Bilan of the Internet “price decrease” applied on the 1st of March.
1. Sloooooow connection
Every night, it's the same story... Between 6 & 11pm, Internet slows to a crawl since usage peaks.
Unless you live in a remote area, or there aren't many peers around you, it's a hair-ripping experience. It's like going back to dial-up. Pages take minutes to load, watching YouTube buffers infinitely. Even Twitter & Facebook take ages to refresh. A slowdown just when you use the Internet the most! Downloading via browser? Forget it, speed is less than 10KB/s. :(
However, this Monday, I was experiencing the same slowness during the day! After being baffled for a while, the cause of this problem finally dawned onto me - holidays! Yes, the majority of students were at home, leeching all the available bandwidth!! :|
I was expecting this... given how MT doubled our speeds without a major upgrade of the infrastructure - which they are currently doing by installing fibre optic cables. However it'll take some time before these cables come into operation. Till then we are condemned to suffer.
So what can we do? Here are a few tips that may (& may not) work.
- My.T users, avoid the IP 196.20.XXX.XXX When you have this IP, your Internet speed is slower.
- Reset your IP. This gives you 5-10min window where you get top speed, before it returns back to 'normal.'
- Use OpenDNS. When there are more users, it's logical that MT's DNS will be overloaded. Although, I don't see any improvement...
- Be evil. Yes, run 5+ multi-threaded downloads at the same time to suck every kilobyte out of your available bandwidth. It's unfair, but would you prefer downloading at 10KB/s? On my 512k, I get up to 52KB/s by running 5 parallel downloads with 10 threads on Flashget.
- Downloading after 12am? Well, this might concern you...
2. MT's DNS down
If your livebox isn't connecting, it's probably due to a network or a DNS outage. With more users, the rate of DNS outages has also increased, the most recent one happening last week. In such a case, modifying your network settings in your OS is not enough. You need to change the DNS IPs in the livebox:
Go to Configuration avancée –> Réseau –> Relais DNS
You’ll have to re-configure it every 8h when your IP resets.
3. The price "decrease" 
As we all know, the price never decreased, only the speed doubled & quadrupled for 128k. Most 'light' users complained that they never wanted a speed double, as they were satisfied with their previous speed.
However, by scrapping the 128k & 256k offers & maintaining the starting offer at Rs 750, MT kept affordable Internet out of reach of the public. People using dial-up, Nomad 64k - most having a budget less than Rs 500 - have been left stranded.
The reason is... dial-up users are the biggest cash cow of MT. Here's how:
1. Dial-uppers use almost no bandwidth - <56K.
2. Their usage is limited not by amount downloaded, but by time spent (12h)...
3. Since they *always* use more than 12h, they pay Rs0.50/min for excess.
4. Pay-As-You-Go dial-uppers pay even more!!! - 0.57/min (day) & 0.27/min(night).
5. Consider the price-to-bandwidth ratio of dial-up vs ADSL.
- Rs 750 : 512K - Rs1.45/K
- Rs 350 : 56K - Rs 6.25/K!!!!
4. My.T Mouse 
512k ADSL users got a special 1Mbps upgrade, not available to the public. & current My.T users had their speeds doubled at the same price, while keeping the 15 channels an option.
New users? They'll be paying My.T more since it's now bundled with 15 useless channels. If they want only the Internet, then it's Orange ADSL. Actually it does make sense that there should be a disparity between the two services. But does the inclusion of 15 boring channels, VOD & a DVB receiver justify this?
The Bilan
A speed double - faster downloads, faster browsing & no more buffering. But at the cost of not being able to use the Internet for a few hours. I see no immediate improvement to this situation, at least until the undersea fibre cables connect Mauritius & we can finally dream of a speed on par with the world – 20Mbps?
Note: In 2007, I had a 128kbps connection, in 2008, 256K & in 2009, 512K. So in 2010, I should be getting 1Mbps, right? ;)
Update:
Tushal.net - Mauritius Telecom: The Failure!