speed or bandwidth measures can be:

§ Kilobit per second: A kilobit per second (kbit/s or kb/s or kbps) is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:

·         1,024 bits per second or

·         128 bytes per second.

§ Megabit per second: A megabit per second (Mbit/s or Mb/s or Mbps) is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:

·         1,048,576 bits per second or

·         1,024 kilobits per second or

·         131,072 bytes per second.

§ Gigabit per second: A gigabit per second (Gbit/s or Gb/s or Gbps) is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:

·         1,073,742,000 bits per second or

·         1,048,576 kilobits per second or

·         1,024 megabits per second or

·         134,217,700 bytes per second.

 

-          Will these limits be fair for users?

o   Yes, they will be more than fair. Let’s take a 1-Mbps speed as an example. It is provided with a sharing ratio of 1 to 32. This means that the guaranteed bandwidth is continuous 32 Kbps. Let’s calculate the maximum volume that can be downloaded with the guaranteed speed:

32 Kbps / 8 = 4 KBps

4 * 60 = 240 KB per minute

240 * 60 = 14,400 KB per hour

14,400 * 24 = 345,600 KB per day

345,600 * 30 = 10,368,000 KB per month

10,368,000 / 1024 = 10,125 MB per month

10,125 / 1024 = 9.888 GB per month

As shown above, the maximum volume that can be downloaded with the guaranteed speed will be less than 10GByte while the limit options proposed for this speed are 16 and 24 GByte.

-          What happens when a user reaches the allowance limit?

o   The line speed will be downgraded to 64 Kbps until the end of the month. However, the user can instantly buy extra volumes that expire by the end of the month by simply calling the Toll Free number 1800800200.

 

-          How can a user measure and monitor his usage?

o   The user can simply log in at www.paltel.ps and by entering your ID number and your 9 digit telephone number you can have live measure of your consumed bandwidth.

 

-          Was this policy implemented in any of the neighboring countries? If yes, how are they compared to PALTEL’s offering?

o   Yes, it was implemented by many service providers worldwide. Below is a comparison between PALTEL and Orange-Jordan: