Dont take iburst if you are considering.

[markos]

Take it from someone who has been a iburst user for over a year now, dont under any circumstance go for iburst over adsl.

Their service is terrible, their response time is worse, and they never admit they have a problem mostly because they are incompetent and their employees don't know what they are doing so they can cut costs and hire any muppet.

Every month you will have problems for a week at the least, when there is bad weather you will have problems and things WILL NOT get resolved for weeks at a time.

I made a huge mistake so don't do the same. Telkom will screw you, make you wait and overcharge you but at least you will have some kind of a service and not only 1/2 a months worth every month.

You can listen to me or don't but just be warned and if you do decide to try dont sign a contract, instead try it for a month and see for your-self.

Hope this post prevents people from making a huge mistake.

Regards

 

[Fudzy]

I will counter this statement and say the only big problem iBurst has is with their pathetic accounts department, they seem to be getting better though but it does mean keeping a closer eye on the automatic debits going through. Problems seem to be relative to the area in which you stay.

 

[native]

I have a little bit of faith that once they get their accounts department right and hire the right head of customer care who will manage the entire customer service department things might go the right direction.

Ed Hall used to pop in here and answer couple of question and also ran a blog which seam to have died.

They appointed a new Customer Care HOD who fail to interact with customers in this forum.

To my knowledge they do have an incident report page and also a network status page. I guess if you have no connection and no backup you will not be able to view those pages

 

[prc66]

Hi Think Marcos should apply for a job there and solve these issues. It's true also that ADSL only works in one place but naturally should work better. If you only needed in one place ADSL is a no brainer and chosing iburst is a bit daft.

 

[PeterCH]

I dunno. I'm using month to month MWEB iBurst in Bloubergstrand and it works fine.
Had downtime last month for a few hours until they fixed the tower after that no issues,
speeds are usually close to if not above 100KB/sec download and signal is 100%
without any antennas, just the USB modem. I will admit that ADSL prices are dropping
and if iBurst doesn't follow suit soon it will be an expensive option but at present
it's ok for me.

 

[MrH]

There's a good side and a bad side to iburst.

"Good" is if you have a good signal it works well, and in my +2 years with iburst I had full speed most the time so I never needed to use the iburst "tech team".

"Bad" is that iburst accounts will screw you as they don't know how to run a debit order system, in fact they are the reason I gave up on iburst and probably the main reason for many that have left.

"Bad" is also the attitude of the "people" that work for the company, not the sort of company anyone should want to deal with, so if you can't get ADSL and want to get iburst get it through a reseller like Tradepage or MWeb as suggested by who.is.michael in this thread: http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=96811

 

[Ekhaatvensters]

I don't experience the same thing.

Statement like "Every month you will have problems for a week at the least" can never hold true for wireless. Most moths are fine for me.

 

[ambo]

Every month you will have problems for a week at the least, when there is bad weather you will have problems and things WILL NOT get resolved for weeks at a time.

Did you get a proper signal test done before you signed up - most problems on iBurst are due to bad signal at YOUR side and not problems on their network.

A mate of mine gave me his iBurst modem when he signed up for ADSL about six months back. On Friday he asked for it back. He has been without ADSL (and a phone line) for 2 months now. It not always greener on the other side

 

[milomak]

are they still shaping like crazy?

 

[Ivan...]

Hah, signal strength is a joke. I recently moved and at my old place I got 1mbps and had 100% signal strength all the time. Now I have 40-60% signal strength..it keeps jumping, but still getting 1mbps speeds.

 

[who.is.michael]

I don't experience the same thing.

Statement like "Every month you will have problems for a week at the least" can never hold true for wireless. Most moths are fine for me.

Been true for me over the past >2 years...

 

[Ekhaatvensters]

Been true for me over the past >2 years...

I mean it's not going to be the same for everyone. Having problems for an entire week out of every month sounds a bit extreme anyway, and making as if it's fact...

"when there is bad weather you will have problems"

I don't usually have problems when there is bad weather, might have happened a few times.

But I'm just nitpicking seeing as you shouldn't go for iBurst anyway, simply because of the cost and performance advantages of ADSL.

 

[MrH]

To be fair to the iburst system, I never had speed or connection problems no matter what sort of weather we had and it was almost at full speed most the time.

Although it's 1mbps speed is a bit outdated these days (about 25 to 30% of what I have right now) it still would have had it's place with me IF it was not been run by the incompetent/useless/greedy iburstSA company.

I still have plenty respect for the iburst system but none whatsoever for that cursed company thats running it.

 

[who.is.michael]

I mean it's not going to be the same for everyone.

