Amobia goes uncapped

[Rouxenator]

http://www.amobia.com/consumer_services/fixedwireless.html

Being a customer of Amobia for 3 years I'm in the process of getting ADSL installed since Amobia told me (on the 18th of March) that they have no plans to offer uncapped packages. I just happened to see on their website that that actually do - must have changed their minds I guess :wtf:

I am in the process of finding out what they mean with the fineprint "Malicious & excessive abuse of uncapped bandwidth is not permitted"

 

[DefecteD]

never even heard of them

 

[Rouxenator]

They are very reliable. My company uses them for a point to point connection as well. For home internet they offer a rock solid re-badged telkom service that was capped. I am hoping to get more info on their uncapped service ASAP - will post it here when I do.

 

[Keeper]

with a setup cost of R2000 they are nuts!

 

[tco21]

with a setup cost of R2000 they are nuts!

It obviously covers the required equipment. Ever tried joining a WUG?

 

[Rouxenator]

Thats the equipment cost. If you look at the costs of going from nothing to ADSL connected it is not that bad.

What is VERY shocking is that I just totaled up my Amobia usage for the last 2 years and I think I need to lie down.
Total bandwidth used since May 2008 : 491GB
Total money spent (including CPE) : R48k

eye am sofa king we todd did ! :wtf:

 

[tco21]

Yoh! That is a lot of money spent on connectivity. Did they at least send you some sort of gift at any stage?

 

[Rouxenator]

Did they at least send you some sort of gift?

.... :wtf: .... .... no.

This is their initial reply when asked to clarify "Malicious & excessive abuse of uncapped bandwidth is not permitted"

Before I can answer your questions, you need to be aware of the following.
No ISP is getting any free bandwidth, so no ISP can supply unlimited
traffic. We just managed to get better tariffs on volumes, but still
need to manage & count it.

Now quick answers to your questions:
1) Malicious – Users will not realise any virus/worm infections, for
they will not care about their usage. Spammers will also use this
opportunity to make a career out of spamming. We do not like any of the
above & steps will be taken.
2) Excessive – We do not want our clients to flat line their 3Mbs
connection with permanent downloading, queued one after the other. At
that speed it will end up with mad numbers per month. Once again, steps
will be taken.

Now what are these steps that will be taken.
- We will monitor the usage over multiple months
- We will warn the user & attempt to educate them regarding solutions to
their usage problem
- We will throttle their speed to limit their traffic usage within reason.

Please note that the above rules are not unique to us.

I have replied and asked them to please answer the following :
1) will it be like mweb uncapped
2) what shaping are you doing to uncapped
3) what is excessive threshold per connection speed
4) throttle level if thresholds are exceeded

 

[tco21]

WRT the monitoring, will they be monitoring only usage rates or actual files and sources of download (in connection with their first point about viruses). If so, it'll be pretty Orwellian of them.

 

[Rouxenator]

I got some pretty standard but reassuring feedback from Amobia in the last 24 hours.

Regarding the AUP questions I asked them, the replies were standard and I am happy to accept them :

1) will it be like mweb uncapped
Yes, we use them as our competitive reference
I am happy to hear that.

2) what shaping are you doing to uncapped
We will prioritise web & mail traffic
Sounds standard to me

3) excessive threshold per connection
4) throttle level if thresholds are exceeded
Initially we will try our best not to throttle, nor put a threshold on
any connection, but we reserve the right to change our minds. Stating
this in our adds & contracts is only for legal protection when our
upstream provider suddenly change their deal.
Yup - standard stuff - lets roll.

Needless to say I did apply for uncapped and even before I completed the application faxes (will do that tomorrow) I got moved to uncapped in order to test drive it - does not look that bad either !


Amobia 2mbps uncapped local speedtest.

 

[morkhans]

Thanks for the feedback rouxenator. I must ask, what is the story with the terrible upload. I thought these links were synchronous?

