BitCo Consumer Review

Hi Richard.Cumming

Our support is open Monday to Friday 8am - 5pm, we are planning to have after hours support for residential customers from 2015

We will post an update as and when we progress on this

You can send a mail to [email protected] and a technical representative will respond back to you tomorrow morning

Our core support is online 24/7 in the event of a network failure a technician will respond to the point of failure 24/7

Mike

Hello Mike,

Good to hear but this can't come soon enough. As you know, residential customers work during the day. It is really frustrating to not have a support person to speak to when something is happening after BitCo's working hours.

For instance on Friday at about 3pm give or take I asked for some support on port forwarding, specifically the general ports for PS4 gaming. Had to do this over email. Support did reply, on email, but I didn't see said email until 5pm approx. So this morning I get an email saying sorry we only work until 5pm.

You can see where this is a problem. Now gaming might not be a priority for some but what do you think 90% of your residential customers are doing? Gaming, streaming and downloading and uploading. When is this done? At night when people have come home from work, fed their kids and can have some time to themselves.

So you can see why I say that this can not come soon enough.

However I will give you lots of brownie points for getting back to me about this as well as the commitment to implement something is 2015. In my past experience with providers, I would have heard nothing so thanx for that.

Regards
Richard
 
Hello Mike,

Good to hear but this can't come soon enough. As you know, residential customers work during the day. It is really frustrating to not have a support person to speak to when something is happening after BitCo's working hours.

For instance on Friday at about 3pm give or take I asked for some support on port forwarding, specifically the general ports for PS4 gaming. Had to do this over email. Support did reply, on email, but I didn't see said email until 5pm approx. So this morning I get an email saying sorry we only work until 5pm.

You can see where this is a problem. Now gaming might not be a priority for some but what do you think 90% of your residential customers are doing? Gaming, streaming and downloading and uploading. When is this done? At night when people have come home from work, fed their kids and can have some time to themselves.

So you can see why I say that this can not come soon enough.

However I will give you lots of brownie points for getting back to me about this as well as the commitment to implement something is 2015. In my past experience with providers, I would have heard nothing so thanx for that.

Regards
Richard

Hi Richard

I have the exact same problem.I have been trying to have FIFA 15 ports prioritized for the past 3 weeks but its been email ping pong with the support guys so far.

The overall internet experience with Bitco(streaming,downloading etc) is great but I get terrible lag when I game.

At this stage I'm even afraid to complain as I do not wish to be cut off as a customer. I really don't have any viable alternative at the moment :(
 
Hi Richard,

Everything you have stated above is certainly noticed and we will certainly keep you updated as to when afterhours support for home users is available (as Mike said). Thank you for your understanding thus far.
 
Hello,

I see that in this reply to larryn, it is said that port forwarding is easily done.

I have been struggling to setup port forwarding for days now. It is just not working. I have tried pinging the ip and get no reply. I need to setup port forwarding for my cameras and several externally facing web interfaces.

I believe that this is not a router issue as I have tried a different router as well.

Can some please help or give some advice.

Thank you

Hi Richard.Cumming

We (the marketing team) are escalating this for you internally and will try reach an amicable solution to have support assist you appropriately. We will keep you update by private message.
 
So, I've had my BitCo 2mb line for the past 2-3 weeks or so, though I'd share my experiences.

- I cannot praise BitCo enough for their service. In a country where we are so used to being shafted or getting poor service it's a nice change of pace. From the initial correspondence in signing up to the installation, it was all painless and a pleasure.

- The two things I mainly use my line for gaming and downloading (more on the latter below). I've tried CS: GO and Destiny (I play this a lot) and the pings are excellent, I anticipate that other online games will run just as well for me. Loading times (Destiny, etc) have also greatly improved.

- Downloading is a mixed bag for me because the leaky bucket is definitely broken. I assume (I stand to be corrected) that for a 2mb line I should theoretically get around 300kb max download speed? I've never had that speed, be it Torrent, Steam downloads, PSN downloads or downloading updates/driver. The fastest I've seen my line go is around 260-270kb. Also, the speed doesn't go back the fastest after the second throttled hour of the leaky bucket. There are times where the line downloads as little as 100kb for 2-3 hours.

