BitCo Consumer Review

Murmaider

Murmaider

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I had bitco installed last week at my place in Radiokop to replace my Amobia Connection.
I went with the 5mb uncapped (R855 p/m connection).

Over the last week I been running tests on the connection, everything from downloading to gaming to browsing and must say that I am extremely impressed. The connection has remained very stable and throughput is consistent. Speed tests done throughout the week have all been the same at 5.02Mb incoming and 0.98Mb outgoing.

Local latency is great with 4ms to our infrastructure in the Vox Rutherford Estate Data Center (peering via Nap Africa) and international latency is good. I hovered between 206ms - 219ms this weekend for EU World of Warcraft**

I never had one buffering moment or issue while watching 720p youtube videos. The videos load almost instant and play consistently. I would highly recommend these guys as a very viable alternative to other wireless providers.


** Their customer side shaping needs some tuning, for example WoW is shaped so you get around 28000ms wow lag (with 210ms home lag - took me a while to work out it was shaping). I was able to get around this by using a game tunnel service (like lowerping, betterping, etc). When I spoke to them about it they said they were aware of this and were working on adjusting it so I don't foresee it being an issue. They are new to customer solutions and I would expect their original shaping policies to be designed for business.
 
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I signed up with them today. I was very skeptical but after speaking to them I was sold on their service. At this moment I do not have the setup completed but by the sounds of things this might be the best internet that I've had in a long time. I am very excited to join them. This just might be a happy "marriage"

PS. Thanks Michael, you were very helpful.
 
When I read your post I got excited, I have a friend who has been battling with his ADSL. But after looking at the coverage map I see it doesn't cover his location in Pretoria. But I have suggested that he gives them a call.
 
I will do a full review as soon as I have the connection at home.
 
We also recently installed the 5Mb uncapped solution from Bitco and i have to say i have never been so impressed by a company's service. From quote to installation to the final quality of the link everything has been nothing short of exceptional. After struggling with a terrible ADSL line for over 5 years and battling back and forth with Telkom we decided to give Bitco's wireless solution a try. I could not believe how fast they responded and had someone at our premises for site survey.

Even the technicians that did the survey and installation were exceptional, they were friendly, well mannered and well informed. This may not seem that important but its nice to have good guys doing the work especially when they are crawling in your roof space and are inside of your home.

As for the link its self, it is the best internet connection i have ever had. It is stable and speeds are consistent 24/7. My wife and i both run small business's from our home in Fourways Gardens, my wife runs a small book keeping service and uses multiple remote desktop connections and VPN's to access her clients company files in Pastel. Since changing over to Bitco she has not dropped connection to an RDP session once and the response time of Pastel over VPN has tripled! I also run a small web development company from home and i'm sure many web developers will agree that there is nothing better than having a fast, reliable upload. The 1MB upload delivers 123KB consistently for me no matter which of my clients web servers i am connecting to, this has saved me so much time and the fact that you can still download or browse at 5MB while doing so literally brings a tear to my eye :-)

Im also an avid gamer, Battlefield 4, Day-Z, COD and Diablo III are just some of the online games we enjoy at home. Since changing from ADSL over to this system every single game has gotten better. The constant 5MB also really helps with all the updates on steam and origin too. There were some minor teething issues at first but after putting in a call at Bitco they were able to sort the issue out and our online gaming is better than ever. With Diablo III we are down to 190Msec constant, which does not seem that amazing but when you consider that is a European server and that on DSL we were averaging at about 280-320 it makes the world of difference.

This really is a great product and it is such a relief to finally have stable and consistent internet. I really would recommend the solution to anyone considering moving away from Telkom or other wireless providers. Thank goodness there is finally a decent alternative to most of the over subscribed rubbish out there. Thank you BITCO!
 
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OK so how does this system work. I had a look at their site they mention wireless. What technology is that?
 
Now I cannot wait. The installers are coming on Tuesday next week to install.
 
EddG said:
Now I cannot wait. The installers are coming on Tuesday next week to install.
Click to expand...

Just be aware that they come and install and then (from what I understand) bitco test the connection for a day or 2 to make sure its 100% stables and then they send you your router.

Garth could probably give more clarification on this.
 
Hi Koosi

BitCo have many highsites on towers or buildings located across Gauteng, Kwazulu Natal, Bloemfontein, Nelspruit etc. We install a dish similar to a satellite dish on your roof and this connects to the closest tower. Some of our business customers and very busy highsites are connected via 1Gb fibre links.

We can provide 2Mb, 5Mb and 10Mb Uncapped Internet that is of really high quality as we do not have to contend services over Telkom IPC for DSL.

We have been providing services to business for several years and now we are entering the home market.
 
100% correct Murmaider. We have an uptime guarantee of 99% for all our links so we need to make sure they are perfect before we hand them over for home or business use.

Our infrastructure team has extremely high standards for installations.
 
garthvs said:
Hi Koosi

BitCo have many highsites on towers or buildings located across Gauteng, Kwazulu Natal, Bloemfontein, Nelspruit etc. We install a dish similar to a satellite dish on your roof and this connects to the closest tower. Some of our business customers and very busy highsites are connected via 1Gb fibre links.

We can provide 2Mb, 5Mb and 10Mb Uncapped Internet that is of really high quality as we do not have to contend services over Telkom IPC for DSL.

We have been providing services to business for several years and now we are entering the home market.
Click to expand...
In other words a small microwave link yes, not unlike ones I used to install and maintain many years ago.
 
garthvs said:
We can provide 2Mb, 5Mb and 10Mb Uncapped Internet that is of really high quality as we do not have to contend services over Telkom IPC for DSL.
Click to expand...

10Mb? I thought 5Mb was the max,
Garth what is the pricing on the 10Mb, I might be interested in upgrading.
 
Our initial trial offering was limited to 5Mbps but we now have a 10Mbps option.

Our residential options are:

2Mbps R 699 p/m
5Mbps R 899 p/m
10Mbps R 1499 p/m

There is an initial installation fee which is reduced based on the period you wish to sign up for and a free Wifi router is included with the service.
 
Hi guys, i have been using the Bitco home uncapped for about a month now and although i am happy with their overall service, My line seems to drop to 2 MB sometimes. This happens at around 11 PM. When it does work its awesome, download speeds up to 500kbps on torrents and speedtest shows 5mb + download and 1.09 upload with a ping. I am wondering if this is due to shaping done on the line.

Garthvs: does Bitco have unshaped accounts ?
 
Hi NightCrawler

Rather than highly contend our services like DSL, which IMHO has degraded to a point where it is terrible to use, we decided to keep our bandwidth very clean and only slow your line down if you do heavy downloading for a substantial amount of time. As soon as you back off on the bandwidth for about 1 hour your line will run at full capacity again.

We wish we could give everyone 10Mb constant but the cost of international bandwidth and the rand / dollar exchange rate prohibits us from doing this.

We do have Premium business packages but these are far too expensive for home use.
 
garthvs said:
Hi NightCrawler

Rather than highly contend our services like DSL, which IMHO has degraded to a point where it is terrible to use, we decided to keep our bandwidth very clean and only slow your line down if you do heavy downloading for a substantial amount of time. As soon as you back off on the bandwidth for about 1 hour your line will run at full capacity again.

We wish we could give everyone 10Mb constant but the cost of international bandwidth and the rand / dollar exchange rate prohibits us from doing this.

We do have Premium business packages but these are far too expensive for home use.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your input. What do you consider excessive usage? (To MTN it's 2GB/month, to TElkom its 100+) and are there off peak times that are a little more flexible?
 
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