ADSL coverage in Midstream?

[MickeyD]

Prelim MSAN work?

 

[LandyMan]

Is this development (just inside the Hutton Gate) good news for us?
View attachment 71962

Doubtful. Remember Midstream Estate, including Hutton gate, already have Telkom infrastructure. According to the minutes of Midlands HOA AGM last year November, Bondev didn't stop Telkom, Telkom didn't want to put infrastructure in. :what:

 

[LandyMan]

Not permitting any civil work... therefore no lines.

Did they give a reason? As far as I know, Bondev wasn't permitting Telkom to install lines into Midlands. I will try and follow this up internally, but haven't got much knowledge of how Midlands is administered (vs. Midstream).

See my last post. Do you guys have anything'official' on the above statements?

 

[ranger]

Is this development (just inside the Hutton Gate) good news for us?
View attachment 71962

This MSAN went live towards the end of March, and as far as I know the other MSAN went live before the end of April.

This solved my DSLAM congestion and should now allow 10Mbps+ speeds for people in Midstream Estate, but the ADSL checker isn't working for my number now. I will try and check on other tools.

 

[plofstof12]

So, I have had informal discussions with people in Telkom who know some of the planning considerations, and they said that the MIdstream HOA is not allowing Telkom to deploy an MSAN into Midstream Estate. Obviously, an MSAN would allow much better speeds than the 4Mbps max allowed by our distance from the RHK exchange.

This is very concerning. I can hardly imagine why an HOA would have made this decision?

But I can imagine several stakeholders who would support this... If the 'decision' has its roots in the current broadband provider being concerned about competition, we should speak up. If so a formal complaint lodged at the Competition Commissioner could be considered.

 

[FarligOpptreden]

Never kind that, the newer extensions of Midstream supposedly don't even have infrastructure available for ADLS. This is quite concerning, as our house in Midstream Hill will be finished in the next two weeks and Vodacom coverage is quite poor down there... No LTE or ADSL means no online gaming. Only option i hear is Smart Village, but I've only read bad things about them... Any Midlands / Midstream Hill owners care to comment?

 

[plofstof12]

Only option i hear is Smart Village, but I've only read bad things about them... Any Midlands / Midstream Hill owners care to comment?

Nah, relax, Smart Village isn't bad. I moved in about November last year and I really can't fault the service I received. If you're into gaming, you'll be glad to know that I get better pings through Smart Village than I ever got through various ISPs' unshaped connections with Telkom ADSL at my previous place.

I have a 40mbps unshaped line with Smart Village, which is better than you could ever get from Telkom (although I've never seen the full 40 megs saturated... a 20meg line will probably do as well for you).

I just did a speedtest (just for you) and here's what I got.
I guess a 4ms ping to a Pretoria server is not bad

My comments above is more general about competition. Competition is healthy, and even if I'm happy with Smart Village right now you never know where things will be in 5 years if a quasi-monopoly is purposefully being maintained in the estate. That's all.

 

[FarligOpptreden]

Oooooh. Those results look tasty! What are the prices like? Do they offer decent bandwidth packages (or uncapped)? We use around 100GB a month currently, so anything in that region would suffice...

 

[plofstof12]

Uncapped unfortunately only available for 10 Mbps and lower in Midstream. And then it will be shaped (although your pings should still be OK). For 20mbps and 40mbps you have to subscribe to a fixed amount of data (which will then be unshaped) with top-ups available if you run out.

Last year I was told that SV will start opening up their network to allow users to make use of any ISP (so only paying SV for the line then). Not sure if this happened yet.

PM me then I can mail you the latest Smart Village pricelist for Midstream that I've got.