BitCo Consumer Review

Goobie said:
Hey Mike,

I'm a total noob so excuse the stupid question. How would my browsing experience differ from my Bitco connection to a ADSL connection (assuming both are running at the same speed)? At what stage does line contention have a noticeable effect on browsing and streaming experience. Will I notice the difference between your 1:1 service and eg. a 1:4 service?

thanks
Click to expand...

Hi Goobie,

Thanks for the post

The easiest way to see the difference between our network and traditional ADSL type of services would be to do some ping tests and trace routes.

Try pining international web sites like www.bbc.co.uk and try ping some sites on our content delivery node - www.google.com / www.youtube.com

Compare the results between ADSL and you will see a noticeable difference in latency.

Mike
 
Pitbull said:
I am extremely sad that I'll be parting ways with Bitco in the next few months. The new property is not within their coverage and I'll miss this service immensely. Only other service provider where I'll be going is some no name brand I have never heard of. They have a tower right on top of the Magaliesberg mountains. Is there any way I can convince Bitco to install on that tower? Maybe even a promise of a few clients signing up to that exact tower?

I have 3 close friends staying on those plots too. And they would love the service.

I'm dreading the day I need to cancel Bitco :cry:
Click to expand...

Hi Pitbull,

:cry: Sad to loose you as a customer.

Try send me the coordinates of that tower and let me see what we have.

We are busy building in that area so i will see what we can do for you?

Mike
 
BitCo said:
Hi Pitbull,

:cry: Sad to loose you as a customer.

Try send me the coordinates of that tower and let me see what we have.

We are busy building in that area so i will see what we can do for you?

Mike
Click to expand...

Mike you will make more than just my year :D

I'll PM you.
 
Gatekeeper said:
I have the same issue there are numerous people in Florauna including me that want to go the bitco route but if there is no signal this will be an issue. Hopefully this might get them to install a new high site.
Please bitco help us out. Myself and neighbours are ready to switch...
Click to expand...

Hi sturshel & Gatekeeper,

From a quick check our 2 towers by you are in Wonderboom (Mountain) & Faerie Glen

let me know once you LOS has been done and i will check the pictures to see what we have planned in the area

We are busy building more sites in PTA just a long process for each high site activation.

Mike
 
TheElf said:
Sooo.... After I was initially declined, no LOS, a new High site was made active in my area. I saw Bitco installing at the house across the road asked them about it. Sent my mail and 4 days later my line was handed over. :p

I have my line for roughly 2 weeks now, and I must say I like it a lot (I am coming from 3G, LTE no adsl available in my complex).

The only thing that bugs me so far is when I am playing Dota2. I have a ping of say 38-45ms, then randomly will have spikes of high 200+ms, its only irritating me, but not a major concern atm.
Regarding the rest... I am happy. I have watched countless youtube vids. Rest of the family successfully streamed a movie or to, something I never would have been able to do on my 3G (mosly because of the cost).

One last thing... Will it help to say limit my steam dl speed to 400kbps , because when I download a new game I get throttled. I understand this as using the lines full capacity for more than an hour... just wondering. Any pointers?

PS: Sad to see you go Pitbull, even though I have not commented on here that much as 3 post I was reading here a lot
Click to expand...

Hi TheElf,

Thanks for the positive review.

sounds good but seems you might have a small bit of radio interference causing the spikes in latency

Can you PM me your name so we can log onto your equipment and double check the CCQ and quality

Mike
 
BitCo said:
Hi Murmaider,

Thanks for the post

We feel the same way, users trying to bypass our FUP and do large unattended downloads typically ruin it for everyone.

I wish we didn't have to enforce any form of FUP but the amount of abuse we experience on a daily basis is scary and abusive proposals ruin it for everyone.

Many users are upset me have implemented a DPI (Deep packet Inspection) but this has completely optomized the network and the feedback from the gamers, streamers and general users has been fantastic

Mike
Click to expand...

Hi Mike ,

With regards to BF4, what is the status as i was asked to test last week and weekend and was pleasantly surprised ,consistent,stable and a little bit of lag, but playable.

However last night the wheels fell off, the chassis disintegrated the gear box over took the headlights, feed back to Richard via support ticket!
 
Bitco, What would you consider abuse on a 10mb line? I do ~200-400GB per month with light torrents, mostly Netflix.

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Wikkels88 said:
You guys REALLY shouldn't be selling uncapped packages if this is the case, just my 2cents
Click to expand...

There was actually an article about this on MyBB today. Heavy down loaders should be using Capped solutions not uncapped. Uncapped is not for heavy downloading due to the restrictions. I'll get a link quick, I read it today.
 
BitCo said:
Hi Goobie,

Thanks for the post

The easiest way to see the difference between our network and traditional ADSL type of services would be to do some ping tests and trace routes.

Try pining international web sites like www.bbc.co.uk and try ping some sites on our content delivery node - www.google.com / www.youtube.com

Compare the results between ADSL and you will see a noticeable difference in latency.

Mike
Click to expand...

Mike, I think this is an excellent question and as no one browses by pinging sites, is still unanswered??
 
Bitco

BitCo said:
Hi OCD,

As i said before in my previous post our network is not designed for unattended downloads, we focus on delivering the highest quality bandwidth.

If you want to torrent 24/7 and use 900GB+ per month then a best effort service like ADSL is the way to go for you

I am sure some of the other ISP's who offer highly contended bandwidth would be happy to tolerate this kind of usage

Mike
Click to expand...

Dear Mike

I don't want to torrent 24/7 and use 900GB+!! I want to torrent about 2hrs per day and use a total of about 150GB per month without being speed limited.

I pay double what the ADSL rate is for above. I thought my expectations were reasonable. ??

