Anyone still experiencing slowdown?

We're not out of the woods yet - on Brixton tower, noticed network went off and then on, presumably as someone loosened the rubber band on Sentechs testicles.. we'll see..
If the speed fixing was ProAsm - then Sentech better pray he never leaves them, otherwise they're doomed...

(but allow me to get briefly boring - while everyone's still focused heavily on what's unfolding now...)
automatically, I ask myself - what have I learned from this 4 or 5 days of crap?

1) the sentech call centre people are utterly unable and unwilling to help on any meaningful level, should there be a clear problem with the network. The call centre people operate like super-monkeys and simply recite whatever they are told to. I knew this intellectually, but didnt have experience of this in reality, until now.

2) Sentech as such, doesnt believe its customers when they report a problem with the network individually - and when customers en masse are reporting problems, there appears to be no overview within Sentech seeing that all these isolated calls indicate a network-wide problem.
To put it another way: The IT people appeared to try and fix (or dismiss) individual reports of drops of rain - and no one seemed to notice that the reality is that it was a genuine rainstorm, not 'rain drops'.

3) Call centre people insultingly fell back on referring to the legal minimums of what Sentech undertakes to supply in bandwidth, when facing clear evidence of a removal of bandwidth. Either this was done by call centre people by themselves, or it reflects the thinking that Sentech itself will use, if/when the network fails/slows in the future..

4) Either customers were apathetic and did not complain - in which case Sentech was justified in letting 5 days of a 'miscalculation' disrupt service (justified because 'they didnt know about it') - or everyone who posted on these forums DID in fact complain and were ignored.
So either users didnt bother to alert Sentech, and figured posting in this forum was enough - or Sentech themselves chose to ignore a large number of complaints indicating a Trend in their network. As to which is correct, I dont know.. but maybe its worth thinking about..

Now I have some speed, I have to go and have sex with my modem, if you'll excuse me :)
 
So is the speed back?

Fantasy is what people want, reality is what they need.
 
The response I got.

----
Dear Sir

Thank you for your email. We have currently escalated the speed issue to upper managment and are waiting for a response from them. When they come back to us we will have the answers for you. Please keep in touch.

Many Thank,
Jared
Sentech Support
------
 
speed seems to be back (although Im wary of saying that and tempting Fate)

and I left out the most important thing I learned during this crap:

5) If it wasnt for this website and Forum, I'd have been royally screwed in terms of discovering that there was actually a problem not just being experienced by me.
So thank (fill in your favourite Deity here) for this website and Forum, which allows us to share experiences..

Re wireless being in its infancy/teething pains etc - sure, point taken - but its cold hard cash thats being paid out, so I'm entitled to stamp my foot, go purple in the face, and demand all those rightful things due to me as an impatient armed and sociopathic customer who expects a certain level of quality :)
 
So is the speed back?

In one word: NO.

Why did it take 5 days to get upper management to become aware of this problem?
What are the requirements to be a (S)entech (H)elpdesk (I)nterne(T) monkey?
What do these S.H.I.T monkeys do when they're not lying to customers? (I'm thinking something along the line of them drooling on thier keyboards..... *lol*)

Can anyone become a S.H.I.T Monkey?

Come on Sentech...
 
*fliiiing*

*thwack*

*thud*

that's me getting smacked by a pro-forma "Reply to all" email...

I sent two different emails, and got the same reply from both:

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">
Dear Sir,

Thank you for your email. We have escalated the speed issue to upper management and are waiting for a reply. An email will be sent out to all MyWireless users and the issue should be resolved by Tuesday. Sorry about the inconvenience and frustration you have experienced.

Regards,
Sentech Support<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

bljech! [xx(]

"Sorry" just isn't going to cover it mates, I need at LEAST double my bandwidth for a week (or copious amounts of alcohol) that might make me feel a tad better...

I haven't lost my mind... It's backed up on disk somewhere...
 
Is The SPEED back?

Answer: NO

I must say that I'm getting 4.5KB/s now (1.5KB/s faster than the 3KB/s I was getting for the past 4 days now) BUT That's Still far away from the 13KB/s I'm used to for the past 2 months... I can't use this connection for Terminal Services to manage remote sites , AND THAT IS THE REASON I BOUGHT THIS SERVICE..

Hope this service becomes usefull for what I intended it to BE soon..
 
