International business people are being refused contracts by Vodacom

International business owners who come to South Africa as Investors to set up businesses usually get a 2 year temporary business permit / visa. (The permanent residency application takes around a year to go through.)

Coming to this country to set up IT businesses or other business, is a decision where the countries broadband Internet infrastructure is a main factor.

Now take a foreign business person who applied for the business visa in February 2005, and it was granted in March 2005 valid until Febraury 2007, starts his business in Cape Town and applies for the very much needed 3G data service from Vodacom. The Vodacom store employees view the persons passport and state that they will not allow the person to sign up, note, not even in his South African business name, since his visa is not valid for another full 2 years, yet the contract is for 2 years.

The business person offers to pay the full 24 months monthly fees in advance in cash and states his business depends on the service, this is being declined.

This is completely unacceptable, Vodacom then suggests, the person signs a page long contract that allows for Vodacom to take possession of his newly bought property in Cape Town in case he fails to pay his bills. The business person then arranges for his law firm to complete this declaration and hands in his 3G data card application. Declined!

Now in the persons upmarket suburb Sunset Beach, the Telkom ADSL service is supposed ot be available, however Telkom states that until June 2005 no capacity to connect a new ADSL account is free in the exchange.

The business person now considers to pull out his investments of South Africa and settle in another country where it is possible to obtain the much needed infrastructure.

A wireless provider was tested, but the results were less than acceptable with multiple, long outages in the first 3, 4 days of using the service, without prior announcements and support hotline, the business offering this service was not reachable by phone about the outages.

What is a foreign business person in this country supposed to do? Willing to pay ANY amount to have at least a stationary, fast, reliable broadband connection avaiable immediately and an option to use mobile 3G data services?


I read that Vodacom staff participate in this forum, maybe someone can comment.

Hi goodgirl

Firstly this reminds me of all the problems I had when I arrived in the UK - I was denied the right to open a bank account bcos I could not provide utility bills & proof of residence (and my British passport didn't help me one little bit), I was then denied the right to rent a flat bcos I didn't have utility bills and worse no bank account...

Anyway, where there's a will there's a way .

I am sure vodacom3g will comment, however it might speed things up if you send vodacom3g a private message with a contact number.

Other issues like this have been noted by international visitors to our country and it's damn shocking what they have to deal with - heck, we get rock stars like Micheal Stipe making sarcy comments about our internet access - and too right as well !

Thus is the legacy of Telkom !

Odd, both sentech and iBurst should be available in the Sunset Beach area. The sentech signal should be strongest as the tower is on top of the only set of flats (Milpark) you can see in "The Paddocks" direction. Roughly 1.7 - 2km away. Using an external antenna might increase signal strength or give clear line of sight for those unfortunate business people who have tripple stories blocking their view.

Goodgirl,

As commenting on the legal issues around getting contractual agreements in place in foreign countries is way off topic, let's get you connected.

Please contact me directly on PM with all your contact details. We'll have to take this one a bit "off-the-beaten-track". I have an idea or two that might work.

JayT said:

Odd, both sentech and iBurst should be available in the Sunset Beach area. The sentech signal should be strongest as the tower is on top of the only set of flats (Milpark) you can see in "The Paddocks" direction. Roughly 1.7 - 2km away. Using an external antenna might increase signal strength or give clear line of sight for those unfortunate business people who have tripple stories blocking their view.

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Thank you, very interesting, I will make some enquiries with these two companies. The bad experience was with a service called Jazznet.

What service can you recommend for high speed international bandwidth, all providers seem to be reducing this to remain profitable. I need a provider/contract that will not restrict International Bandwidth in any way, I don't mind to pay for it, but I need faster International speeds, this is one of the biggest problems, I think if I have a provider who offers me even 512 via Wireless, that's nice but if they use some ADSL connection on their end that itself suffers from restricted bandwidth internationally, it makes no difference.

I understand the ISPs here reduce the available Intl. bandwidth to reduce their costs, but would it not be possible technically to offer plans where they do not restrict it, but bill the customer for it?

I am happy about all suggestions, Satellite anything .. as long as I can get Intl. speeds like I would in Europe or Australia or anywhere else.

Please let me know everything you know that's available no matter how expensive.

If cost is not a problem, a dedicated leased line is an option. There should be some members who can provide prices for the 256, 512kbps and higher connections and which ISPs are the best to use for that sort of connection.

Goodgirl.
Contact Iburst, if you have a decent reception you will get 30-40KB/s single thread d/l and 120-130KB/s multithread. If you have a crap connection forget it. You get a weeks "trial" so have nothing to lose. Go for the UTD not UTC (pcmcia) as you are more likely to find a "sweet spot" connection wise if you can move it around.

A word of caution about doing an iBurst trial - wait until the cap has been implemented & packages are actually known & pricing of extra GBz is available - allegedly the WBS iBurst launch is on April Fools Day - I suggest waiting until the 4th April bcos WBS seem to think they are the cat & customers are the mice.

iBurst should work but will be right on the edge of its coverage. Once the planned Table View tower is up, the coverage will improve a lot. The 3GB cap is also going slow down the connection if more than 100MB of bandwidth is required a day.

