Cool ideas vs Atomic Access? Moving because Afrihost customer service is just horrible

L

lightmagician

Member
Joined
Oct 6, 2025
Messages
15
Reaction score
13
Hi folks. I work from home and need a reliable ISP. I'm moving house and Afrihost have messed up the relocation order as apparently they can't provision the new line and no one asked me for updated documents to support the line relocation. This is the second time in a row they've messed up line provisioning for me and it was the last straw.

I'm Cape Town based and I've read a few good things about Cool Ideas and Atomic Access. I'll be using the ISP on top of Vuma. Do either of you have experience with these ISPs in terms of reliability and customer service? I need minimal ISP drop outs and fast answers if there is a failure so that I can mitigate it.

Thank you in advance.
 
lightmagician said:
Hi folks. I work from home and need a reliable ISP. I'm moving house and Afrihost have messed up the relocation order as apparently they can't provision the new line and no one asked me for updated documents to support the line relocation. This is the second time in a row they've messed up line provisioning for me and it was the last straw.

I'm Cape Town based and I've read a few good things about Cool Ideas and Atomic Access. I'll be using the ISP on top of Vuma. Do either of you have experience with these ISPs in terms of reliability and customer service? I need minimal ISP drop outs and fast answers if there is a failure so that I can mitigate it.

Thank you in advance.
Click to expand...
I am with Cool Ideas and have been for years now (Vumatel CT).

I would however like to try out Atomics Network as their latencies do look quite a bit better but too much effort switching ISP's and all

1776084152221.png
 
CrypticZA said:
I am with Cool Ideas and have been for years now (Vumatel CT).

I would however like to try out Atomics Network as their latencies do look quite a bit better but too much effort switching ISP's and all

View attachment 1900704
Click to expand...
Thank you for getting back to me. Do you have any issue with Cool Ideas in terms of speed, latency or reliability? What's customer service like? My bug bear with Afrihost is that when things go smoothly it's all fine, but as soon as there is a wobble in any process, there is little to no communication.

What's your experience been with Vuma as FNO - is it reliable? I've not heard good things but it's the ISP that's currently installed at the new house and it's the path of least resistance.
 
lightmagician said:
Thank you. Do you perhaps have any stats relating to your ISP downtime, latency, etc. for Cape Town?
Click to expand...
ISP downtime isnt really something you can track to be honest. Interruptions are typically limited and not for a complete service.
Vumatel uptime is typically good and up with the better networks.

Latency from Cape Town to our POP in Lisbon is 114ms and then to London pop is 141ms odd.

We peer at LINX and De-cix Lisbon and Madrid with major networks.

We manage our own wet capacity to those pops.
 
PBCool said:
ISP downtime isnt really something you can track to be honest. Interruptions are typically limited and not for a complete service.
Vumatel uptime is typically good and up with the better networks.

Latency from Cape Town to our POP in Lisbon is 114ms and then to London pop is 141ms odd.

We peer at LINX and De-cix Lisbon and Madrid with major networks.

We manage our own wet capacity to those pops.
Click to expand...
Awesome, thanks for sharing that.
 
lightmagician said:
Thank you for getting back to me. Do you have any issue with Cool Ideas in terms of speed, latency or reliability? What's customer service like? My bug bear with Afrihost is that when things go smoothly it's all fine, but as soon as there is a wobble in any process, there is little to no communication.

What's your experience been with Vuma as FNO - is it reliable? I've not heard good things but it's the ISP that's currently installed at the new house and it's the path of least resistance.
Click to expand...
i have been with cool ideas for probably 6-7 years now and same with Vumatel and i am on a very stable part of their network so my downtime has almost been 0.

I have only contacted CI Support maybe 3 times or 4 times in those years and its always been decent. If not i know the team here can assist if needed. Latency is decent, just certain regions like the green highlighted ones where Atomic seems to have better latency but a lot of most networks is picked up locally so all networks are generally the same.

Something to note about my Atomic comments is this is all i can see from the outside, how well things run to those regions could be different.
 
The low latency routes are from Angola Cables, their transit has come a long way, they were pretty unmanageable in the beginning.

Difficulty with complicated transit is the management thereof, so lower latency to the major regions makes more sense to us.
 
lightmagician said:
Thank you for getting back to me. Do you have any issue with Cool Ideas in terms of speed, latency or reliability? What's customer service like? My bug bear with Afrihost is that when things go smoothly it's all fine, but as soon as there is a wobble in any process, there is little to no communication.