You are correct not everyone is as fortunate like you in having a stable connection - if it is stable at all?

Having problems for an entire week out of every month sounds a bit extreme anyway, and making as if it's fact...

Trust me this is the norm with most towers / users in Cape Town’s CBD / Sea Point / Century City (iBurst CTN Headquarters) areas and it is not dependant entirely on location, line of site, external antenna or signal strength.

Myself and the clients I support experience frequent disconnections, very poor international pings and either you can’t access mail or some sites (local & international) don’t resolve without any apparent reason, your downloads are reduced to a trickle, timeouts are in excess of 20 % (to the gateway – 0%), the ftp access is so badly shaped that it is unusable, same goes for VoIP protocols, remote desktop protocols, website control panels, VPN, Https, etc.

I’ll forward you the emails I’ve sent to Henry, Carlos, Louis, Shireen and the iBurst Support Desk and you’ll clearly see there has never been one month in the past two years that has passed without incident. I’m inclined to think that you do not fully utilise your connection, i.e. you don’t make use of all the protocols mentioned above?

I guess if you only use the service for browsing and the odd download it is not that noticeable but the service as a whole is terrible, to be frank it stinks. Once the contracts expire I’ll make a UTD/C bonfire and will invite all the consumer journalists I can get hold of – anyone who wishes to take part please PM me.

It can’t be considered as a replacement for DSL connectivity and it definitely can’t be viewed as broadband.

I would go as far as to challenge any iBurst user in South Africa to prove that he or she can fully utilise all protocols successfully for a thirty day period.

Regards

M

 

[Ekhaatvensters]

the ftp access is so badly shaped that it is unusable, same goes for VoIP protocols, remote desktop protocols, website control panels, VPN, Https, etc.

I’m inclined to think that you do not fully utilise your connection, i.e. you don’t make use of all the protocols mentioned above?

Access to which FTPs? I have had ftp downloads at full speed, I posted the single thread one at 1mbps in another thread a few days ago.
It was probably on the old iBurst site, but their "prioritised" protocols (not shaped to death :/) included FTP for downloading. This might have changed.

The rest I don't use very often if at all, but I am online (or one of the other PC's is) almost the entire day, and night, and I download a lot. It's the reason I'm capped every month.

I'm sure that there are latency problems at least once a month, but ADSL will be the same. SAIX's international latency statistics don't look very good. I didn't agree with an entire week out of every month having problems, but I'm sure you would have other problems every month.

 

[who.is.michael]

Hi EHV

Please don’t consider this as a personal attack; it is more a case of me venting my frustration at having been placed in a position where I am forced to make use of such a sub-standard internet service.

I sincerely hope prospective iBurst users take heed of this warning, so as not to be placed in such a situation, where frustration is at the order of the day.

One can only hope that organisations like ISPA and ICASA will mature and prevent such poorly managed services from operating in the South African internet environment.

May the consumer voice be heard.

Regards

M

 

[RichardG]

iBURST is a legacy technology and will die a slow death..
I'd never get there crappy service, ever again..
I'm very atmost happy with my DSL and 3G,HP card
and not forgetting my cellphone...

 

[zambussi]

Iburst Service vs Telkom Service

I've had Iburst for 18 months now - was previously with Sucktech. Also have both Telkom and IS ADSL (at work). Can honestly say that I get the best value out of Iburst for home use - the fact that hitting the cap still gives me a throttled service is the only reason I am still with them (and also the fact that Telscum still can't get their act together).

I had to put up a 3m mast to get a good signal, but other than that I have had no problems with either their accounts or their tech support (I solve 99% of the problems - not that there is much in the way of problems, myself).

With ADSL at home, I have yet to get it properly working. It took Telkscum 12 months to "upgrade" me from optical to copper (and they call it an upgrade!), and since then either the phone works and not the ADSL or the other way round. I have an uncapped IS account at work, but emails sent with IS take forever and an age to get to their recipient (if at all).
In fact some email address are rejected by IS and have to be sent with Telkom.

Iburst sends to everyone, but can be slow at times.
If I were to use Iburst for work - I would have tossed it a long time ago.
At the price that they sell their 9Gb package, I can get an uncapped IS account - so for work, they are too expensive.

 

[who.is.michael]

SAD Fact...

It is a disgrace that "ISP's" (if you can call them that), provide such poor services to consumers - none of them would be able exist in any first world country, if they provide the services levels that we locals have to put up with.

 

[Racketlon SA]

I have to agree that the accounts departments is up to no good, bad service, empty promises and they dont call you back. how can i reach a top management person to deal with the issue i have now for almost a year?.