why the problem with the 24month contract?

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Hell, I'll sign now, give me a pen and paper! You have a cellphone contract for at least 2 years, your gym contract for at least 1 year... besides, I bet you they have some kind of "backing out" clause that compensates for this..... plus, to all those users who had satelite downstreams, you had to sign a 2 year contract too, why the big problem with them?

They are not telkom... there's a sales pitch on its own!
 
Hi,

I need broadband for a satellite office early in 2004.

Due to the 24 month contract I can't consider the Sentech option - it is tying me too long with an untested product (I know the technology is tried and tested elsewhere, but technology is a small fraction of a product).

Also, the technology is still in infancy. We can expect every 6 months or so a "breakthrough" which could send prices tumbling and equipment obsolete.

In a 24 month contract I'm stuck.

The regulatory environment in SA is also extremely volitile. Today we have Telkom, promise of Sentech and a promise-to-surface that can provide broadband. What will is be in 6 months or a year?

Enough reasons why a 2 year contract is not an option to me?

But then, I wish Sentech all of the best. The better they do, the better for the IT industry in SA.



South Africa needs World Class Broadband at World Competitive Prices.
 
In numerous threads there is the view of comparing Sentech’s pricing model with that of a cellular service provider. [?]

Currently service providers who have seen the light will offer you a one month contract. The only proviso is that you have your own mobile telephone.

Although I believe Sentech’s entering the data market is certainly good for competition, there is a lot of faith being asked on a system that we have not seen any results.

What is the reason we are not given the option to purchase a modem upfront and to test the “service” from month to month, determining if this is the answer to all our complaints of Telkom.

What we need in this economy is WORLD CLASS COMPETITION. Not restrictive competition.
 
HENCE PLEASE JUST WAIT FOR THE BETA TESTERS - once they have given you some results i'm sure your mind'll be made up
 
exactly my point staind... people here tend to shoot down new and BETTER things that is starting to happen even before they do, then the word-of-mouth spreads like wildfire that sentech "sucks ass" and they get a bad rep for nothing...

i'm sure they will re-think the whole 24month contract thing, be patient before making up your mind. sheesh
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by noone</i>
..... be patient before making up your mind. sheesh<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

<i>The squeeky wheel always get oiled first</i> [;)]
 
Hello everybody,

I'm pretty new to this forum but have been an advid reader for some time now while researching on Telkom's ADSL. This is my first post. I am looking very forward to the new Sentech MyWireless product that will be launched soon.

I just wanted to find out about the contract deal, I'm not sure if it has been discussed before (not the posts I have read).

If I sign up for a 24 month contract (like a cellphone), and I take the 128K deal. Say two months down the line I am happy with the service, and I want to upgrade to 256K or 512K. Will I be able to?

Will the contract allow upgrading and downgrading on a per month basis?

I would hate to sign up for a 128K MyWireless and find I love the service and want to upgrade to 512K, and find out I have to stay with 128K for the full 24 months.

Also another question, whihch might not be able to be answered just yet. Is about cancelation. Say someone signs up for a 24 month contract but then has been using it for 12 months and then decides to leave the country, or is unable to pay the monthly fee, or whatever reason. How would cancelation work?

Since you are still paying off the modem, would you not be able to give it back to Sentech or whoever and perhaps even pay a cancelation fee. I'm not too clued up on all this legal stuff, but it would be nice to know.

I really hope the Sentech MyWireless booms in South Africa and that it will be a new era in internet connectivity here.

Thanks to whomever can answer my questions.
 
I'm sure they wouldn't object to you wanting to pay them MORE money per month [:D] However, I would assume the point of the 24 month contract is that you can't cancel before the 24 months are up. If the only reason for the lengthy contract period is amortizing the cost of the modem, then perhaps they might provide a "buy-out" option where you pay a lump sum for the modem, and terminate the contract. Someone from Sentech would have to answer these questions if you want an authoritative statement, though.

mithrandi
 
The early indication I had from Sentech was that you may upgrade your contract but not downgrade. Policy could've changed since then, of course. Maybe they'll do what the cellphone companies do when you want to downgrade your cellphone contract (pay a fee of sorts)
-jus
 
I'm guessing they'll recharge you the Activation Fee(R500) because they need to reactivate a different account for you.
 
