Neotel, my experience so far...

C

Chewie64

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Hi,

I'm a newbie here, but have monitored the forum for a while.

Herewith my experience to date...

I got connected to Neotel about 7 weeks ago. I signed up months ago on their website and they phoned, and persuaded me to join them (yes, for at least 24 months) at R599 month.

All very easy. Within 24 hours I had a new phone (and phone number) and a new connection. At the time I was still running with Telkom's 4Mbps ADSL and 3Gb bandwidth.

There were few initial frustrations. Mainly, coming down from 4Mbps to (on average) about 200Kbps. For me, this was the easiest to live with, as I just leave big downloads to run over-night.

The one that does bug me is not having an always-on connection. Even setting the Dial-Up connection to 'do not disconnect' doesn't seem to work too well on Vista...

I've also had some issues with Free Download Manager and BIG downloads. Visual Studio 2008 eventually ran up to 99 % (of 3.2Gb), and then got no further. Whenever I tried to finish the download it somehow 'grabbed' the connection and I couldn't do anything else (even though it was downloading nothing!).

Onto the good news (there is some!). At this crucial point in their 'Consumer Offering' life, they do have their contact centre working well. There is no waiting time to speak to a consultant. They do seem to be quite technically savvy, they do ALWAYS phone back when they say they will (even if it's to say they haven't got an answer yet).

Also, 10Gb is enough for my needs. Instead of waiting for a CD/DVD (Ubuntu, VS2008 etc) I can now download freely (except for the issue mentioned above!). And, late at night, the comnnection speed does increase significantly - although the best that I have got is top about 1Mbps. Not quite the 2.4Mbps maximum advertised.

Anyway, enough for now. If there is anyone who wants to know more about 'Living with Neotel'; please post, and I'll do my best to reply.

Regards to the forum.

Chewie
 
HenryJ said:
Same here. Even for normal browsing you are gonna feel the laaaaag.
Click to expand...

Yeah, if his speeds at night are around 1mb then their networks already overloaded so it'll probably only get worse, they can't have that many clients now.
 
Syndyre said:
Yeah, if his speeds at night are around 1mb then their networks already overloaded so it'll probably only get worse, they can't have that many clients now.
Click to expand...

I guess we wait....and wait for Neotel's ADSL offerings
 
Chewie64 said:
And, late at night, the comnnection speed does increase significantly - although the best that I have got is top about 1Mbps. Not quite the 2.4Mbps maximum advertised.
Click to expand...

A bit of an understatement.
1Mbps is quite a long shot from 2.4!
And that is a best rate?
 
Syndyre said:
Yeah, if his speeds at night are around 1mb then their networks already overloaded so it'll probably only get worse, they can't have that many clients now.
Click to expand...

They could still be working out some kinks.

Also this dude just have a slow connection because his far a tower or his modem is in the basement.

It'll be interesting to see how their CapeTown and Durban rollout goes.
 
Qwikslver said:
They could still be working out some kinks.

Also this dude just have a slow connection because his far a tower or his modem is in the basement.

It'll be interesting to see how their CapeTown and Durban rollout goes.
Click to expand...

When is the CT rollout?
 
Qwikslver said:
They could still be working out some kinks.

Also this dude just have a slow connection because his far a tower or his modem is in the basement.

It'll be interesting to see how their CapeTown and Durban rollout goes.
Click to expand...

They could be but his signal strength should remain constant regardless of the time of day.
 
Syndyre said:
They could be but his signal strength should remain constant regardless of the time of day.
Click to expand...

I am not an engineer, but I believe signal propagation is affected by time of day and so on. One "obvious" factor is sun-spots (obvious to me, and I hereby await a shooting down!)

:D
 
There seem to be quite a few problems, as for the ADSL offerings; I think we are going be waiting a long while...

The question remains that if you change from the CDMA package to the ADSL when it does become available, ehat do you do with your handset/telephone/CDMA modem?
(a doorstop?)
 
thesones said:
The question remains that if you change from the CDMA package to the ADSL when it does become available, ehat do you do with your handset/telephone/CDMA modem?
(a doorstop?)
Click to expand...

Not sure. On the other hand, if you sign up today for the CDMA option, your two year contract will at least be long expired by the time ADSL arrives...
:p
 
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