Afrihost Business Uncapped Feedback - 2

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AfriMan said:
I appreciate your compliment :)

I have faith in our clients. I think I've had the privilege to interact with a great many of our clients, I'm probably close to a few thousand interactions, and I believe that they do have faith in us and trust where we come from. Of course, it's true that some have been disappointed along the way and I've always tried to help them as best I can. I'm also really happy to say that a great many of those clients that I've seen move away have always come back because they prefer dealing with us despite technical issue and they feel that we're a company they cam trust.
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I have to agree. I am one of those that get really upset. But I do not think that I will leave. I mean when it is working it really works well. I have read up on the other threads and the grass isn't always greener. Just wish there was a little better planning behind the scenes as this is waaaaayyy too sudden. But yeah, I am really hoping for a solution very quickly. But having gone through this last year I know this is but a dream. Please prove me wrong.
 
To be fair, this all really comes down to "you get what you pay for".

The only Business ADSL line the company has that I can honestly say has run at 100% capacity every business day for 5 years without fail is a 4mbps Vodacom Business ADSL line (with an SLA). In fact, it runs so flawlessly we sometimes forget we even have it. Basically the general office hammers that line all day, every day at max speed, and has been doing so for 5 yrs, in which time I think we've had one day's disruption due to Telkom.

But it costs R3500 per month!

So when we opened a Cape Town branch 2yrs ago the Afrihost Business Uncapped ADSL line for R697pm looked like it was worth a shot. In hindsight, given the aggravation, shouldn't have gone there.

This is why I suggested that Afrihost looks at a true business offering, not a "business" account that is really a premium home user account - there are many aspects of Afrihost's way of doing things that are (were) attractive, but now pretty much every ISP has an interactive client zone and you might as well just get an account directly from MTN.
 
Type RSA said:
I have to agree. I am one of those that get really upset. But I do not think that I will leave. I mean when it is working it really works well. I have read up on the other threads and the grass isn't always greener. Just wish there was a little better planning behind the scenes as this is waaaaayyy too sudden. But yeah, I am really hoping for a solution very quickly. But having gone through this last year I know this is but a dream. Please prove me wrong.
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I think planning for capacity is something new to us, we've only been doing this since we moved onto the MTN network a couple of years ago. My experience is that we're getting better and better at this. While this sudden increase did catch us by surprise, we did have a better plan to manage performance in the short term and we did have a plan in place that could be accelerated, rather than having to start from scratch in terms of motivating to MTN, etc.
 
garp said:
To be fair, this all really comes down to "you get what you pay for".

The only Business ADSL line the company has that I can honestly say has run at 100% capacity every business day for 5 years without fail is a 4mbps Vodacom Business ADSL line (with an SLA). In fact, it runs so flawlessly we sometimes forget we even have it. Basically the general office hammers that line all day, every day at max speed, and has been doing so for 5 yrs, in which time I think we've had one day's disruption due to Telkom.

But it costs R3500 per month!

So when we opened a Cape Town branch 2yrs ago the Afrihost Business Uncapped ADSL line for R697pm looked like it was worth a shot. In hindsight, given the aggravation, shouldn't have gone there.

This is why I suggested that Afrihost looks at a true business offering, not a "business" account that is really a premium home user account - there are many aspects of Afrihost's way of doing things that are (were) attractive, but now pretty much every ISP has an interactive client zone and you might as well just get an account directly from MTN.
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Or to make things simpler, Afrihost should just offer a 'redundancy' addon in the Clientzone. For a fixed fee per month they provide you with 100% redundancy from another upstream provider.
 
garp said:
To be fair, this all really comes down to "you get what you pay for".

The only Business ADSL line the company has that I can honestly say has run at 100% capacity every business day for 5 years without fail is a 4mbps Vodacom Business ADSL line (with an SLA). In fact, it runs so flawlessly we sometimes forget we even have it. Basically the general office hammers that line all day, every day at max speed, and has been doing so for 5 yrs, in which time I think we've had one day's disruption due to Telkom.

But it costs R3500 per month!

So when we opened a Cape Town branch 2yrs ago the Afrihost Business Uncapped ADSL line for R697pm looked like it was worth a shot. In hindsight, given the aggravation, shouldn't have gone there.

This is why I suggested that Afrihost looks at a true business offering, not a "business" account that is really a premium home user account - there are many aspects of Afrihost's way of doing things that are (were) attractive, but now pretty much every ISP has an interactive client zone and you might as well just get an account directly from MTN.
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With our partnership with MTN, these types of products could be a possibility as well as high speed fibre. I don't know the specifics of the Business product you're comparing with though.
 
