Sentech dead yet?

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saffakanera

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Is Sentech dying? Whats this I hear of base stations being retracted? Still owe them R10k, stopped paying after a year because we thought the service was a bloody joke.
 
Sentech died a month or so after they opened. I imagine the cockroach (as with the Doom we sprayed) is in its final stages of kicking
 
As of Monday morning, i no longer care what happens to that bastard company.
Finally ate the last of their *****, cancelled my service, told them where to "store" their "service".

Cant wait for my new WiMAX!

But yes, one of the towers in Nelspruit is having severe problems, and when asked about it, they deny the tower even existing.
That was about as much as my patience can handle.
 
Oh yeah!

That was right before the service went live...
Was all junk from that moment onwards.
 
I won't bet on Wimax being my "saviour" seriously. If you want to be online, get something decent. If you can't, you shouldn't be on the net ;)
 
Seriously though, with local ping times to their OWN dns servers being 600ms+ on average, WiMAX would very well save my day at least.

Ive already investigated some outputs for WiMAX from other users, and i can definitely live with local ping times far under 100ms.
 
just remember, the more users per tower, the more latency you'll experience. Now its fine because Wimax hasn't been taken up that much yet, but as soon as towers gets saturated you'll sit with the same problems.

Examples: Sentech. iBurst (I've used them both and both had the exact same problems)

And if you think Sentech support sucked, try using iBurst and/or any other wireless provider's support. They don't know **** about anything. At least if my ADSL line ****s out their support can reset the port I'm on, check to see if my router is connected properly etc (all over the phone)

With wireless you get "nope, we don't have a problem, try restarting your PC" as the generic response to anything. You have to REALLY beg them to believe that you (and everyone else) are having a problem.

Once, on these forums, we coordinated an "attack" on support. After myself and several others phoned over a 2 day period and got told "You are the only one with the problem"

So we all phoned 5 minutes after one another and kept asking "Isn't anyone else complaining about this" and after my 3rd call to them they admitted there was a problem?!

Ya right. Good bye wireless... hellooooo ADSL
 
Not that ping is the best diagnostic tool, but just as a bare example, here is a few lines from using Sentech... after hours...


Pinging www.mybroadband.co.za [41.203.17.1] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 41.203.17.1: bytes=32 time=836ms TTL=55
Reply from 41.203.17.1: bytes=32 time=95ms TTL=55
Reply from 41.203.17.1: bytes=32 time=632ms TTL=55
Reply from 41.203.17.1: bytes=32 time=311ms TTL=55
Reply from 41.203.17.1: bytes=32 time=110ms TTL=55
Reply from 41.203.17.1: bytes=32 time=370ms TTL=55
Reply from 41.203.17.1: bytes=32 time=107ms TTL=55
Reply from 41.203.17.1: bytes=32 time=369ms TTL=55
Reply from 41.203.17.1: bytes=32 time=627ms TTL=55
Reply from 41.203.17.1: bytes=32 time=206ms TTL=55
Reply from 41.203.17.1: bytes=32 time=762ms TTL=55
Reply from 41.203.17.1: bytes=32 time=1019ms TTL=55
Reply from 41.203.17.1: bytes=32 time=2343ms TTL=55
Reply from 41.203.17.1: bytes=32 time=779ms TTL=55
Reply from 41.203.17.1: bytes=32 time=459ms TTL=55

Ping statistics for 41.203.17.1:
Packets: Sent = 15, Received = 15, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 95ms, Maximum = 2343ms, Average = 601ms



Adding insult to injury, there are 2 towers in Nelspruit. My closest one isn't even 3Km away, the other 7Km.
I have DIRECT LoS to the tower (top of hill, from my window i can see the thing).
I work in IT support, and i personally installed (or at least troubleshooted, upgraded, reinstalled, etc) 99% of the people in Nelspruit's Sentech for them. If I didn't, my colleague did.

Wanna know the total?
How does 14 sound?
14 users between 2 towers and i refer you again back to above ping results.

Sentech was never good. Not 3 years ago when they started in Nelspruit, not now.
The only reason i never went DSL is due to the copper line required. Landlords generally dont appreciate or even allow telkom lines in their rental units.
Now i can have DSL, by means of WiMAX.

Want to guess how many people in Nelspruit know about WiMAX? How about the 3 i told so far. Ask anyone else here about WiMAX their answer would be something like:
"Is that a new type of beer?" or "Is that a new type of TV for watching rugby?".

More people on the towers, yes, would obviously detrement a slight bit on the performance. But the numbers involved in such a horrible drop do not border around 10, or even 100, more likely after a few hundred yes.

Chances of a few 100 RESIDENTIAL people in Nelspruit getting WiMAX?
Just about none... good guess.
 
Also keep in mind the backhauling equipment used. How most of the wireless guys have is several towers, backhauls to a main hub, the main hub then serves the pages etc (think of the main hub as a giant router and the towers as switches connecting you there)

If the backhaul bandwidth isn't up to scratch that too gives you the latency/speed issues. So if your towers is not saturated at all, it only means that the backhaul terminates (which, from 3 years ago I can tell you did at that time) in their central hub in JHB.

