Afrihost ADSL proof of concept network testing

[Sinbad]

you trust as to manage all the players in the background to keep your experience consistent.
.

sorry but you have not exactly covered yourself in glory in this respect lately, even when the player is in house.

 

[craigcul]

I think MTN network has gone due to the strike action as in this country they always destroy things because they can.

 

[Peon]

I think MTN network has gone due to the strike action as in this country they always destroy things because they can.

I wonder this as well. Somehow I doubt a core network engineer at MTN would partake in the strike. Im confident Afrihost will come up with a solution. Im afraid Afriman that the best solution will be to go back onto the IS network. Its proven itself to be a winner. I suspect the price though is a factor.

 

[Necuno]

sorry but you have not exactly covered yourself in glory in this respect lately, even when the player is in house.

Still expecting a rock star home coming and hero reception; perhaps first step is dead serious honesty over head in sand ignorance.

 

[whatnot]

I was quite alright with Afrihost until like march - april this year, and then things went south.

 

[Kosmik]

I was quite alright with Afrihost until like march - april this year, and then things went south.

Agreed, same for me too. I switched this month and the difference is ridiculous. Fix the network, become competitive again ( they are now on the upper end of the scale ) and will consider returning.

 

[MagicDude4Eva]

Morning everyone

Just want to post a quick note to say please don't make too much out of this snippet of info. Our real intention was always for people to know as little about the back end so as not to cloud their perception before even trying the network. We really want clients to experience the network, smash it, do their thing and then tell us which they'd prefer going forward. I think most would agree that if the network passes the user test, it won't matter which provider we use, as long as you dig the experience and you trust as to manage all the players in the background to keep your experience consistent.

We'll probably be able to give a full rundown of the who's and what's when the final network is decided on and we're moving full steam in that direction.

A few quick questions you could please get answers for. I think AH has arrived at a critical juncture where transparency is crucial for the survival of your company. The silence of your CEO over the last 5 days is concerning, as it signals that he has no answers (and even then it is better to just say "Guys, we are stuck and we do not have the answers, but we are exploring the following options").

• Why is Afrihost forced to switch to MTN competitors for fixed line network services? Politically that must hurt MTN.
• How long will the POC last?
• How many networks are involved? Initially there was mention about two. Now there seems to be only one (or possibly Neotel is a third)
• Wouldn't your pricing change? In some instances you are cheaper than your competitors and I would think that if they could/wanted to beat your offering they should have done so already. Perhaps competitors knew that your cheaper offering would be not sustainable and they waited for your collapse. Either way, how do you avoid other backbone providers exploiting your desperate situation?
• What KPIs will AH use to determine the successful network? Surely user-feedback can not be it, as it is very subjective and each requirement is different (i.e. I can have a perfect email/Facebook experience on a 10meg line, but another user could have endless problems with VPN, SSH, streaming / realtime traffic where high latency is a direct contributor to the service experience)
• Will users who participate in the POC have the option to switch back to MTN?
• Will you compensate users for being guinea pigs during that period? Especially relevant if the POC produces poorer results.
• What about users not participating in the POC? Seeing that the POC seems to be the silver bullet to all your problems, how do you remedy users not participating in the POC and still having issues?
• Many users have asked for compensation / refunds for services not rendered (note: those users want to stay with you, so the refund request is different to other users cancelling the service)
• Scalability: It is relatively simple to run a closed-group POC with a select number of users and be successful. How do you ensure that the selected network will then scale for all your users?
• Switching to another network infrastructure (i.e. Neotel), will Afrihost share our PII with Neotel for marketing purposes?
• Will Afrihost amend the TOS and SLAs when switching network operators?
• I am simplifying this: If I have a poor ADSL performance with one provider, I switch to another. By the sounds of it the same is now happening to Afrihost. How are those networks different to MTN as our impression always was that this is a IPC issue. Does this then mean that MTN has no capacity to meet demand, but others have?
• How will Afrihost deal with CPA issues as TOS were not met in the majority of cases - i.e. I read that many people paying for 10mbps lines will receive only 10% of the service. Even under the term "best effort service" such service delivery is unacceptable.

IMO, the whole Afri-INSERT-COLOR-HERE is absolute BS. You are not running a restaurant business offering blind-tasting to customers and wanting feedback what meal tastes the best. You are a tech company and ISP and should have the necessary instruments/processes in place to monitor your SLAs, QoS and have appropriate incident management in place. It is a big mistake to rely on subjective consumer feedback alone --- and if you have the necessary monitoring in place, you would know exactly where the problems are and would be able to devise a strategy to fix it. A blind-tasting of bandwidth/network providers is however not the solution.

