BitCo Consumer Review

ruhanstander said:
Am I the only one frustrated with Bitco not doing their debit order runs on the 1st of the month like all other service providers. Or if it falls on a weekend, the next business day?
And they refuse to have it change to manual pay to suit the client.
Click to expand...

Hi Ruhanstander,

Please send us a PM on when your debit order wen off your account so we can investigate?

We try run them as close to the 1st as possible, if the 1st falls onto a weekend then we run it on the next business day

Apologies for the inconvenience, please shoot me a PM so we can investigate and improve this process

Mike
 
sturshel said:
Howzit guys. My place is in pta north, Florauna to be exact. My place is right on the mountain facing north, looks like one of the towers might be south (behind me, on the other side of the mountain) ? Any body fom my area on Bitco?

I cannot suffer Telkom anymore, basically 2 meg max!

I NEED THE 10 MEG SERVICE :twisted:
Click to expand...

Hi Sturshel,

From a quick coverage check on our map you do seem to fall within the coverage Zone

The closest high site seems to be in an area called Wonderboom and is around 5km from your location

Lets wait for the LOS test and hopefully you will have clear LOS to the tower and your suffering will be over :-)

Mike
 
CriticalConsumer said:
I am also a little confused when I receive 3 - 4 different documents that relate to payment. Leves me wondering which is correct.

As for the debit order being within 5 days of the new month - it probably has to do with one of two things: Cost of debit orders running on the 1st of the month or Billing cycle configuration on the billing system.

As for not offering other options for payment: this is definitely not good practise however; they are being cautious in the consumer space and ensuring that services are paid for.
The appetite for risk will be very small initially but will grow as their confidence and client base in the consumer space grows - also possibly one of the reasons.

Like I mentioned before, they are on a learning curve within the consumer space and are used to dealing with business clients. Things will get better as we all learn together.

Just my 2c...hopefully Showerhead doesn't steal that too :p
Click to expand...

Thanks CriticalConsumer,

I am going to investigate what invoices you guys get on a monthly basis as it should only be one invoice for the monthly services you have.

In addition to that you should receive a statement showing your account balance and history of payments

I will have a chat with our accounts team and revert back with some feedback

Mike
 
BitCo said:
Thanks CriticalConsumer,

I am going to investigate what invoices you guys get on a monthly basis as it should only be one invoice for the monthly services you have.

In addition to that you should receive a statement showing your account balance and history of payments

I will have a chat with our accounts team and revert back with some feedback

Mike
Click to expand...

Cool @ Mike. I would recommend rather sending one email with a current invoice and statement of account instead of many emails with individual documents.

The confusion begins when a person receives too many emails with different documents.
 
Hi Guys,

So the Techs from BITCO where at my place this morning, very friendly and knowledgeable gentlemen, the site survey took roughly 45 mins. They could not install immediately because there was no clear line of site due to trees etc. , I asked the Tech does this mean its a no-go on the install he said no he will submit the report to the engineers and I should have feedback by Monday.

My question is does this mean I will not get coverage? Are there any other ways of boosting the signal?

really want to try this product out as there are some rave reviews on it?

What now?
 
I basically had the same answer.. although my techs couldn't tell me anything specific.. I tried asking for more info. Reply was we cant disclose that.. I can understand the tight lips. As it could give false hope and people could end up blaming the techs. So il wait for the report. Patiently. .. was truly looking forward to that 5mb link though :( aww well.

Shout out to bitco. Your staff are friendly and seem to be excellent at what they do.
 
Raiden112 said:
Hi Guys,

So the Techs from BITCO where at my place this morning, very friendly and knowledgeable gentlemen, the site survey took roughly 45 mins. They could not install immediately because there was no clear line of site due to trees etc. , I asked the Tech does this mean its a no-go on the install he said no he will submit the report to the engineers and I should have feedback by Monday.

My question is does this mean I will not get coverage? Are there any other ways of boosting the signal?

really want to try this product out as there are some rave reviews on it?

What now?
Click to expand...

If you can, cut / trim the trees. You still have coverage, just not CLEAR line of sight (LOS). Any WAN service provider would be cautious to provide a service where this no clear LOS. The tree would cause intermittent faults or block the signal path altogether.

Would you rather have a fault prone service or good service? So having the network engineering / planning team evaluate the risk is standard procedure.

Another way around it is to put up a 5 - 10m pole to overcome the problem if you can however this obviously makes things prone to lightning and wind (can be stayed using steel cable though).
 
Waiting patiently as well ...... Apparently there are other base stations around my place that have clear LOS but are not owned by BITCO.....Im hoping BITCO can strike a deal for renting space on the pole :-)
 
jcheek said:
By way of background interest (slightly O/T), some technical info on the requirements and bandwidth demands for streaming video.

For those interested in more technical details, this article gives quite a nice overview of typical bandwidth requirements for streaming, using the contemporary H.264 video codec and with specific reference to online streaming services like Netflix and Hulu.
Click to expand...

jcheek, this was very useful, thank you. What too did you use to graph your consumption?
 