So you share a pool of x bandwidth with many more users than you should anyway. I believe back then they had 32mb/s allocated to the sentech "pool" as sentech had an open proxy where ADSL users (back when local bandwidth was free) could use their open proxy to browse and download via international bandwidth and the new wireless technology/users got blamed for it all. So subsequently got put on a different "share" of bandwidth as to not affect their satelite guys.

ANYWAY.

The ping is also suppose to be the most important thing to happen on a network, so the true latency *should* be shown. However, there is a "queuing" technology they use that queues your requests.

I'm suprised there were no packet loss on there, but what normally happens is that the one packet will reach you before the request of the older packet would come (causing a lot of lag in gaming for instance) because the queues got screwed up that much. I'm not sure if they changed it since then. My money is on "no"


Like I said, there are several factors with regard to wireless. The tower, it's backhaul capacity, the amount of users on there, the amount of capacity of the backhaul and where it terminates and if it terminates at a specific place other than the main hub, if that hub has sufficient capacity to deal with sending the requests to the main hub etc.

Have you ever had the "is the wind blowing and is there a tree infront of your house?" excuse when your signal sucked?

lol
 
Yeah, i know how the systems work, i'm also in IT support (including networks).

The thing about WiMAX though, is that its not a WISP, but an alternative last-mile solution to DSL.

Thats not why i posted though. The reason you see no packet loss, is as i mentioned, 14 people between 2 towers.
Of those 14 i cant imagine how many still use it. I can only imagine im the only one of 3 people here still using Sentech.
 
Haha, I have a free sentech mywireless modem and 1GB account (let's just say I'm hooked up).

I get excellent response times, I use the modem in Hatfield, and the connection is much better than my doBroadband Telkom connection.

=D I really hope Sentech lingers a few more years.
 
I am still on a classic package from yonks ago and enjoy my 10G bandwidth, works like a charm for me. I dont really need speed, just consistency.
 
OhGats said:
I am still on a classic package from yonks ago and enjoy my 10G bandwidth, works like a charm for me. I dont really need speed, just consistency.
Click to expand...

You get consistant slow speed, yes i know ;)

Well, from the ups and downs I've had in the past with them they're NOT consistant at all. That might have changed.
 
It's almost dead -

http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/telecoms/2008/0809181100.asp?A=BUS&S=Business&O=FPLEAD

Sentech dumps retail

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By Candice Jones
Posted: 18 September 2008


Sentech's retail product, MyWireless, will fall away entirely over the next year, following a long, controversial history.


According to the state-owned enterprise's 2007/8 annual report, government made a strategic decision this year to phase out MyWireless from Sentech's arsenal of products. “In line with the 2008 to 2011 corporate plan, Sentech will phase out retail products in their current form during the 2008/9 financial year.”


Sentech has long been criticised for the retail product. Analysts commented that the poor service delivery and Sentech's inability to deliver on its mandate of becoming SA's wireless broadband champion caused many consumers to write off the company as a legitimate competitor in the retail market.


Earlier this year, National Treasury criticised the company for squandering R500 million on the MyWireless service that should have been spent on maintenance and upgrading of the TV signal distribution system.


Sentech has been complaining since 2002 that it has not received adequate funding to upgrade the analogue TV signal system to digital terrestrial TV, with the switch-on due to occur on 1 November this year.


The 2007/8 annual report has committed Sentech to focus more attention on its public and wholesale service, alongside its 2010 directive, rather than any consumer business it was targeting before.


Sentech will now focus on wholesale broadband delivery to hospitals, clinics, schools (particularly the Dinaledi Schools), Thusong community centres, post offices and other government offices located in rural and under-serviced areas.


Catching up


Sentech has also turned its focus towards digital terrestrial television (DTT), which looks to be falling behind.


The company's annual report for this year says it is committed to providing coverage to 40% of the country, a far cry from what it had promised during the same period last year. Back then it had promised to deliver 56% of coverage by the end of this financial year (March 2009), 78% by the end of the 2009 financial year and 92% by 2010.


However, Sentech has completed the first phase of DTT implementation with the R120 million that was provided by government. “Our ability to meet government's target date for DTT switch-on, of 1 November 2008, is dependent on the allocation of timeous transfer of the required funds for the 2008/9 financial year.”


Sentech says, while the first phase went well, it is concerned that its current financial “shortfall” will limit the number of sites it is able to switch over by the deadline. “This is unfortunate, considering the success of phase one and two,” said Sentech CEO Sebiletso Mokone-Matabane.


However, she is confident Sentech will still manage to facilitate 80% digital coverage by 2010. Complete analogue switch-off occurs the year after.
Click to expand...
 
It's not dead, it just smells funny.

Meanwhile, did any one see the RFP announcement a few weeks ago? Sentech now wants to build a Wimax network. Check it out on the website under tenders.
 
Can you imagine? Sentech had a couple of years head start and seemingly bottomless pockets to build a national wireless Internet infrastructure. And despite this, it managed to cock it all up. Which is why Government must not get involved in what should be a private sector initiative.
 
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