 

[Rouxenator]

I'll test it tonight against international destinations to see if that makes a difference. I am not sure if it is that bad because of a connection Gaborone.
When I checked this morning it was still running at 2.4mbps downloading torrents so the shaping does not occur after hours.

If you consider the price of the CPE against the total costing of applying for a landline, getting ADSL, getting ADSL modem, etc, then Amobia looks very nice !

 

[morkhans]

Nice keep us posted on your experiences. I am quite tempted by this option as well. I have an open slot in my RB433. You think Amobia will let me use my own CPE?

 

[Rouxenator]

Yup ! I am pretty sure they will. A friend of mine got on to Amobia after I referred him. He is on the 3mbps package and built his own CPE setup.
Ask them if you can, they are very accommodating and friendly to deal with. Contact from their website is also answered promptly.

 

[morkhans]

Are they on month-to-month or is there a contract involved?

 

[Rouxenator]

Day to day if you like - but billing is per month. No contracts - that is why you have to pay upfront for the CPE.
Uninetworks had a different model where you could get the CPE on a 24 month contract, but they really started to suck badly at some stage and I would recommend any other WISP but Amobia at this stage.

 

[morkhans]

Day to day if you like - but billing is per month. No contracts - that is why you have to pay upfront for the CPE.
Uninetworks had a different model where you could get the CPE on a 24 month contract, but they really started to suck badly at some stage and I would recommend any other WISP but Amobia at this stage.

Cool. I had a friend who was with Unitnet and they were really good to him up to a point where they made a lot of networking changes and everything went to pot. We have a number of clients with Amobia, and while they do have the occasional problem, their service is very good.

 

[morkhans]

So Rouxenator, any feedback after a month or so of living the uncapped life?

 

[Rouxenator]

If you want Amobia CPE let me know, I am looking to sell mine

But that is not because I am unhappy with it - quite the opposite actually - I found their uncapped service to be nothing short of amazing and for the price it is a bargain. I was switched to Amobia uncapped on the 8th of April and did about 67GB in the two weeks that followed. My max usage on a single day was 16GB and I had no connectivity issues at all. I therefor highly recommend Amobia uncapped to anyone that wants cheap uncapped internet. It is cheaper than ADSL if you look at what you get and what you have to pay in total in order to have ADSL. Their upstream ISP seems to be M-Web which has received a lot of praise for their uncapped packages. The reason I only used Amobia uncapped for two weeks is because I got ADSL and I am currently on 4mbps uncapped from M-Web. Both on Amobia and via ADSL I have had no trouble with M-Web so I think it is a very smart move of Amobia to use M-Web.

One thing to keep in mind is that Amobia does have a 3 day rolling total for acceptable usage. This is currently as follows :
3Mbps - 10GB/3 day
2Mbps - 7GB/3 day
1Mbps - 4GB/3 day
384Kbps - 2GB/3 day

Effectively this means you have a "cap" of :
20GB on 384kbps @ R299
40GB on 1Mbps @ R499
70GB on 2Mbps @ R649
100GB on 3Mbps @ R799

In my wild testing spree of doing 67GB in two weeks I only got one email from them asking to cool'it a little but I was assured they would not throttle me - they are just asking. However, I have to put this into contrast with my current ADSL connection at M-Web, I have been on uncapped for exactly one month now and have done 190GB with out a single boo or bah from M-Web. So I guess they really are uncapped! My ADSL connection is solid and given enough seeders I have my torrents running up to 430kb/s. The most I have done in one day has been 20GB.

So that is my review of Amobia uncapped and how it compares to the best ADSL uncapped package (IMHO). The answer is very favorably! Even though my Amobia connection was half the speed (2mbps) of my ADSL (4mbps) it still did more on a per day basis, and of course, it is telkom-free meaning you have less nightmares at night.

Currently I am looking to join CTWUG and to finance this I want to sell my Amobia CPE. Anyone interested can PM me - I am willing to make the price very attractive.

 

[Uli]

Wish I had coverage....