Which is best for a sales team: iBurst or Vodacom 3G?

[Salesteam]

This is probably a question on many sales managers and business users' minds.

We have a sales team in Cape Town and JHB selling a product that can be demo'd online, and need to cover mostly the central areas where corporates have offices.

Not only should there be blanket coverage outsite (e.g. meeting a client at an outside coffee shop), but it should provide access within most buildings, even if the speed is comparable to dialup.

Which should we go for, iBurst or Vodacom 3G? Relating to:
- coverage of central areas
- access within buildings
- speed (will obviously impress clients)
- will there be significant changes in the factors above in the following 6-12 months?

I've spend hours on the site, but no entry (that I could see) compare these two products directly. Your insight is greatly appreciated !!

[nocilah]

well with iburst you should look at the coverage maps but to be honest I know nothing of Vodacom 3G... except that iBurst is probably faster and has bigger cap then Vodacom.

[stoke]

If you're visiting the clients and they're in a valley, IBurst is not going to work. It relies on Line Of Sight. But, those clients not in a valley will benefit from IBurst's superior speed and higher cap (and cheaper).
Looks like you're going to have to use both.

[vodacom3g]

[QUOTE=Salesteam]Which should we go for, iBurst or Vodacom 3G? Relating to:
- coverage of central areas
- access within buildings
- speed (will obviously impress clients)
- will there be significant changes in the factors above in the following 6-12 months?
QUOTE]

From a Vodacom 3G perspective: (not a sales pitch, merely facts)

- Most city & business centers covered by 3G at 384Kb/s max. An aggressive roll-out will increase this substantially over the next 6 to 12 months
- nationwide coverage at around 40-50Kb/s on GPRS (comparable to dial-up) as fall back to the above.
- Access within buildings: You should never be out of coverage, If you can make a call, you can do data.

In addition to the above, GPRS/3G is truly mobile. Some people stream radio stations in their cars while driving! You could do your sales pitch in a restaurant or where ever the customer chooses.

You can also get Vodacom to build a dedicated VPN for you with a high speed fixed line back to your corporate environment. This can ensure that the demo systems can only be used for demoing and not massive downloads. Many similar options exist.

Vodacom have specifically constructed solutions for the travelling sales guys. PM me for more info.

[arf9999]

Horses for courses?

I don't have either system, but this is how I see it

IBurst:
PRO: High Speed, Higher Cap, lower price per MB
CON: Coverage is limited due to limited towers, some LOS issues, limited to urban areas, difficult to predict coverage.

3G:
PRO: Wide Coverage on 3G, HUGE coverage on GPRS, It is unlikely that you will not have GPRS coverage anywhere that you are doing business indoors or outdoors.
CON: Slower on 3G, MUCH slower on GPRS, More expensive per MB, lower cap.

I would be tending towards 3G as a more ubiquitous solution, but with the undertanding that there are some trade-offs.

[Salesteam]

WOW, this site really cooks! Did not expect such quick feedback.

Another question, I seem to remember reading somewhere that Vodacom 3G downgrades the quality of web images while browsing... Is this true? If yes, is there an option to switch this "feature" off?

Thanks!

[AcidRaZor]

If you're visiting the clients and they're in a valley, IBurst is not going to work. It relies on Line Of Sight. But, those clients not in a valley will benefit from IBurst's superior speed and higher cap (and cheaper).
Looks like you're going to have to use both.

iburst DOES NOT rely on line of sight

[AcidRaZor]

WOW, this site really cooks! Did not expect such quick feedback.

Another question, I seem to remember reading somewhere that Vodacom 3G downgrades the quality of web images while browsing... Is this true? If yes, is there an option to switch this "feature" off?

Thanks!

That is usually done on the server itself and you won't be able to switch it off (If i am correct in assuming what you're talking about)

You should not be able to see a considerable degraded picture, it just compresseses it alot more (and throws out unnessacary quality)

Unfortunately I have not worked with that technology before. a Collegue of mine has 3G (and I have iBurst) and if you compare the two sites, almost no visible difference can be found.

If you are working from a laptop, make sure your window's settings are correct. I had serious pixalated pictures because of my high resolution and managed to fix all of that by a quick diagnostic run through all my visual settings

[Salesteam]

Thanks Noone. You mention you have iBurst.