They have escalated this to upper management now? Wow... I sure do feel a lot better about this now.

Still downloading at nauseating speeds.

At best I spike up to 8k from 2k, which is totally unacceptable. That's, at best, 25% of the capacity of the 256k package - which I am paying full price for. And 8k is awesome compared to what I've been getting lately.

This idea of selling me a 256k package and then trying to tell me that I should be happy with 2k per second download speeds due to contention ratios had better be the result of poor customer support management and not Sentech official policy. Sooner or later the legal door is going to slam shut on this "Advertise X, deliver Y" attitude that seems to be more and more prevalent lately.

I will, at the absolute minimum, accept 70% (and I'm being very generous here) of the advertised capacity (though I point out that Telkom achieves almost 95% of advertised speed in their products). I don't care that your product is new and this is ground-breaking tech and that you don't know what you're doing, and that you don't have your ducks in a row, and that.... WAAAAH! Call someone who cares.

You expect me to pay full price for this?
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Comrade Borris</i>
Can anyone become a S.H.I.T Monkey?
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Comrade Borris: Your wit and intellectual humour astounds us all. It's so relevant and appropriate. You truly are an asset to this board.
 
Sounds like a BOFH to me. If they "recalculated" the CR or whatever then how long did it take them to do that? Fine, lets say they DID make that mistake. Fine, so then what the hell takes 6 days to fix? Just set it back like it was??

Definitely another excuse to shut people up if you ask me. I bet Sentech is having a meeting with IS on monday.
 
I've done a bit of research. I get about 1 KBps to netcache02.infosat.net (our transparent proxy).

I get about 6 KBps to sites in Sentech (Radiokop). If you add that to all the other trafic on my box that's my quota.

So the link from Radiokop to Infosat is broken.

So this problem has very little to do with a dispute between Sentech and the ISP, and is just a technical problem...


<hr noshade size="1">
<center>http://rational.co.za/MyWireless/calculate.html</center>
 
As I was mouthing off earlier when things were lousy - and now for the past couple of hours, I seem to have some speeds back - I figure to be fair, I should mouth off again :)

This is a repost:

First off, its a great product. Unless its not working - in which case I cut Sentech no slack whatsoever.
They want to be a business, and in the electronic field - they better behave like a business.
I believe in consumer activism. If something is being paid for, it must be delivered.

To come up with 'gee cut them some slack' or 'teething problems' as justification for you and I as consumers to sit on our behinds and allow stupidity, bad service or no service' - is to let that company think that this form of behaviour is acceptable. (Like an abusive relationship, people behave in certain ways because thats what other people ALLOW).

You dont, as a consumer, 'teach' anything to a company, by tolerating shoddy, bad, or inefficient service - except the knowledge, to the company, that this shoddy behaviour is 'acceptable' and normal.

As a consumer, and paying good money, its not our place to be lab rats - and it does nothing for our general self respect or sense of self worth, to be given any reasoning whatsoever which results in us sitting back and accepting a company's bad service or behaviour.

This doesnt mean to say that I dont think Sentech is providing a great product. They are. When it works. But thats as far as I as a consumer can go. Dont ask me to 'cut a company some slack' or do anything to offset an absence of service.
This is consumerism, not a friendship.

They know this, and behave accordingly - so I must also operate along similar lines.

I'm not an animal whose loyalty can be bought with a regular meal or service. I'm a consumer who is paying for a service. So I'm not 'grateful' that service has been restored. Why should I be? I'm paying for it. Loyalty is irrelevent, patience is not required, its a business transaction between US and THEM. Lousy service, or a clear breakdown in company-communications is not my problem - its theirs. The reality is they've failed me, and they've failed all of you.

Okay.

When things are working. Great. I'm the first to compliment them, but I'll also be the first to cut their throat if they think that the inferior service over the previous few days, means it is acceptable behaviour on their part.

This is business. Not a personal relationship. I pay - you pay - they provide. Clear cut. No confusion. So suggesting that allowances should be made because they're new, is doing them a disservice, in the long run, because they as a company, will fail to grasp their place in this business relationship. We pay - they provide.

This simple truism applies to any service you spend money on - so NOT attacking Sentech for their stupidity over the last few days, will mean they wont learn - and they'll potentially do it again.

So dont misunderstand me, I'm a very happy Sentech user - but that doesnt blind me to the reality of their function in the business arrangement we have going..