Bryn26 said:
Or to make things simpler, Afrihost should just offer a 'redundancy' addon in the Clientzone. For a fixed fee per month they provide you with 100% redundancy from another upstream provider.
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I don't think that is something we would consider, but if the right relationship is in place it's always possible. For us to create multiple realms on different ISP networks, or to repoint custom realms involve very high fixed costs, and I don't think we could justify offering that sustainably.
 
AfriMan said:
I don't think that is something we would consider, but if the right relationship is in place it's always possible. For us to create multiple realms on different ISP networks, or to repoint custom realms involve very high fixed costs, and I don't think we could justify offering that sustainably.
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Surely it wouldn't be too difficult to organise if you scratched another ISP's back while they scratched yours?
 
Bryn26 said:
Or to make things simpler, Afrihost should just offer a 'redundancy' addon in the Clientzone. For a fixed fee per month they provide you with 100% redundancy from another upstream provider.
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That would be a great plan ;)
I do think though that that might cost them way too much money, considering that you can't "plan" outages. It would amount to the same as buy double the IPC that you need and not get any return on the capital outlay. That is, half of the IPC bought would have to be kept as back-up (not in use at all). In this case, capacity available to AH is not the issue - MTN has more than enough. Once again, Telkom's IPC is the stumbling block... if this wasn't THE major cost of provisioning for ISP's, then not only would this type of thing not happen, but we would also see a massive reduction in the cost of connectivity in this country.

In a perfect world :love:
...one can only dream..... :whistle:
 
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garp said:
To be fair, this all really comes down to "you get what you pay for".

The only Business ADSL line the company has that I can honestly say has run at 100% capacity every business day for 5 years without fail is a 4mbps Vodacom Business ADSL line (with an SLA). In fact, it runs so flawlessly we sometimes forget we even have it. Basically the general office hammers that line all day, every day at max speed, and has been doing so for 5 yrs, in which time I think we've had one day's disruption due to Telkom.

But it costs R3500 per month!

So when we opened a Cape Town branch 2yrs ago the Afrihost Business Uncapped ADSL line for R697pm looked like it was worth a shot. In hindsight, given the aggravation, shouldn't have gone there.

This is why I suggested that Afrihost looks at a true business offering, not a "business" account that is really a premium home user account - there are many aspects of Afrihost's way of doing things that are (were) attractive, but now pretty much every ISP has an interactive client zone and you might as well just get an account directly from MTN.
Click to expand...

MWEB 4Meg Business is 2Grand a month and should perform like your Vodacom line with a nice saving.
 
Bryn26 said:
Surely it wouldn't be too difficult to organise if you scratched another ISP's back while they scratched yours?
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Anything is technically possible, it's really around the cost and the practical aspects of offering a service like this.
 
So now that it appears that the real problem has been identified, when can we expect to see optimal performance again? I can honestly not remember the last time my line was running at full speed :(
 
D3athR3aver said:
So now that it appears that the real problem has been identified, when can we expect to see optimal performance again? I can honestly not remember the last time my line was running at full speed :(
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We should hopefully see the upgrades go live within the next few weeks. I don't have a confirmed or rough date at the moment, but I will update when I have that info.
 
AfriMan said:
We should hopefully see the upgrades go live within the next few weeks. I don't have a confirmed or rough date at the moment, but I will update when I have that info.
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weeks? As in before year end?
 
AfriMan said:
Yes, we'd definitely want to upgrade before year end. Remember that Telkom also have a network freeze between mid Dec and Jan, so we want to have this sorted well before that.
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Will hold you to this. Simply because I think you (afrihost, not your personally) just saying it to buy time and shut up the complainers (or ATMs in business talk and clients in my terms) :D
 
ambroseg1 said:
Will hold you to this. Simply because I think you (afrihost, not your personally) just saying it to buy time and shut up the complainers (or ATMs in business talk and clients in my terms) :D
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Don't think that's been the case :)
Capacity upgrades are a rolling system, it's something that's always going to be around.
 
ambroseg1 said:
Will hold you to this. Simply because I think you (afrihost, not your personally) just saying it to buy time and shut up the complainers (or ATMs in business talk and clients in my terms) :D
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Upgrades are definitely going in. I do hope that Telkom can provide the requested IPC quickly :)
 
AfriMan said:
Upgrades are definitely going in. I do hope that Telkom can provide the requested IPC quickly :)
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AfriMan, I know I sound like a stuck record, but I am begging you! Please could you get someone to look into Bonded DSL services.
It is something I really need, I am looking into Mweb and IS bonded services but they are way way over priced.....
:D
 
AfriMan said:
I totally understand your post here, and I think the quality of information is a very important thing, rather than just hitting the reply button. We do focus a lot on taking more time to do first time fixes, and this is maybe something we need to focus more on (or do continuous training to ensure is entrenched in the culture). I think generally we are very good, but I do think there are more examples than we'd like of where we've fallen short as a team.
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Thank you
 
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