Have you moved around the city centre and centre-fringe of JHB and CPT with a laptop? Coverage? Or do you lose complete reception in a dip somewhere? (Degraded access is fine)

Inside small buildings? Large buildings, such as conference centres or airports?

[nocilah]

Salesteam... iBurst is great but not with regards to picking it up in buildings etc... it does depend on LOS to a degree... perhaps in future when iBurst towers are everywhere it would be a better option. For your case you may want to use 3G because they are more a less everywhere...

I know at home my signal degrades if I move my modem away from my window... but perhaps you need to ask about the lap top modems which is what I imagine you guys would use.

[Harley79]

noone, you wrong mate

1.) vodacom have already turned off the compression

2.) it was an option within the dashboard software to turn it off

3.) the new dashboard software (to my knowledged) is going to allow it to be user configurable again. I beleive the old version never worked so well.

in a nutshell. At present images on web pages are perfect. When 3G was released it was "compressed" (personally I prefer it compressed as uses less of my bandwidth) however due to certain people complaining (who proberly don't even care anyway), they removed the compression.

[Harley79]

going back to mobility. airports, buildings, etc, coverage

Re: 3G

Mobility on 3G excellent. I personally have driven around JHB with Highveld streaming, have driving around CPT talking on Skype (with headset )

Airports - JHB & CPT perfect coverage

Buildings, never had a problem. CPT (next to Convention Centre) 14th Floor and Ground Floor operational. JHB, city centre, Rissik St, perfect coverage. Noordhoek CPT also good coverage right next to Ou Kaapse.

Hope this helps

P.S. This all on 3G. I have only ever been "degraded" to GPRS when I have been out in the sticks (no iBust coverage there at all)

Have not been with iBust since early Jan, but all of the above would have failed on iBust at that time. Not convinced things that much better now anyway.

[AcidRaZor]

Thanks Noone. You mention you have iBurst.

Have you moved around the city centre and centre-fringe of JHB and CPT with a laptop? Coverage? Or do you lose complete reception in a dip somewhere? (Degraded access is fine)

Inside small buildings? Large buildings, such as conference centres or airports?

Inside buildings, depends on the buildings, you get degraded preformance. I've been around basically the whole of JHB. Parktown (there by the SABS buildings, 1 Jan Smuts ave) Bedfordview (Bez Valley around Eastgate), Randpark Ridge, Weltevreden Park (my cousin is in a dip and can't get Sentech coverage at all, also struggles with cellphones) Constantia Kloof etc.

Unfortunately I haven't tested in Cape town as the first towers only went live after I returned from there in January.

In general the coverage is much better than Sentech could ever dream of, not sure about Vodacom, although, having 1 gig cap could seriously cost you at the end of the day. At least you have 64k (isdn) speeds after you're capped on iburst with the option of purchasing more bandwidth (whereas vodacom charges you per meg anyway, could be mistaken?)

Salesteam... iBurst is great but not with regards to picking it up in buildings etc... it does depend on LOS to a degree... perhaps in future when iBurst towers are everywhere it would be a better option. For your case you may want to use 3G because they are more a less everywhere...

I know at home my signal degrades if I move my modem away from my window... but perhaps you need to ask about the lap top modems which is what I imagine you guys would use.

The technology they use does not require LOS. At all. The only time LOS would become needed is if you're on the outlying area of coverage. Meaning if it can stretch to 9km, and you're 8.1km away from the tower and in a dip, chances are you won't get signal at all (or it will be hellishly slow), so putting your modem on your roof (which then has LOS) would help alot.

With the rate iburst is putting up towers (visit their website) I won't be suprised if they have better coverage than sentech or vodacom could ever dream of.

[nocilah]

yeah I agree hence I said LOS to a degree, I know someone from iBurst said they have only put up 25% of their towers and their plan is to saturate the towers coverage... which sounds mighty fine...

[AcidRaZor]

Yea, I was really suprised to see that plans for 22 new towers have been released (and that more than 6 of them will be live by end of April i think?)

This rollout is MUCH faster than Sentech. *bawhahahaahha* Sentech wanted the whole of SA covered by now....