Now this is rather odd as I sold my previous house to a gent from the UK (married to a S.A girl) with no hassles at all and he got a bond from Barclays in the UK and paid ABSA in pounds.

you can get voda3g on a month to month contract without having to sign a two year contract. All you need is proof of ID, a valid credit card, and a 3G device. If you need to the connection in a hurry, buy the card yourself and go month to month... The two year contract only applies if you want the card for free...
Cheers -

bb_matt said:

Other issues like this have been noted by international visitors to our country and it's damn shocking what they have to deal with - heck, we get rock stars like Micheal Stipe making sarcy comments about our internet access - and too right as well !

Thus is the legacy of Telkom !

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You don't have to go that far. I am residing now for two years in SA. I have bought a house. My daughter goes to a local school. My German pension flocks in every month. Application for a permanent residency on a pensioners application has been made....But.... I still dont have the permanent residency.
I dont want to work here, I dont want to take anybodys employment. I can cater for myself. I don't need SA aid. I just want to live the few remaining time I have in a nice and beautiful country....

I pay every 3 month 1275 Rand (425 per person) to renew my temporary residency. My SA friend had to be a signatory on my bank account in order to be allowed to open one. Cellphone contract is impossible to get and it was a hassle to get a landline....

ScrnScrm said:

you can get voda3g on a month to month contract without having to sign a two year contract. All you need is proof of ID, a valid credit card, and a 3G device. If you need to the connection in a hurry, buy the card yourself and go month to month... The two year contract only applies if you want the card for free...
Cheers -

Click to expand...

I don't mind to buy the card if that's the only way, after visiting the vodacom stores multiple times and arguing about the case asking for help to get the service no matter how and for how much money, no one ever mentioned this possibility of getting the service without signing for 2 years.

Thanks ScrnScrm I will look into it, also v3g is offering his kind asistance!

Regarding the immigration issues, it's a pain, not only in South Africa, try Australia! We can make another thread for it in the off topic forum.

You can forget about Australia. My wife and myself we are both in a wheelchair...!!!

goodgirl said:

I don't mind to buy the card if that's the only way, after visiting the vodacom stores multiple times and arguing about the case asking for help to get the service no matter how and for how much money, no one ever mentioned this possibility of getting the service without signing for 2 years.

Thanks ScrnScrm I will look into it, also v3g is offering his kind asistance!

Regarding the immigration issues, it's a pain, not only in South Africa, try Australia! We can make another thread for it in the off topic forum.

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yip, they not going to mention it to you, cos they would prefer you to sign a two year contract!!!! all the networks will try the same move, but dont accept it. just go elsewhere until you find a service provider that will!
as a side note - vodacom are in the process of amalgamating all their service providers into one organisation/umbrella. you should see the marketing starting for this soon. me doesnt know if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
if you dont come right goodgirl, pm me. i will put you in contact with the right people to make this happen for you!

Thursday March 31st, Canal Walk,

went to upstairs Vodacom shop, friendly shop attendant who told me that he can not open any vodacom contract in the business name, because the business has not yet received its VAT number (which can take a few more weeks).

He sent me downstairs to the customer care center. There a lady asked me how she could help and I explained her that I need to open a new account for a business. She said they don't open accounts, I said that the guys from upstairs sent me down, she told me to sit and immediately called the guys upstairs.

She did not even try to whisper and I heard her saying to them on the phone "Well why couldn't you lie to her!?!".

Then she came back to me and told me I have to do it over the phone, she called a number for me and I told the operator where I am and that I need to open a new account. She put me through to an automated system. I selected to speak to an operator, the operator said they have nothing to do with opening accounts and gave me another phone number.

I looked for the lady in the customer care center who put me on the phone and she was now hiding behind the corner at the back, I told her no one was responsible for opening new accounts on that number.

She then said to me that they don't open accounts and that I should go back upstairs!

I then walked out but decided to go back and take a note of the name of that lady. She did not want to answer that question about her name and suddenly wanted to make another phone call! I wrote it down from her name badge: Mrs. Drummond was her name.

I told her that if there is any problem to open an account in the business name, then I would open it in my own name, I just need the service.

Then she told me to sit down with a guy who asked me if I had ID and if I had a Gold credit card. I told him yes/yes and he called Cellucity in Canal Walk asking them if they can sign up a foreign person, they must have immediately said no, because he started to argue trying to convince them with words similar to "Man you can chose which gold card to pick".

Then he told me to go over there and that they would take care of it. I went there and they could not open an account with my credit card and passport, because I don't yet have a South African bank account and the credit card was not good enough.

The bank did not want to open me an account without past 6 months overseas bank statements which are in a container on the ocean coming in 4 - 6 weeks.

It's a frustrating country and I think, too I shouldn't be staying here and investing here.

All I need is a proper, working, broadband internet connection.

Goodgirl, what can I say?

I've forwarded your posting to the owner of the shop in question as well as VSP management. Please call me when you get a minute. I've PM'ed and SMS'ed you my contact number.

Celemasiko said:

My wife and myself we are both in a wheelchair...!!!

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I challenge you to a game of counterstrike gramps. Name your terms ...

vodacom3g I just spoke to your clone working in Investec about the shyte service I received re my offshore investments.

Good grief ... was the problem resolved quickly after that! I could hear the screams over the phone as they punished the culprit.

<- Customer's face after receiving good service