BitCo came a few weeks ago and did a LOS test. Apparently there's bloody great bluegum in the way (even though signal strength was good). So I'm about to chop down a tree at great expense - here's hoping it was only that tree and the engineers were on the money.
 
beerygaz said:
BitCo came a few weeks ago and did a LOS test. Apparently there's bloody great bluegum in the way (even though signal strength was good). So I'm about to chop down a tree at great expense - here's hoping it was only that tree and the engineers were on the money.
Click to expand...

Holding thumbzzzz :p
 
beerygaz said:
jcheek, this was very useful, thank you. What too did you use to graph your consumption?
Click to expand...

Pleasure, beerygaz - glad you found it of interest.

The traffic graph was produced by a Peplink Balance 20 dual-WAN router.

Off-topic : ADSL maxes out at about 4Mbps in my area, and BitCo isn't here yet, so for the moment I have two WAN connections : a 4G LTE connection on Telkom Mobile, and a 2 Mbps ADSL connection with MWeb. The LTE connection gives me about 50Mbps (but is capped), whereas the DSL connection is slow (but uncapped). I use the Peplink to bond the two links together and give me about a 30Mbps "semi-capped" connection with failover. Apart from providing the intelligent dual-WAN functionality, the Peplink - a really wonderful piece of kit, by the way - also has some incredibly useful management features, including traffic monitoring.

Ultimately I plan to ditch the DSL connection (high fixed cost, slow, unreliable) and replace it with a wireless link (possibly BitCo - LOS, clear FUP and equipment permitting). I don't think I'll ever ditch the LTE in favour of a single BitCo link - I'm not sure I could ever go back to a 2.5Mbps or 5.0Mbps connection now!

On-topic : Good luck with that (invasive alien) tree!
 
Another excellent star to put up to BitCo's support.

Had an issue while RDP'ing to a specific server on a specific port being throttled. Garth (CEO) sorted it out for me directly.

PS: Their support department not as tech savvy as the rest of us here so you need to be patient with them (which I think is fair)

But BitCo's management is really doing it right. What a pleasure to experience such good service in this poepol banana republic of ours... :D
 
BitCo said:
Hi Guys,

I will request some technical detail on the power consumption of the equipment and post this info for you so that you can work around the ongoing power problems.

All our high sites have battery backups and we have mobile generators on standby if we experience prolonged outages.

Mike
Click to expand...

Hey Mike

Have you managed to get any info around this? Unfortunately my load shedding schedule is smack in the middle of the day and it's making a pretty miserable person ATM. I'd like to go and buy a UPS before the end of the week.
 
Sparky_za said:
Hey Mike

Have you managed to get any info around this? Unfortunately my load shedding schedule is smack in the middle of the day and it's making a pretty miserable person ATM. I'd like to go and buy a UPS before the end of the week.
Click to expand...

Hi Sparky:

Here are power consumption details for the different components of the BitCo system:

Cisco SF-300-8 switch supplied by BitCo consumes 7.1 Watts http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/produc...ess-smart-switches/data_sheet_c78-610061.html

PoE injector can use up to 60 Watts
http://www.hedindata.se/dokument/C-POE-173_s.pdf

Linksys E900 WiFi router consumes around 5 Watts
http://www.tpcdb.com/product.php?id=2023

So total power consumption is around 80 Watts. You would need a 160 Watt UPS max for this setup however the size of the batteries will determine how long the UPS will run.

A good indicator can be found here on how to calculate run time based on power draw - this is an APC product page and is calculated based on their UPS's:
http://www.apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=27&tab=models


Edit: I just became a casualty of "load shedding" and my APC BackUPS Pro 1500 with extended battery indicates on its LCD that I have 941 minutes of power remaining. I am posting this using that power...and it drives my internet / networking setup.
I also have an APC BackUPS Pro 1200 and it has 196 minutes of power remaining - this unit is over two years old...

The aim this updated post is to give you an idea of what you can do with the UPS for the equipment from BitCo...
 
Last edited:
CriticalConsumer said:
Hi Sparky:

Here are power consumption details for the different components of the BitCo system:

Cisco SF-300-8 switch supplied by BitCo consumes 7.1 Watts http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/produc...ess-smart-switches/data_sheet_c78-610061.html

PoE injector can use up to 60 Watts
http://www.hedindata.se/dokument/C-POE-173_s.pdf

Linksys E900 WiFi router consumes around 5 Watts
http://www.tpcdb.com/product.php?id=2023

So total power consumption is around 80 Watts. You would need a 160 Watt UPS max for this setup however the size of the batteries will determine how long the UPS will run.

A good indicator can be found here on how to calculate run time based on power draw - this is an APC product page and is calculated based on their UPS's:
http://www.apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=27&tab=models


Edit: I just became a casualty of "load shedding" and my APC BackUPS Pro 1500 with extended battery indicates on its LCD that I have 941 minutes of power remaining. I am posting this using that power...and it drives my internet / networking setup.
I also have an APC BackUPS Pro 1200 and it has 196 minutes of power remaining - this unit is over two years old...

The aim this updated post is to give you an idea of what you can do with the UPS for the equipment from BitCo...
Click to expand...

Thanks for that info dude!

Now the shop I was going to buy from doesn't have stock... I guess there may have been a bit of a run on this kind of stuff of late... so frustrating!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X