naw, would be cheaper than that, the last time i didn't pay my telkom bill and got cut off, they only charged me like 80 bucks, not the full 404
 
Well, the R500 activation fee is pretty notionary; I mean, surely they don't have to actually DO anything incredible to give you an account... just feed the details into their authentication servers etc. Unless the R500 is for the SIM card you authenticate with (if they are in fact using SIM cards for authentication).

mithrandi
 
Beta testing in the past has proved to give useless information. This was proven with both megawan and telkom adsl. Testing a solution with +/- 20 users thats inteneded to be used with 1000+ users is no test in my mind. Obviously the qos with only 20 users will be unbelievably fast. With a contention ration of 35840k:1000 if all 1000 users are logged on using the net u will get a guarantee of 35k, and yes that is less than a 56k modem. Now the chances of 1000 people using the service at the same time may be remote, but there is a chance that this will happen and i think quite a few people will be very concerned about this and signing a 2 year contract that may end up being a sub-standard service. Oh and lets just remember the ZA trend of over subscribing that we see with almost every internet provider.

I'm not saying this will happen, but obviously people like myself have concerns. I may sign into a 2 year Cell contract or a 1 year gym contract but i do so knowing what to expect with Sentech i am signing with my eyes wide shut !!!
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Beta testing in the past has proved to give useless information. This was proven with both megawan and telkom adsl. Testing a solution with +/- 20 users thats inteneded to be used with 1000+ users is no test in my mind. Obviously the qos with only 20 users will be unbelievably fast. With a contention ration of 35840k:1000 if all 1000 users are logged on using the net u will get a guarantee of 35k, and yes that is less than a 56k modem. Now the chances of 1000 people using the service at the same time may be remote, but there is a chance that this will happen and i think quite a few people will be very concerned about this and signing a 2 year contract that may end up being a sub-standard service. Oh and lets just remember the ZA trend of over subscribing that we see with almost every internet provider.

I'm not saying this will happen, but obviously people like myself have concerns. I may sign into a 2 year Cell contract or a 1 year gym contract but i do so knowing what to expect with Sentech i am signing with my eyes wide shut !!!<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Very good point Sliver, but I think that getting results from the beta test will still be good just to see how it handles...
 
For pings and things like that it will be very informative, for actual download speeds it will unfortunately not give us much indication due to the small amount of users, but hey, any info is better than no info :)
 
Beta testing (on this scale) does not give you any information about what the system will function like under "normal" conditions. It does, however, give you an indication of what the system is capable of during actual usage, as opposed to just some theoretical figures on paper. So, beta testing may not tell the whole story, but it tells more than just throwing paper numbers around.

mithrandi
 
Another potential problem with the 24-month contract is that it may set a nasty precedent.

We're all hoping that the introduction of Sentech and the SNO will encourage Telkom to respond with either improved services or better prices (or both).

But what if Telkom simply comes up with an "alternative" package that gives you uncapped, unshaped bandwidth, maybe at a slightly higher price, but only if you're willing to sign up for 24 months.
And then the SNO does something similar.

Is that really the way we wanna go?

Please. If I sign up for the 512k package, I'm basically commiting to hand over about R35000 to Sentech over 2 years. That's a LOT of money, and if something better comes along (and we all hope it does), we're screwed.

Poor old "bos aap" is a perfect case in point. I feel sorry for you dude. [:D]
http://www.myadsl.co.za/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1326
 
On the other hand, look at cellphones; you get "Pay-as-you-Go", which is a complete waste of money unless you only make 2 calls every month. Then you get 1-month, 12-month, and 24-month contracts; sure, you're less locked in on a 1-month contract, but you pay for it. Sentech may think that people will not be willing to pay R4000 up front for the modem, plus a potentially increased monthly fee.

mithrandi
 
Long term contracts prevents people from switching between service providers to follow special offers...

Just think about this:

Sentech enters, and makes a dent in Telkom's customer base. Telkom gives a special offer ADSL no connection fees @R550 per month. As I have an "imagenary" no-ties Sentech contract, I cancel that and go for Telkom.

Sentech gets hurt and gives a special offer. So next month I'm with them again.

Fixed term contracts limits the speed at which the market forces can operate to get broadband services and rates op to scratch with the rest of the world.



South Africa needs World Class Broadband at World Competitive Prices.
 
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