Fair warning to prospective MyWireless users.

My dial up experience was generally pain free. There were some ups and downs, but I wasn't really paying very much for that service - so I was ok with lack of quality every now and then.

My ISDN 128k experience was awesome. Advertised bandwidth (128k) was always in full swing (even with contention ratios in place, gasp), with 100% availability. No technical problems. I could rely on it for work. But then, I was paying quite a bit more for that service - so it was in line with my expectations.

My Sentech/MyWireless experience so far has been disgusting. For the last few weeks of MyWireless I've spent more than half of it at 3kb/s and less. The only reason a company will get away with what these people have so far, is because the alternative is the devil.

And they know it. Something goes wrong, don't even bother saying anything to your customers. That's because they don't care. And they know they can get away with it.

If this... sham... isn't sorted out soon, I won't not pay for it - contract or not. That may not be legal, but I'd be willing to test how solid the legal ground is that they're standing on.

I did not subscribe to MyWireless for 3kb/s download speeds, even if it is 24/7 (yeah right).
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Donovan</i>
<br />
I personally have a very stable, efficient, quick connection (it's on an ethernet cable to a smoothwall box, have only ever had a problem when the power was cut, and then it just reconnected).
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
I'm also generally happy with the product itself so far (on 128), on the whole it's been stable and no major speed problems (although I mostly work at night, and get good speeds then). But I am definitely not happy about what I'm reading on the forums regarding the helpdesk. I think most of us early adopters are relatively technical people who understand and even expect some "teething problems". But what makes me angry is the attitude of the support people, who seem to think that lying, being rude, or ignoring people, all take precedence over even *admitting* that there even might be technical problems on their side. Sentech doesn't communicate with it's users about known problems, and won't listen to users trying to report problems. Instead they arrogantly say things like "this is a contended service, this is the quality you signed up for and are going to get from now on". Now some people on 512 seem to be getting speeds as low as 15-30kbits or so - but if the problem were simply due to this being a contended service, then why would some 512 users still be getting good speeds? So the story sounds like rubbish. If someone on 512 is consistenly getting less bandwidth than someone on 128, there is a *problem* somewhere. But Sentech (i.e. helpdesk) won't listen, so customers don't know if Sentech know or care about the problems.

I used to recommend MyWireless to others, but will stop doing so until Sentech improves their customer support (Correction, until Sentech GETS SOME customer support, and gets rid of the arrogant "customer abuse" department). Sentech management must surely be aware by now of the problems at the support center, so the fact that we see no 'reform' there starts to suggest that the attitude problems may originate with Sentech management itself, which is troubling. In any case, so long as the product itself continue to work well for me, I'm going to give it a few more months before I pass final judgment. (If Sentech want to hit critical mass, they will HAVE TO improve their service, they don't really have a choice as they are still an underdog. If they are pulling some sort of bait-and-switch this early already on the provided bandwidth, then I think they've underestimated the potential negative publicity and overestimated the strength of their market position.)
 
At the mo mywireless is quite dissapointing for me, so im actually considering going with one of the other smaller wisps who actually have coverage in my area. Too bad bout sentech but hopefully as time goes by itll improve

Proud South african rip offs.
 
I guess I'm one of those ******* looking people right about now.

God knows I'm one of the people that pimped this service more than anything else right from the outset (and even before Sentech had begun beta testing).

I was told of a fast connection for a small amount of money, and when I heard about it I told all my friends of this possibility of a brighter future for SA internet. A 1Mb burstable connection with low latency and a static IP etc.

Boy was I wrong.

Enter Sentech "marketing"! My hopes were crushed. The discovery in the end that it was R500 for a 128K, 100ms latency, 10% packet loss connection was a kick in the pants myself and many people who had plans to replace outdated diginet lines. With others I sat up on IRC chating to some guy claming to be from Sentech's marketing department (I think that was Mr Smith???) arguing with him and pleading for them not to destroy what was looking like a semi decent package.

Futility at best - the same ignorant response of all our plights "It's aimed at home users".

Enter Sentech Damagement!

Look in awe at the briliant contracts and legal clauses just ready and waiting to continentaly FSCK you up the arse! No matter how much we tried to explain that the problem with Sentech was the 24 month contract, we'd rather buy the modem ourself people didnt listen! One BRILIANT company actualy decided, ok you can buy the modem. And then gave us a 24 month contract anyway?!?! WTF ARE YOU??? DEAF??????
The AUP was the final strike for me ever considering this as a replacement for Telkom land lines. Bound with 24 month contract, I just cant afford to suddenly be accused of downloading too much and being charged more as a result. Many people said "No its just an excuse" "they wont actualy do it" etc etc. Thats all good and well, they might not do it, not now, not in a year, but who's to say they wont sudenly decide to? I'm not taking that risk.

All our suggestions, all our recomendations get ignored and disregarded. Simple stupid problems like PMTU breakdown, can be avoided by simply taking the advice of the internet comunity. Mail servers being blacklisted etc, etc.

One has to wonder.

Did Sentech really gear and equip themselves with staff capable of maintaining and understanding the provision of an internet service?

- Colin Alston
colin at alston dot za dot org

"Getting traffic shaping right is easy and can be summed up in one word: Dont." -- George Barnett
 
My view is that the entire service is operating at an efficiency level of about 5%, which is I guess typical for an African company.