What's your experience been with Vuma as FNO - is it reliable? I've not heard good things but it's the ISP that's currently installed at the new house and it's the path of least resistance.
Click to expand...
That was my experience too, their support even with the reps on the forum is absolute garbage, you may as well be talking to a bot because they just copy and paste the same questions/replies day in day out and it can go on like that for weeks.
 
My family is on atomic access, service is good, has a telegram channel for outages as well.

Had a bad support experience with cool ideas, this was due to communication between them and frogfoot, FF at fault, just nothing moved forward, and their support told me 10Mbps was fine on 100 for international.

This is years ago now though, stuff will have changed.

Atomic side, their community chat gets support pretty quick, but I haven't used it in a few years, international issues / maintenance and stuff is clearly communicated via status page and their telegram alerts channel.
 
Thank you for the feedback - much appreciated. Looks like i'll have to settle with Afrihost for another month but I'll definitely be moving to a different ISP. How much of a gap in service should I expect when switching ISPs on Vuma? I figured it would probably be 3-5 days given line migrations and what not (unless i'm mistaken).
 
lightmagician said:
Thank you for the feedback - much appreciated. Looks like i'll have to settle with Afrihost for another month but I'll definitely be moving to a different ISP. How much of a gap in service should I expect when switching ISPs on Vuma? I figured it would probably be 3-5 days given line migrations and what not (unless i'm mistaken).
Click to expand...

Its a bit of a lucky packet unfortunately. Your safest bet is to switch to another FNO if you have the option then you can activate the new line before the old one is disconnected.

There are plenty of posts on here about lines not being released by the old ISP and having to deal with call centre bots and getting nowhere.
I think Vuma also charge hefty fees for changing isp's.
 
B-1 said:
Its a bit of a lucky packet unfortunately. Your safest bet is to switch to another FNO if you have the option then you can activate the new line before the old one is disconnected.

There are plenty of posts on here about lines not being released by the old ISP and having to deal with call centre bots and getting nowhere.
I think Vuma also charge hefty fees for changing isp's.
Click to expand...
This is exactly what’s happening as Afrihost didn’t bother contacting me so it’s by luck that I’m sorting it out ahead of the move as I checked with support how the line provisioning was going with Vuma.

Great idea with changing FNO, thank you. I also have OpenServe in the area and that may do the trick instead of asking Vuma to move where they installed the ONT as it’s in such a random place now :)
 
lightmagician said:
Thank you for the feedback - much appreciated. Looks like i'll have to settle with Afrihost for another month but I'll definitely be moving to a different ISP. How much of a gap in service should I expect when switching ISPs on Vuma? I figured it would probably be 3-5 days given line migrations and what not (unless i'm mistaken).
Click to expand...
If the line is released as per the notice you should be switched on the same day.

It is only really legacy areas that have had issues with address problems in the past.
 
PBCool said:
If the line is released as per the notice you should be switched on the same day.

It is only really legacy areas that have had issues with address problems in the past.
Click to expand...
This is happening to me right now. The line wasn’t released despite the previous occupant moving out weeks ago and also relocating their fibre so I know it’s been cancelled on the ISP end.
 
Johnatan56 said:
My family is on atomic access, service is good, has a telegram channel for outages as well.

Had a bad support experience with cool ideas, this was due to communication between them and frogfoot, FF at fault, just nothing moved forward, and their support told me 10Mbps was fine on 100 for international.

This is years ago now though, stuff will have changed.

Atomic side, their community chat gets support pretty quick, but I haven't used it in a few years, international issues / maintenance and stuff is clearly communicated via status page and their telegram alerts channel.
Click to expand...
This must have been a long time ago and I'm sorry to hear about the experience.

Performance wise we have been the Ookla winner for a long time, which includes international tests.
 
lightmagician said:
This is happening to me right now. The line wasn’t released despite the previous occupant moving out weeks ago and also relocating their fibre so I know it’s been cancelled on the ISP end.
Click to expand...

There is no such thing as relocating fibre in FNO terms it is a cancellation and reapplication. If there is proof of the line being released then FNOs typically act quite quickly.

Who is your ISP?
 
Why even ISPs needs a month notice to release the line anyway. Definitely they want to charge you for that month otherwise no obvious reason they need 1 month notice.

I'm in process with AH and is really frustrating....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X