Broadband Ratings

Although I am not punting Iburst, Perhaps we need to bear in mind that the service is uncapped and most users would be downloading constantly which have a negative effect of the test results.

I think the next set of tests (once Iburst caps) will show a massive speed increases from current tests.

Also I think once they sort out their issues with the busier towers latency will improve greatly.

It will never be as responsive as Wired Connectivity but it should be a lot faster than ADSL
 
alchamy said:
Although I am not punting Iburst,
Click to expand...

I don't think there is space for the punting of any service or view within the survey/report.

It has to be "clinical" and honest.

Therefore it is essential to provide feedback on possibilities that could influence the statistics and invalidate it.

I don't like the fact that Telkom's products as sort of best, but I have to accept it.

Just as I have to accept that the alternatives to Telkom is not up to scratch.

I believe that this report is valuable also to the ISP's - it provides them with a tool to benchmark themselves as seen through the eyes of knowledgable clients and users.
 
Hi Kaspaas

Well said! While we were calculating the results we were often surprised by the results, but since we were confident that the calculation was accurate there was nothing that could be done. We had to report the results from these tests and nothing else.

As you mentioned it provides valuable information to ISP’s and prospective broadband clients. We all know that the advertised characteristics of a service are is nothing more than meaningless data, and by providing real-world figures Telkom, Sentech and WBS can no longer simply say what they want about an offering. I am confident that this report can grow into the most respected barometer of broadband services in South Africa. It is definitely a good thing that such a report will then be in the hands of the users and not the industry players!

Regards,

RPM
 
Excellent work! on the international page, could you please think of putting the 'caps and restrictions on the results, so that it shows just how bad the caps are on the SA services.
 
kaspaas said:
I believe that this report is valuable also to the ISP's - it provides them with a tool to benchmark themselves as seen through the eyes of knowledgable clients and users.
Click to expand...

Agreed, definately a wake up call for Iburst, they thought they were doing so well. Looks like they have loads of room for improvement. Sentech is not even Broadband at this stage.

This Document will also provide an excelent standard for choosing broadband services and provide statistics to assist users in making the right choice.

If Iburst & Sentech do not up their game, a document like this could become a real thorn in their side.
 
There are no speed tests available for 3G yet, so they are not included in the first report. If we take "reasonable" average values for their download (150 KBits/sec) and upload (80 KBits/sec), they get 48% locally (16% internationally). If we are gracious and give them download (200 KBits/sec) and upload (100 KBits/sec), they get 52% locally (18% internationally). Hence still the worst in SA.

It is their R10 per extra meg that crushes them. They will have to get Japan speeds to compete with other services, if they want to ask R10 000 per extra Gig.

Hopefully there will be 3G testers for the next round, so that we can get a reliable figure for them.
 
I'm sure it's too late to comment on the layout and grammar, but by and large, a very good job !

I'm not sure whether I've downloaded the latest version or not ?

Anyway, my 2cents :-

The text justification up various words in slightly obscure places. Words like making should never be split up across lines, they should rather drop to the next line and the previous lines justification would spread out slightly. This can be time consuming, unless your a type-setter by career ! :D

The grey Verdict boxes - possible white space on the second line. In other words, no text should appear under the Verdict header, it should be aligned to the start of the verdict text.

Standardisation of colons : - The top verdict boxes use them, the lower score boxes don't.

But that's just me nit-picking - it's obvious to see how much work has gone into the document, it's easily of professional standards in terms of grammar and layout.
 
Hi guys

Thanks for all the suggestions and help regarding the document. While not many content changes were made, I did make some grammatical and layout changes. I even tried to solve the typesetting problem :-)

Please keep the suggestions coming as we will include these in the next installment!

Regards,

RPM
 
With their new pricing, under the same assumptions as above, 3G improves considerably, with scores (60% loc, 20% intl) and (65% loc, 22% intl) which may bring them much closer to a position where they can start competing with other SA services.
 
Hi RPM & Beyers,

just wondering if this is still the latest URL for the Broadband Ratings document:

http://home.telkomsa.net/rudolph/broadband_ratings.pdf

and whether you are happy to "release" it into the world as such?

Reason: I would like to start signatur-tising your very good work - I need to change my signature soon to stop hArTh from hunting me down :D
 
Impressed

I am impressed.
Very professional.
Markinor could sub contract out to you now.
 
rpm,

Maybe a good idea would be to feature the broadband report somewhere prominent on the homepage where lots of visitors will see it. Put it somewhere above the fold and have an html version as well as the PDF. You could also have a section describing how the ratings were calculated and have a history of previous ratings so one can get an idea of how the market is progressing. I think its quite a valuable resource for someone deciding on what connection to get so it makes sense to make it as available as possible. Just a suggestion.
 
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