Their helpdesk, support, infrastructure, bandwidth, all of these things are not running as it should. At least it's not running at the level for what I'm paying for. Really. MyWireless R650 per month, will get you an ADSL connection. Another R200 will get you 3Gb of data. And the damn thing works. MyWireless doesn't WORK. Well, not WELL enough to be of any kind of productive use. From the problems with the firmware, the tower signal locking on nonsense to the horrific bandwidth, and packet loss that you receive once you are actually connected.

The service just doesn't work well enough to be really called "Broadband". It's more like "Broadside" thrown by Sentech to cover up the fact that it sucks.

We've been fscked around for nearly 3 months now. Sentech is obliged to either give 3 months worth of freebies, or let people out of their contracts gracefully. I don't care if it's new, and I don't care if they should "have a chance to fix it" anymore... The fact is, they've had their chance now. And it's still fscked.

My warning is to prospective users: Wait at least another 6-12 months before even considering the service. You will be the one bleeding if you get it right now.


<center><h5><font color="red">Oo. MyWireless <s>Hacks</s> Tweaks & Tech Info.oO </font id="red"></h5><h6>Have you checked the fawking FAQ?</h6></center>
 
Rodent, will you be able to cancel your contract? Or are you sticking out the 24 months?
 
well, I am checking out the download speeds on a 512 account.

36 mins connected , 60 megs received. avg kb/s 28Kb/s

Considering this is from connection time and not everything was started, I expect it to level out a bit.
 
just to add to my previous post, considering the improvement i got, I would not consider the 512 account.

why? Overpriced for the improvement improvement. at most i would go 256account currently.
 
I mentioned this forum to a tech-support person who called me (in my ongoing battle for bandwidth) and said that there's rather a lot of unhappy MyWireless customers here - the guy said he knew of this forum, and that he didnt know of ANY unhappy customers at all - in fact, according to him, there are QUITE A FEW HAPPY MY-WIRELESS CUSTOMERS ON THIS FORUM.. I said 'Oh really?'
I've spoken with hookers and drug dealers in my sordid past, who have a better grasp of reality..
 
Well,

Since the "scheduled(myarse) maintenance" on Tower12 I have a FAR more stable connection and average throughput of 14.5KB/s via the Torrent - Fedora Core2 almost downloaded ;-)

I have great respect for TheRodent and happen to agree with him. The improvement I currently have is probably temporary and one can only pity any other MyWireless contract user.

I will currently NOT recommend the product to ANY of my customer base. 6Months - sound reasonable....

R



************************************************************
The views expressed on this site are my own and NOT those of my employer.
 
My biggest problem is the lack of communication from Sentech's side. On Rodent's advice I convinced my partners to get a 512k package for the office. I got a 128k for myself at home. The one at the office worked brilliantly for exactly 8 days. Then we were a victim of "tower optimisations". We couldn't convince anyone at Sentech that we had a legitimate problem so we went ahead and ordered 2 Poynting antennas, thinking we'd fix it ourselves.

The whole excercise has cost me personally as well as the company thousands of Rands in antennas and loss of income - I spent hours doing research on antenna's and walking around looking for signals.

Everything seems to be stable now, but Sentech could have saved us thousands if their zone locator had been accurate and if they bothered to inform people that they are going to loose their signals when the tower ranges were adjusted.

I don't think any non-technical person would ever have gotten it to work. I'm personally discouraging family & friends from signing up, because I know I'll end up doing tech support for them. I can imagine my mom calling me every 2 hours telling me that the internet is off again!

Groenie
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by LoneGunman</i>
<br />I mentioned this forum to a tech-support person who called me (in my ongoing battle for bandwidth) and said that there's rather a lot of unhappy MyWireless customers here - the guy said he knew of this forum, and that he didnt know of ANY unhappy customers at all
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Aaargh. That's quite an insult to anyone's intelligence - how arrogant of them, thinking that you are so stupid that they can fool you into thinking that you are basically the ONLY unhappy customer. It's furthermore insulting in the additional implicit message that if you are the only one complaining, then you're just some whiny person who complains for no real reason. And it's also just plain bad service because it sends the message "we're not even going to listen to your complaints because we think your complaints are bogus". I am frankly somewhat flabberghasted that people who must surely be aware on some level that their JOB is "customer support" and what that means, can actually think that saying things like that passes for "customer support".
 
"Relax," said the night man,
"We are programmed to receive.
You can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave."

Hotel<s>California</s>Sentech
 
512 connections aint worth much, IMHO, if anything is to be learnt, cheaper is better.
Who here has gotten the 80Kb/s downloads recently on their 512 connection?
 
Unless im wrong 8 bits = 1 byte
So a 512 connection can ony get 64Kb/s max

So no one has seen 80

I did see 52Kb/s (stable for the 10min I watched)on a friends 512 connection with Kazaa this weekend
 
Hi Guys.

Anybody locking on onto tower 50 in Northcliff?
Since the maintenance on the tower over the past weekend, I do get a better connection.
I'm using a 128 IPW connection on a partial signal.

Signal lights: before: 2 now: 4
Signal persentage: before: 5% now: 20%
KBps download: before: 2 to 5 now: 22 up to 44

With Webvacuum downloader I get a constant 38KBps download.

Sentech Helpdesk did tell me on Tuesday that they did discover a faulty cable at the tower and replaced it.
 
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