Neotel My experience

[Intox]

Just thought I would share.

First off the I emailed them then got a reply they cant find my address, replied to them with more detail (nearest street corner and such), second reply they still cant find it :confused: .

Called them and after quite a struggle of getting the address right since the reception was really bad I got the go ahead that im covered, proceeded with the credit check and then bam R1000 deposit required.

So I thought that understandable since I just moved, payed the deposit and waited for delivery.


Pretty straightforward to install and here is the results.
3 bars signal on the phone, sometimes drops to 2 and shoots back quickly
SpeedTest.net result : Down =740kb/s Up = 82kb/s
Ping to google.com : 307ms - 493ms
Ping to NeoTel.co.za : 122ms - 256ms
Ping to BBC.co.uk : 354ms - 554ms

Using a download manager i am getting around 80kB/s sometimes 100kB/s
As for torrents got around 60-70kB/s

Overall
Calls are fine no problems at all.
There are some times when the connection drops happened 2x today.
Will be doing some tweaking to see if I can get a bit more speed out of the connection.

That's it
Celebrating my freedom from Telkom :D

[RichardG]

Congratulations!!!!

I had tons of issues with Neotel at first but they working on fixing things :)

[Shake&Bake]

Good to hear some positive feedback at least.

Intox - would you mind disclosing which area you are in?

R1k deposit seems steep to me and the 1st that I've heard of them asking for one :o

[Intox]

Good to hear some positive feedback at least.

Intox - would you mind disclosing which area you are in?

R1k deposit seems steep to me and the 1st that I've heard of them asking for one :o

Sure, I am in Vorna Valley, Midrand.

The deposit came as a surprise to me too, especially since I chose the R399 Package.

[gt20343]

I was never asked for a deposit. i have the neoconnect prime 2G. R499 package.

Here is a list of things i noticed:-

1) Installation is a breeze
2) Mobility
3)fully functional phone
4) speeds of about 35/45kbs when downloading skype installation file

Cons
1) I have excellent coverage in Weltevredenpark but Connection drops every 10 or 15 minutes interval. Its quite annoying when you are using skype :(

2) After a connection drop you have to type password again and save to release the modem from previous connection. :(

If Neotel can fix this connection issue then it will be great.

[Kasbah]

I was never asked for a deposit. i have the neoconnect prime 2G. R499 package.

Here is a list of things i noticed:-

1) Installation is a breeze
2) Mobility
3)fully functional phone
4) speeds of about 35/45kbs when downloading skype installation file

Cons
1) I have excellent coverage in Weltevredenpark but Connection drops every 10 or 15 minutes interval. Its quite annoying when you are using skype :(

2) After a connection drop you have to type password again and save to release the modem from previous connection. :(

If Neotel can fix this connection issue then it will be great.

Congrats Intox and gt20343
I also had a few problems when I first got the device, honestly signal strength and ping times are getting better and better each day now since last week Friday. I stay just above you on the hill gt20343 and get 3/4 bars signal. I also had a few connection/disconnection problems in the beginning but have finally found the best place in my house for maximum signal. I still feel new Neotel Customers need an antenna to get max signal and understand why Neotel are resielent on giving customers the device in areas which are not 100% totally covered yet as they want happy customers to give a good rep.

2) After a connection drop you have to type password again and save to release the modem from previous connection. :( <--- I use Win XP and have setup my dialup connection to re-dial if dropped with passwords saved, so if the connection drops it's automatically dialled back, just check the settings, their a few tweaks you can do to make sure you are always connected.
I have now been connected for 2 days 3 hours without a disconnection yet :)

[PeteGT]

I'm in Vorna Valley too, didn't have a problem with finding the address.
I hope they dont come with the R1000 deposit on me, I will not accept that.
I dont have a bad credit history, actually a very good one, 3 credit cards in the black and they phone me all the time to offer me more credit, so I dont know why this is taking so long (since Saturday).

[PeteGT]

What happens with the deposit? do they simply take your bill out of it at the end of the month and refund you the difference or what?

How does Neotel bill you, begging or end of the month?

[Kasbah]

What happens with the deposit? do they simply take your bill out of it at the end of the month and refund you the difference or what?

How does Neotel bill you, begging or end of the month?

I signed up with Neotel mid last month, there was no mention of any deposit and they have not deducted the R469 for beginning of this month so might be end of month. /me waits to see

[evilsee]

In Cape Town the area around the city, up on the slopes of table mountain and lions head is called the City Bowl, yes thats right, its a big massive amphitheatre, All neotel has to do is stick a frikken antennae on one of the tall buildings in town and they would have the whole city and the city bowl covered.

I just check on this site https://salesportal.neotel.co.za/web/guest/home and It would seem that cape town CDB has very little coverage, Im a missing something, does anyone else in CPT CBD have average?

[gt20343]

Thanks Kasbah i will try your suggestions.

I have signal strength of 4 in every corner of my house.
i had sent a mail to Neotel about my connection drop issue with a snapshot of my log file and around 10 pm i get a call from neotel.

The Techie from Neotel suggested that i turn my firewalls off and try.
( i have Microsoft and Sygate firewall on). Got to give that a try today.
will let you peeps know how it goes.

Vow this is service i am not used to. Great one Neotel. :)


I registered for neotel on 2nd of September at postnet and Neotel haven't deducted any money yet.

[Intox]

I'm in Vorna Valley too, didn't have a problem with finding the address.
I hope they dont come with the R1000 deposit on me, I will not accept that.
I dont have a bad credit history, actually a very good one, 3 credit cards in the black and they phone me all the time to offer me more credit, so I dont know why this is taking so long (since Saturday).

I believe the reason I was asked a deposit was because I recently moved.
Never had any credit issues before.


