I have been with Marc at Netdirect for a while now and can give a pretty good summary of how they are.
The installation price is heavy but it is good equipment. I priced the equipment through my dealer account at Scoop and he is making very little mark-up. Most other WISP's use little grids with basic routerboards which is fine for 1 or 2meg lines. anything more than that and you are better off with the proper Parabolic dish he installs. Just make sure he actually installs it and doesnt just charge for the more expensive one but gives you the cheapie. He used to offer 2 options. The good stuff for around R4000 or the more basic setup for about R1700 if memory serves. On the monthly price, just remember that it is gold class broadband, meaning higher priority on the provider's (MWEB in this case) network. At least that is how it was when I signed up back then, if he has changed this then I wouldn't know. A lot of WISP's offer very watered down bandwidth as it is very expensive and they try and maximise profitibility as they can only generally upgrade their bandwidth in lump increments. this means they need to have the need before they will just upgrade. often this entails waiting a couple of months of bottlenecking to squeeze out the cash. I understand their reasons, but it does come at the expense of a less reliable connection for a while for the customers.
Pros:
- When all is good, you have a nice solid download speed with low ping
- you can be in touch with the owner directly (no call centre)
- No throttling on his side (although I have my suspicians about his provider MWEB slowing down Netflix)
- doesnt complain about your data usage or torrents or anything like that.
Cons:
- stability not consistant. May be great for weeks, then days of up and down, and by down I mean sometimes completely off.
- doesn't ever notify of upgrades and scheduled downtime. often only find out when you complain of speed or connectivity issues
- international speed sometimes very slow while local speed is brilliant. looks good at first glance but you soon realise that you can do nothing online if it isnt a local site.
- I suspect that he manually juggles his bandwidth. whoever complains about low speeds gets someone else's until they complain. There appears to not be any automated load balancing in place.
- often doesn't reply to messages when you try and get him to sort out an issue. Even worse is that sometimes he replies to say he cant do anything now because he is out.
I understand the physical limitations of being away from the office, but since an ISP is a 24 hour operation there should be somebody who can sort out an issue. the internet doesn't close when he goes to bed.
Overall, we like to complain about whatever we have and he has caused me many days of swearing and going crazy, but overall I have to say that I am 1 million times happier than when I had ADSL. Despite the periods of "rough seas" I still have more uptime and constancy than ADSL. The other WISP's in the area are pretty anal about what you can and can't do, so I like the freedom.
However, As soon as fibre is available (area is already lit up) I will change. The price I pay for a 4meg line is halfway to a 100meg fibre line, so for me its a no-brainer.
Marc is a good guy, but seems to have a bit of a concentration issue. I reckon he has severelly undiagnosed ADHD! If you have dealt with him you will know what I mean. No contracts so nothing to lose except the installation cost. If you decide to change WISP's then 10 to 1 you will use the same equipment. Might just have to change the routerboard on the dish depending on what system they use.
Hope that helps.
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