Your feedback needed!

[rpm]

Hi guys

I am sometimes asked for feedback regarding broadband services, and it will be of great value if iBurst users can give their views on the following issues:

Are you happy with the general service (details please)?
Are you happy with the speeds?
Suggestions to WBS regarding iBurst?
Other comments?

I might be asked to comment about iBurst on behalf of MyADSL on tonight’s radio show, and it will therefore be great if you can give feedback before then… If you are not able to do that it will still be great if you can give your view…I am often contacted by the media for feedback and your views will then govern my comments!

Regards,

RPM

[TheYak]

Up until about two weeks ago I would have answered "Yes" to the first two questions, but I can't really do that anymore...

Am I happy with the general service?
No, not really. I sent Sihen a private message quite some time ago and he still hasn't gotten back to me yet - not good. I also have found the support guys are not as friendly and helpful as they used to be, which is a pity, 'cos that's always been a nice thing to experience.

Am I happy with the speeds?
Same thing: Not really. It goes up and down but generally it's MUCH slower than what it used to be and my downloads stall for some reason.

The service (customer and product) has deteriorated a bit... but I still have faith that WBS can pull it off.

Suggestion: If you want to cap people... allow them to use their bandwidth any way they want to... DON'T SHAPE TRAFFIC! I can handle a cap... but then I want to be able to use those 3 Gigs any way I want to!

That's my 12cents!

[alchamy]

I think TheYak summed up what most people would have to say.

This post shows my greatest concern at the moment.......Skills

http://www.mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=16893

[Crash]

General Service?
From December onwards the quality of the service appears to have died off a bit. More disconnections. More downtime etc.
Indifferent at the moment. The next couple months will be the big test. But at the moment i am gonna stick with I-Burst.
The Customer Support is good. Beats the daylights out of Sentech. When I phone I-Burst support, I ask a question, they give me a straight answer, no lies, BS etc.

Am I happy with the speeds?
When i signed up I was getting amazing speeds. I knew it wasn't an indication of the speeds I would get at the final launch. But at the moment I am happy with the current speeds.

Suggestions:
MAILSERVER PLEASE!
When the Capping begins at the end of the month, there must be some bandwidth usage webpage.

With the traffic shaping, I understand the need to protect bandwidth in terms of P2P, bit torrent etc over usage. But remember there are other applications that are perfectly legal and make use of non-standard ports.
Blizzard Downloader, HL 2 steam, direct2drive.com (Buy and download games online) etc. So please, please, PLEASE don't traffic shape to the point that applications can't connect anymore. (Sentech did this and have now paid the price).

[col90]

I just signed up yesterday and receive everything to connect today.
It is already faster than Telkom even not connected...

I connected my laptop from Rivonia and no problem. I will see tonight from home (Kelvin).
I had some poor speed at the beginning compared to what I would expect (5Kbps to 70Kbps) but it was still better than a normal Dial-up line and that was definetly what the software announced me because I did not really have problem to surf.

I reach now some 700Kbps which is not that bad compared to ADSL in SA.

I hope it will go on like that.

[twixt]

As an expert IBurst User (having used it non-stop for 6 days ) I can say I'm generally happy with the service. I'm based in Durban.

I've gotten reliable 20-25KB/sec international, and 60KB-70KB/sec local download speeds. International Latency is generally sitting at a nice +- 400 - 450 ms.

I've gotten friendly, good, non-technical support from the helpdesk and a lot of help from Prudence & Sheila in establishing my account very very quickly.

My concerns are:

1. Lack of feedback/communication regarding the implementation of the cap, port shaping, setup of a news server, and email server. As customers who's QoS will be directly affected by this implementation - they need to be frank, open and start setting dates

2. I'm a bit worried that the QoS will drop depending on how many clients start signing up at the official launch - also depending on contention (again something very little of the support staff will discuss or I beleive understand)

3. I'm also a bit worried by technical support levels - though I haven't needed much in the way of technical support - I phoned in once to report a base station unaccessible and they "restarted" it and it was working again in 5 minutes.

In general to quote IC - "Please will WBS communicate with their customers!"

[BucK]

Got iBurst last week Monday.
Speed is good, getting about 840 - 930 on telscum speed test.
Connection is a bit unresponsive at times.
Signal strength can sometimes jump all over the show from 0 - 100 and back again in 1 sec flat.

This happen very seldom though and I think an external antenna will solve it, bringing up the availability of these might be a good idea.

Sent an email to support yesterday morning, no response as yet, seems that calling them is a better option.