What happens with the deposit? do they simply take your bill out of it at the end of the month and refund you the difference or what?

How does Neotel bill you, begging or end of the month?

Got my first bill at the end of August and everything was as it should be.
As to the deposit, I payed that upfront and it will get refunded at the end on the contract.

[gt20343]

Hi Peeps

I had been testing neotel for a couple of days. Weekend i tried calling UK and got a message that said "the country you are trying to access is restricted."
I called support and they said i have to pay a DEPOSIT for accessing international numbers. I didn't ask how much the deposit was but got the rates for peak and offpeak.
I will post them soon.

Anyway my connection is not dropping as much as before. I used skype last night and there was a significant difference from last time.(no disconnects :)
turning off the extra firewall and making the connection to redial automatically when disconnected has helped me :)

[Robocop]

Thanks Kasbah i will try your suggestions.

I have signal strength of 4 in every corner of my house.
i had sent a mail to Neotel about my connection drop issue with a snapshot of my log file and around 10 pm i get a call from neotel.

The Techie from Neotel suggested that i turn my firewalls off and try.
( i have Microsoft and Sygate firewall on). Got to give that a try today.
will let you peeps know how it goes.

Vow this is service i am not used to. Great one Neotel. :)


I registered for neotel on 2nd of September at postnet and Neotel haven't deducted any money yet.

Sygate's the culprit. I had a problem with disconnection every 2 minutes, after removing Sygate my problem dissipeared.

[Madman88]

I am thinking about going onto the uncapped prime account, Does anyone know of any limitations to the account? such as throttling (blegh) after a certain ammount of usage? or is it trully uncapped?

[Robocop]

I am thinking about going onto the uncapped prime account, Does anyone know of any limitations to the account? such as throttling (blegh) after a certain ammount of usage? or is it trully uncapped?
I've been using the Prime Unlimited for the past 4 months, and as far as I can see it's really uncapped. Been doing 30GB plus a month and the only extra cost on top of the R999 was for national calls made, but never more than R70.

[chubster]

Did you open up your incoming ports? I think you posted that you made an aerial for you neotel device. Is your upload speed any better than what the others reported?

[Robocop]

Did you open up your incoming ports? I think you posted that you made an aerial for you neotel device. Is your upload speed any better than what the others reported?

Yes, my incoming ports are open. They had to re-open them after a device swop.
Remember that I use the device in an area that has no official coverage. I get about 8-20 kBps upload and about 400 - 800 kBps download speeds. After they opened my ports my torrent download speeds went up from 60-80 kBps to 120 - 150 kBps. I'm only getting 2 bars though with the occational 3 bar spells.

Before building my arial, I had no bars and only 20-50kbps download speeds no good even for browsing.

[ColinR]

Yes, my incoming ports are open. They had to re-open them after a device swop.
Remember that I use the device in an area that has no official coverage. I get about 8-20 kBps upload and about 400 - 800 kBps download speeds. After they opened my ports my torrent download speeds went up from 60-80 kBps to 120 - 150 kBps. I'm only getting 2 bars though with the occational 3 bar spells.

Before building my arial, I had no bars and only 20-50kbps download speeds no good even for browsing.

Those bold capital B's worry me!

400kB/s = 3.125Mb/s, more than the device is capable of?

[Robocop]

Lol....early morning pre coffee post. It's kb/s.

[Raevinn]

Robocop, I'm also organising Neotel Unlimited for an "not covered" area. We tested the phone inside our house, got 2 bars. You think im safe? Or should I build an antenna like u? How much did the antenna set you back btw?

[Robocop]

You should be ok with 2 bars, but the arial will boost your reception to at least 4 bars.
The arial cost about R150 to build excluding the small pipecutter I got to cut the tubing.
It could be cheaper as I got 2m of trunking (only needs about 600mm) and 6m aluminium tubing (only need about 500mm).

[Raevinn]

ok, cool, ill check it out with just 2 bars, then if its slow ill give u a call on how to make it :D

[chubster]

I'm just going make sure by spelling it out, is that 80 kilo bytes upload speed? Did it improve the upload speed at all? Or is your aerial only optimized for frequency that download/incoming is using? Is this a hardware limitation at Neotel's tower or is this a upload throttling mechanism on their part. CDMA states to support 384Kilobits upload. So some things the Neotel Representative will have to clear up for us.

[Raevinn]

who cares about uploading?? download ftw :D

[Robocop]

I'm just going make sure by spelling it out, is that 80 kilo bytes upload speed? Did it improve the upload speed at all? Or is your aerial only optimized for frequency that download/incoming is using? Is this a hardware limitation at Neotel's tower or is this a upload throttling mechanism on their part. CDMA states to support 384Kilobits upload. So some things the Neotel Representative will have to clear up for us.

No.....80 kilo bits per second upload speed, and it varies all the time, but like I said I'm in a area thats not officially covered, so I won't complain. And if you demand explanations about these figures it just confirms the reasoning behind them not giving the device to anyone outside their covarage areas.

The arial did improve the upload speed, but this is a broad frequency range arial so you have to compromise a little on both up & dowload speeds. If you would like to further improve speeds in either direction you can always build 2 arials. One tuned for upload & one tuned for download frequencies.

As I don't care about uploading I'm happy with the compromise, and for now I'm content with 200 - 300 kilo bits download speeds.

[chubster]

Thanks for the insight. guess I will have to wait for them to improve the upload speed before I sign any deal with them. I was hoping for an average of 32 kilobyte upload speed. Since in theory should reach 48kilobyte. Maybe another pipe dream. I wonder though why they intentionally limit the upload speed to such a low speed. Does it really cost them more if we shift more data from our side?