- I know there's been a lot of consternation about streaming and I'm not a heavy streamer but do watch the occasional youtube videos, some quite long. The buffer rate is acceptable for a 2mb line. It struggles a bit with 720 videos and 1080 is impossibru. However, 480 is just fine thought and for a 2mb line I'm not expecting to watch without a small wait for higher quality vids.

- One of the biggest plus points for me is the stability of my net. I haven't experienced a point yet where I've encountered major issues, disconnections or where I haven't been able to access stuff online.

Overall, I'm happy with the service I'm being provided with. As someone who can't have DSL this is a great alternative. I'd definitely think about upgrading to 5mb or 10mb (wife permitting :P) in the future but only if I know for sure the downloads will run closer to the speed it actually should be running at.

Keep up the good work BitCo guys and please don't become like Eskom etc.

Dear rajiv,

Thanks for the compliment and constructive feedback. We have PM’d you for your account details so that we can view your usage graph internally and confirm what you have been receiving. You should be receiving 2Mbps down which is equal to 250Kb/s and not 300Kb/s :)
 
Coverage issue

Where do I start....I have been looking like a madman for viable internet after moving into the suburb of morehill in Benoni it's so far away from the exchange (I believe 4km's). +\- that my Telkom adsl was non existent I looked up bitco I thought I had won the lotto when I saw that I was in the coverage area only to be told there's no tower as of yet in the area as well the Telkom guy that assessed that I had slow speeds told me it's an inside joke amongst their serviceman that when dispatched to morehill they "will ****" as the infrastructure is so bad I hope that a tower makes its way soon nearby as I'm certain a lot of people will use a viable Wireless ISP which to me seems bitco as being the best as I've searched the Internet like a madman for the best reviews and bitco in my opinion is number one plus the marketing manager gave me a call and said she's trying so hard to get dishes on high towers in Benoni I hope that for 2015 I can use this service I'll even pay annually just to have good reliable,quick Internet .
 
Anyone know if I can request a line upgrade now or should I wait till January? When do Bitco close off for December?

I'm getting the whole family tablets and will need to upgrade to a 10mbps line...
 
Anyone know if I can request a line upgrade now or should I wait till January? When do Bitco close off for December?

I'm getting the whole family tablets and will need to upgrade to a 10mbps line...

I assume that your line speed is a software config setting and not hardware. Changing line speed should be easy enough to do.
 
I assume that your line speed is a software config setting and not hardware. Changing line speed should be easy enough to do.

Yea, I've upgraded before from 2 - 5. Just want to know if they have any support staff there now that can do it. Will e-mail them and ask :)
 
Network freeze until 05/01/2015.

Thank you so much for the info Jarryd. I mentioned this in the PM but would just like to extend it to all the lovely staff at Bitco:

May you all at Bitco have a wonderful and joyous festive season with your friends, loved ones and family. Keep safe and we'll all be fighting fit for 2015 when it arrives to conquer new heights in our personal lives as well as business. ENJOY!
 
Network freeze until 05/01/2015.

Thank you so much for the info Jarryd. I mentioned this in the PM but would just like to extend it to all the lovely staff at Bitco:

May you all at Bitco have a wonderful and joyous festive season with your friends, loved ones and family. Keep safe and we'll all be fighting fit for 2015 when it arrives to conquer new heights in our personal lives as well as business. ENJOY!

+1
 
I finally got to the end of the rope with Telkom and have decided to try Bitco. Got a call from them earlier today confirming 13 Jan for site inspection and hopefully installation.

Just one question to current customers regarding DNS settings. I know Garth has posted on a few occasions that it's best to set the DNS at device level rather than on the router, but I have a Roku which doesn't support device level DNS settings. Are any of you using a Roku on Bitco with router based DNS settings? Any issues in this regard?
 
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