ISDN or Broadband and how..clueless need help

Y

Ylona

Member
Joined
Oct 15, 2006
Messages
24
Reaction score
0
(posted this in the isdn forum also hope thats ok)

Right, I am returning to SA after being in London for four glorious years of having lightning fast broadband/wireless on my laptop for R200 a month if that much.

K...so... upon returning home I need internet. At the moment mom and dad has dialup that is utterly useless and my hometown is in Mpumalanga so none of the fancy iburst etc in that area.

Mainly i need to have access for checking emails, general browsing on local and international sites, lots of chatting via yahoo messenger etc and a few mp3 downloads but not a lot at all. I dont do online gaming or download dvds etc if that helps. I'd be online 3hours per night mon to friday callmore time and weekends id say 10hours every sat and sunday, im giving the maximum hours just to be safe here. I think at the moment, I just need to be online as much as possible for as little RRRR as possible but doesnt have to be the fastest connection.

I looked at ISDN and thought i could use that with infinitecall but i will have to use one line for the telephone for mom/dad and the other for internet.
Or broadband but thats where i dont know whats going on, I havent a clue what uncapped or capped is or how much gb i would need, at all.
Broadband would be great of course as then id be online 24/7 and no extra phone charges (hopefully?). I have a very nice Dell laptop with wireless so in a perfect world i would want to go online via laptop too at home (so mom can browse on my old pc at the same time).

I would appreciate all your advice so much.

Thanks a bunch.
 
If in Nelspruit then iburst is there, anywhere else well.....

If you are in range of an adsl exhange doent mean you will be connected the same day/week/month or this year.

You could get a data card from MTN or Vodacom for your laptop - none are that cheap for the data/month you get
 
Step 1 Is your local exchange ready for ADSL? Test it at http://www.telkom.co.za/app/dslavailability

Note the test results are not always reliable so dial 10219

If Telkom has no plans for ADSL in your area, then my experience may be relevant to you, read on:

We are a business in rural KZN. We have 6 internet users, 10 e-mail users. We used to use ISDN. This cost us R2500 per month in dial up charges (Business users dont get infinitycall). Now we use SpaceStream Express (SSE) at R1700 per month (3gig cap; cost includes the ISP subscription).

SpaceStream Express (SSE)
SSE is a satellite broadband internet connection

Benefits
  • Not dependant on your local exchange
  • SSE is Always on
  • Download speed is 10 times faster than ISDN (using the 512k / 3GB subscription)
Downside
  • Cost: The cheapest SSE option is R950 per month for a 500mb cap. Note this assumes you choose to pay the installation monthly. The cap would be fine for home use.
So SpaceStream is only worth considering if :
  • you have to have high speed and
  • your internet connection dial up charges are over a grand a month.
  • there is no ADSL in your area
ISDN
ISDN is basically a digital phone line, with dial up charges, like your normal phone line.
ISDN is worth considering if:
  • there is no ADSL planned in your area
  • your spend is less than R1000 per month on dial up access
  • you dial up off peak - callmore time
Benefits
  • ISDN is twice as fast as dial up, (based on the line quality of dial up here in rural kzn)
  • Instant connection, because it is digital, the modem does not have to negotiate a set of protocols, just confirm your username/password
Drawbacks:
  • Cost- beware of dialling up during peak times
  • It also requires availability at your exchange.
Assuming there is no ISDN installed in your exchange, I think they will upgrade it anyway if you apply, but this will mean that extra delay while they get parts. When we first ordered ISDN, we waited over 6 months for telkom to get the exchange sorted. That was a long time ago, so it is safe to assume that your exchange is ready for ISDN, and there wont be this kind of delay.

I have also tried GPRS (access through the mobile phone networks)

Benefits
  • Cost is 20% of dial up during peak times (not callmore) (when you factor in data bandles).
  • Great for people who move around alot (reps)
  • The download speed is faster than dial up, but because of latency, it feels like dial up when you are browsing.
  • May be faster, depending on the software and hardware at the local tower that you connect to. The only way to test is to use a GPRS modem or phone connected to your computer; see the vodacom/ mtn discussions for instructions
  • The benefit is you pay for data, so while reading a page it is not costing you money, only while the page is downloaded. Even without a data bundle it is cheaper than dial up during peak (non-callmore) times.
Downside
  • Slow (feels like dial up)
  • I think if you only use during callmore time, and do not need mobility, then dial up would be cheaper, especially with infinitycall on ISDN.

I hope this is helpful

Best regards,

Murray
 
Hi Ylona

Have a look at the pricing on the Axxess website:

Extract from there opening page:
Are you spending more than R300.00 a month on your old dialup internet access?
If so then have a look at the cost of getting 24 hour High Speed Internet Broadband:

Once off installation of a 384k ADSL Line from Telkom: R 437.50
Monthly 384k ADSL Line Rental from Telkom: R 245.00 (Incl.Vat)
Monthly 1Gb AXXESS ADSL account: R 59.00 (Incl.Vat)
Total Monthly Cost: R 304.00 (Incl.Vat)

Dump the dialup :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X