My concern though is how iBurst will perform once you have 50 people per tower.
One thing that I think is very important, is to have a product where there will be no cap. 3 gig for browsing alone is fine but add to this online gaming and downloads? And by downloads I don't mean p2p, but downloading a demo or maybe a Linux distro and there goes the cap.

Bring in an un-capped option and make it not ridiculously expensive, and you will drive the nails into a coffin and slap the name telkom on it.

[Raithlin]

Are you happy with the general service (details please)?

General service? As in the call centre? I have found myself talking to another customer twice while waiting to talk to a wookie [was able to help the first customer too ]. Other than that and their max call number, not too bad. Time will tell, as always.

Are you happy with the speeds?

At home, not bad at all. I'm still trying to figure out how to connect to the Battlefront SGS though...
At work, phenomenal! I have 100% signal strength, and downloads occur at an average of 87KB/s, peaking at 103KB/s.

Suggestions to WBS regarding iBurst?

Yes: mail server, and either uncapped and shaped, or capped and unshaped. Perhaps separate packages for each? Oh, and can or halve the activation fee. That was really stupid.

Other comments?

Not a bad service, but zero communications. Wookies told me we'd get an email detailing billing dates, etc. Nada [thus far].

BTW, nice to see the general comments are upbeat overall. WBS could still pull this off - if they keep there heads on straight.

[torgo]

Hi

I got iburst at the begining of Dec. It has been up and down a lot since. More stable recently. However, at times now you see good web browsing and then suddenly its all gone...

Call centre support is not good at all with agents not returning any calls. Very limited number of agents. What happens ith more users? My concern is that the setup by this company seems very unprofessional. In all my dealings, one gets the perception that it is a slap-bang kinda job.

3G limit is unreasonable. Stary surfing and you know. They should have it uncapped.

Mail server needed urgently. Their smtp sometimes does funny things and you have to retry several times to get mail out.

Downloads are quick, especially using a download agent. You can get to 1Mb speeds. But surfing seems to have slowed down drastically since I got it in December. Surely this has been caused by more users signing up? What will happen when they go live....???

International speeds seem to radically drop off over weekends??? why?

Very poor support e.g. external antennas. I am in Sandton near teh tower, but have these tall concrete "blocks" between me and the tower. The reception hops between 50 - 100% all the time. IBurst still havent got a cost effective solution for an antenna!


Still need:
-bandwidth usage displays on pages for users
-more announcements and feedback on tehir website. Everything there is old except for them billing you at end January!
-Need to provide detailed invoices for users who want to calim fo rtaxes
- more notifications of service being down (email or SMS). often you have to call in and tell them a tower or something is down that they are not aware of.

[torgo]

Oh 1 more thing,

The cost of the service must be looked at to differetiate from other ISP who seems to be offering broadband! Stay at R459/month and you will get many more users and tollerance!

[AcidRaZor]

Hi guys
Are you happy with the general service (details please)?
Are you happy with the speeds?
Suggestions to WBS regarding iBurst?
Other comments?

1. Yes, much happier than I was with Sentech. I've used the feedback forms on their website and got contacted by the CFO himself to apologize and explain the billing run

2. Yes, local single threaded range from 80-110kb/s. International multithreaded the same, single threads up to 55kb/s (and climbing the longer the download takes it appears)

3. Regarding the internet connection, I could say, if you implement a cap, let the unused cap for the month roll over to the next month instead of cutting off like telkom and starting from scratch.

Regarding call centre, a busy support number is not good. I'm sure they'll sort it out before launch, but still. Pisses me off.

4. My nads itch...

[Bishop]

I guess I am too late... I will still add my feedback though

Are you happy with the general service (details please)?
Yes, I only had to phone once or twice and they were fast and friendly. In the begining that stupid voicemail message bothered me, but that seems to be fixed now. Connection is also pretty stable for me, I stayed connected for a week in December.

Are you happy with the speeds?
Extremely. I pull down anything at 115kB. Online gaming ( for MMORPGs ) is a dream, with no lag and fast response times.

Suggestions to WBS regarding iBurst?
Same as everyone else really. Worried about the cap, the throttling, etc. Some feedback would be great. Also... update your website!

Other comments?
I am busy singing Iburst's praises to everyone I know, but I tell them to just hold on until the launch period is over. Too much can still happen. If WBS can give us an official answer on what is going to happen with the cap and stuff, maybe we can start making informed choices. And by official I mean I want it written out on the website next to the package details, as well as an email.