Here is my 2 pence worth
limnos said:
...I cannot have ADSL as Telskum do no offer it in my area, Kyalami..
It seems as my only option is to move to iBurst, that is why I need some reliable advice...
limnos, you have answered your own question: ADSL is not available in your area (or you are too far from the exchange for the 5.xKm Telkom copper cable limit- altho someone else on the forum mentioned they have ADSL & are 8Km away from the exchange, you might want to check that out before deciding to get iBurst).
MyWireless, like I said before, is something I wouldn't even touch if I had a haemorrhagic viral disease, for fear of catching something worse. MW is also not an option if you want to be able to do all the things you mentioned- before your retirement.
Vodacon's 3G1Gig offering is only for the insanely rich, and 3G coverage is not widespread, so that excludes that, especially if you want to try P2P & gaming on a 1Gig cap.
There is another potential option looming as early as February: WISP legalisation. But, I don't know that it will happen due to ICASA licensing issues of VANS.
iBurst P2P: until recently I have seen no need for P2P on iBurst bcos most of my downloads have been really fast, but remember that has been uncapped, unshaped, unprioritised (or so it seemed to me). Like I said: until recently. Now I'm not sure anymore bcos I personally have been experiencing some really strange (WBS) iBurst behaviour lately, which has caused me to believe that WBS are at the very least testing a capping implementation, no way to know bcos WBS are neither confirming nor denying. One thing is however likely: the 3Gig cap should kick in when iBurst officially launches in April 2005. If that happens, it is likely to be worse than ADSL bcos you will be capped locally & limited to 64K (contention ratio is unknown/undecided).
iBurst Gaming: I am not a gamer, but I can tell you that the weird iBurst problems have included high latency. There is an iBurst gaming thread somewhere on the forum, best to ask people to post their pings against the servers you cannot live without.
If all you ever wanted to do is browsing, send & receive email, moderate downloads & uploads, and you had R599, R679 or R699 to spend per month, as well as coverage in your area, then iBurst would do the trick.
The questions you need to ask yourself are:
- Will iBurst cost you more per month than ISDN with InfinitCall?
- Will you be able to live with your connection being limited to 64K (unknown contention) after your 3Gig cap has been reached?
On the issue of going for a 24 month contract, or alternatively buying the proprietary hardware and going for a 30 day notice contract: your choice.
If I had the money right now, I would buy my UTD & switch to 30dn, but that's bcos I believe iBurst is better than MW (the Sentech implementation of IPWireless) as a technology, and I *hope* that I would be able to sell my UTD to some poor shmuck if I had to.
Hope that helps.