Perhaps AH needs to take a more aggressive/brutal stance to survive the imminent collapse of the business and do something similar to what MWeb did - do not attempt to make everyone happy. If you are incapable of serving uncapped data or if you can not provide certain services, than cut them, ask customers to leave and focus on customer demand you can meet (which in essence means that you will be no different than any other ISP out there).

 

[ISP cash cow]

IMO, the whole Afri-INSERT-COLOR-HERE is absolute BS. You are not running a restaurant business offering blind-tasting to customers and wanting feedback what meal tastes the best. You are a tech company and ISP and should have the necessary instruments/processes in place to monitor your SLAs, QoS and have appropriate incident management in place. It is a big mistake to rely on subjective consumer feedback alone --- and if you have the necessary monitoring in place, you would know exactly where the problems are and would be able to devise a strategy to fix it. A blind-tasting of bandwidth/network providers is however not the solution.

I thought the same thing as your post with regards to that they should be able to monitor more accurately the throughput instead of the customers doing a "blind testing" as you say. I think it is probably more of a marketing tact in trying to get customers to try the new "fix" and then claim that was absolutely awesome and people start trying out and coming back to them.

I have left Afrihost a while ago and lot of people I know have done the same, also by the amount of threads and people commenting on MyBB it seems that Afrihost has hemorrhaged customers already

 

[Sonic2k]

Morning everyone

Just want to post a quick note to say please don't make too much out of this snippet of info. Our real intention was always for people to know as little about the back end so as not to cloud their perception before even trying the network. We really want clients to experience the network, smash it, do their thing and then tell us which they'd prefer going forward. I think most would agree that if the network passes the user test, it won't matter which provider we use, as long as you dig the experience and you trust as to manage all the players in the background to keep your experience consistent.

We'll probably be able to give a full rundown of the who's and what's when the final network is decided on and we're moving full steam in that direction.

Instead of Gian sending his minions he should grow a pair and come here and post it himself.

If we are not to read "too much" into this- does this mean this is actually journalism i.e. small facts distorted into believable lies?

 

[TrueCartman]

I had to switch last night...My 10meg line was running at 2.5mbs. I use my line for streaming so had the wife on me (Orange is the new black) and the kids (to many to mention).

Switched to my free 1GB from axxess to test and make sure it's not the line..Ran at 9.00mbs

Bought a 30+30 for R100 and set that up ran at 9.53mbs

Happy...

 

[Fudzy]

Instead of Gian sending his minions he should grow a pair and come here and post it himself.

If we are not to read "too much" into this- does this mean this is actually journalism i.e. small facts distorted into believable lies?

It's not an article, it's a press release. When else has any other ISP been given such royal carpet treatment (links in the article etc)

 

[new_in_za2]

I was barred from using their network in Jan 2013. I considered it a favour on their part.

Afrihost kicked me out after I refused to publicly lie. They wanted me to claim that the game that was unplayable on Afrihost was actually a P2P file sharing program. This was after months of piss poor performance where on good days I got 1/16th the speed I paid for, and after Afrihost sent me threatening messages demanding that I stop "damaging their brand".

At least it gave me the chance to experience South Africa's other ISPs, which so far have turned out to be both better and cheaper than Afrihost, so I suppose I can consider it them doing me a favour as well

 

[brentmin]

It's fine that Afrihost is testing these upstream providers. But Telkom fails to deliver on the ADSL side. Constant problems at the Isando exchange result in us constantly having to call Telkom to get it sorted out. We are also testing new ISP's right now. I cannot take Telkom's issues anymore.

 

[Sonic2k]

It's not an article, it's a press release. When else has any other ISP been given such royal carpet treatment (links in the article etc)

Sorry don't understand what you are on about... I couldn't be arsed if it is a glorified teapot..

 

[agel]

Had to leave Afrihost a few months back too, they used to be my favourite ISP but dropping speeds and bad latency have put me off; Axxess is going the same way it seems (probably for different reasons; they claim that it's too many new users, maybe everyone leaving Afri?) - trying out Vox now and while it's more expensive (I've always found Afri and Axxess to be the cheapest), I've been very very happy with the latency and speeds.

 

[Thor]

It's not an article, it's a press release. When else has any other ISP been given such royal carpet treatment (links in the article etc)

Every openweb article on mybb is a press release for them, such a sad thing, tech forum with no spine, almost like AF

 

[slvR]

Every openweb article on mybb is a press release for them, such a sad thing, tech forum with no spine, almost like AF

rpm gotta get that $$$$

also the mods here... jirrr

 

[Thor]

^+1

 

[Sonic2k]

rpm gotta get that $$$$

also the mods here... jirrr

That is their own business... mine is the fact that I am getting shafted by this company... paying for something I am not receiving..

 

[znh]

So long afrihost and thanks for all the double data.

I am testing this proof of concept: I Cancelled my DSL and Capped account after they refused to refund me for ADSL line downtime. Do not move your line to Afrihost.