My unhappiness with Bitco stems from your lack of transparency and bad customer service. I still have not been given feedback on many many issues. (support queries etc/ not forum posts)

I require Internet speed, not bandwidth! I get home and only have a couple of hours to enjoy anything before starting the daily grind again. So for about 4hrs a day I expect an uncapped, uncontended, unshaped and non throttled connection. 2 yrs ago this is what I was sold.
 
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Just sent all my paperwork to Bitco for a possible installation at my new house, should be good to go, as the 3rd house up from me has a Bitco install, however after reading some of the threads, is Bitco going to be ok for my needs,

I basically use Netflix most nights, and have my 2 children watching youtube on their iPads, will download the odd game from the Xbox Games with Gold page and I never torrent.

Am I going to have a decent experience or am I going to be throttled when I get home from work, because my children have been watching youtube all afternoon?

Side note, I was with SprintNet before I moved areas, and must say the connection was fantastic, no throttling ever.
 
thedudeman said:
Just sent all my paperwork to Bitco for a possible installation at my new house, should be good to go, as the 3rd house up from me has a Bitco install, however after reading some of the threads, is Bitco going to be ok for my needs,

I basically use Netflix most nights, and have my 2 children watching youtube on their iPads, will download the odd game from the Xbox Games with Gold page and I never torrent.

Am I going to have a decent experience or am I going to be throttled when I get home from work, because my children have been watching youtube all afternoon?

Side note, I was with SprintNet before I moved areas, and must say the connection was fantastic, no throttling ever.
Click to expand...

I have a Netflix sub for 4 screens HD.

MOST of the time 2 devices are streaming in HD at any given time. While that is happening I either game or watch youtube.
Rarely I download a torrent or two and update my games. At no point have I experienced any problems. With the increase in HD streaming I did increase my line from a 5Mbps to 10 Mbps just to be safe. I did notice a slight quality drop if all the devices in the house was streaming.

But for what you want to do, 5Mbps would be more than enough and you should not have any problems.
 
Pitbull said:
I have a Netflix sub for 4 screens HD.

MOST of the time 2 devices are streaming in HD at any given time. While that is happening I either game or watch youtube.
Rarely I download a torrent or two and update my games. At no point have I experienced any problems. With the increase in HD streaming I did increase my line from a 5Mbps to 10 Mbps just to be safe. I did notice a slight quality drop if all the devices in the house was streaming.

But for what you want to do, 5Mbps would be more than enough and you should not have any problems.
Click to expand...

Excellent, thanks, I have signed up for a 5mb service on a month to month, just for in case.
 
thedudeman said:
Just sent all my paperwork to Bitco for a possible installation at my new house, should be good to go, as the 3rd house up from me has a Bitco install, however after reading some of the threads, is Bitco going to be ok for my needs,

I basically use Netflix most nights, and have my 2 children watching youtube on their iPads, will download the odd game from the Xbox Games with Gold page and I never torrent.

Am I going to have a decent experience or am I going to be throttled when I get home from work, because my children have been watching youtube all afternoon?

Side note, I was with SprintNet before I moved areas, and must say the connection was fantastic, no throttling ever.
Click to expand...

Depends on how much you watch as Streaming will still use your bandwidth. If you stream in HD then you will be limited to say 2 movies perhaps if you lucky one after the other. if you download a game that will take a few hours to come down then you will get throttled

Basically you will have a 5MB line for an hour or 2 of continuous use then a 2MB line till you stop using it for a few hours then back to 5MB
 
Viashen said:
Depends on how much you watch as Streaming will still use your bandwidth. If you stream in HD then you will be limited to say 2 movies perhaps if you lucky one after the other. if you download a game that will take a few hours to come down then you will get throttled

Basically you will have a 5MB line for an hour or 2 of continuous use then a 2MB line till you stop using it for a few hours then back to 5MB
Click to expand...

Which doesn't or shouldn't affect the quality of his streams. It doesn't in my case. Only time I saw the effect on the 5Mbps line was when throttled and 4 devices are streaming at the same time. If not it went perfectly fine. (This was the reason for my upgrade to 10Mbps) Try tell the kids to switch off their devices so we can match a movie... :D
 
Pitbull said:
Which doesn't or shouldn't affect the quality of his streams. It doesn't in my case. Only time I saw the effect on the 5Mbps line was when throttled and 4 devices are streaming at the same time. If not it went perfectly fine. (This was the reason for my upgrade to 10Mbps) Try tell the kids to switch off their devices so we can match a movie... :D
Click to expand...

If he is throttled then HD does not work at all, Netflix, YouTube etc. If you can live with SD quality then you should be fine.

I've never actually tried 4 devices at the same time but 2 does not work for me as there simply wasn't enough bandwidth to keep an HD stream going but SD would be fine again

If you want a 5MB line for HD streaming then you actually need a 10MB line from Bitco to have 5MB continuous usage

I wish i could afford a 10MB line but at R1499 or R600 more than a 5MB it's just too much

Lol you'll have a better chance installing a separate link just for them
 
Viashen said:
If he is throttled then HD does not work at all, Netflix, YouTube etc. If you can live with SD quality then you should be fine.

I've never actually tried 4 devices at the same time but 2 does not work for me as there simply wasn't enough bandwidth to keep an HD stream going but SD would be fine again

If you want a 5MB line for HD streaming then you actually need a 10MB line from Bitco to have 5MB continuous usage

I wish i could afford a 10MB line but at R1499 or R600 more than a 5MB it's just too much

Lol you'll have a better chance installing a separate link just for them
Click to expand...

Doesnt sound fantastic to be honest. Real pity about SprintNet not having coverage in my area, 4Mb up and 4Mb down and no throttling ever.
 
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