And saying its 'typical South African way of thought' (demanding everything right now) - just clouds the issue.. the approach I describe above, is the only approach you can have in business.

Sentech isnt 'frikkie the neighbour fixing a car in the driveway on weekends for small change', its a Company, running partly on our money. So this isnt throwing toys - its pointing out a fundamental part of the PROVIDER-&gt;CONSUMER construct that most of the modern world runs by.

I was irked and outraged that they had the nerve to not only fail in their service providing, but attempt to shirk their responsibility in this regard when called on it - and now I'm content that they are doing what our money requested them to do without interruption in the first place. Like they say in the Mafia movies, its strictly business. Do it, or fail. It's that simple. Dont say you're a business and then rely on anyone's forgiveness, loyalty, or willingness to cut you any slack because of what you didnt do.

So even though I'm currently - for the first time in days - getting speeds of 7k and over, doesnt mean I'm grateful, content, happy, or forgiving of Sentech. Either they lied systematically, or they are frighteningly incompetent - its one or the other, and neither option inspires me to feel confidence.

Sentech need to feel the deep displeasure that many on this forum have been experiencing for days. This means phoning them, requesting their fax number - and faxing hard copy to them of letters pointing out their vile behaviour over the last few days. Further than this, requesting phone numbers of those higher up in Sentech, and jamming those persons phone lines with outraged calls and faxes - is also a good way to go. Emails can just be deleted. Using up their fax machine paper, and forcing higher management to confront angry, dissatisfied customers on the phone, will go some way towards demonstrating that they are now dealing with an active public and customer base. Not merely, as they seem to think, a bunch of whiney couch potato's who lack the ability to make their unhappiness felt in the real world.

But hey, I think Sentech are great, and Im happy :)

But that doesnt mean anything beyond the fact that 'I'm happy with now getting the service Im paying for'. This doesnt mean that Sentech should be allowed to get away with what has been demonstrated over the last few days as either blatant ignorance, or a frighteningly stupid blatant unconcern with their customers.
 
if sentech expect us to pay R1500 a month for guranteed 2k a sec i think they might need to start suppling what they are smoking !!!!

Service in SA is like the tooth fairy and easter bunny damn hard to prove it exists !!

gonna trade my wireless for a 14.4 modem , need to see more then 1k a sec.

lol bandwidth test at bandwidth place just gave me this error

The test key was not accepted
The speed test results page will only accept results from tests that have a unique key. These keys can only be used once and are given out when a speed test is started. This helps prevent submitting of results that didn't come from a genuine test. This test was not counted.


Possible causes
Using "back" from the results page
Accessing the results page from a favorites link or direct URL entry
The test took too long to complete; each key is only good for a limited time

i'm going to sleep [}:)]

in chaos all things are harmonious
 
38.8 kilobits per second

Communications 38.8 kilobits per second
Storage 4.7 kilobytes per second
1MB file download 3.6 minutes
Subjective rating Slow

Explain results


Info
Date & time Monday, May 10, 2:04AM*
Test type IDT4 Free
Connection type Wireless: UMTS
Region Africa
Data size 605KB
IP address 66.18.85.241
Provider InfoSat (Pty) Ltd


This morning also has 3 bars, 11% and 42 BER. Compare to signature.

MyDraadloos -Base 36 Bedfordview Signal=9%patch Freq=2518 Gain99db
 
did the same test at bandwidthplace.com and got the following:

Communications 87.2 kilobits per second
Storage 10.6 kilobytes per second
1MB file download 1.6 minutes
Subjective rating Slow

Explain results


Info
Date & time Monday, May 10, 2:11AM*
Test type IDT4 Free
Connection type Other
Region Africa
Data size 605KB

I don't know why mine looks a little better but it is, hovering at around 10KB/s so it seems they are tweaking it.
 
I wouldn't trust that site for accurate results.

Here's what I get to a box in the UK that's on an ethernet connection:

Communications 34 kilobits per second
Storage 4.2 kilobytes per second
1MB file download 4.1 minutes
Subjective rating Slow


--
 
seeing 10k - 20k a sec from tucows.saix.net
seeing 5k from download.com although it did climb to 15k for a few seconds.
web pages seem alright but local speed test came in at 7.5k a sec.[xx(]

Im still not happy with the performance but at least its semi useable, still no offical word from Sentech. All downloads where done with DAP.

in chaos all things are harmonious
 
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