February update

[Mercury]

Wow, what a year it has been! While many of us might be slowing down as the holiday season approaches, iBurst knows that 2006 is not yet over because we still have much work to do to ensure you benefit from the most satisfying wireless broadband experience available in South Africa.

Er, holiday season? 2006? Are we doing the time warp again?

 

[ambo]

LOL - just read this.... and read it again.... and read it again....

Last night was a good party - but I didn't think it was THAT good

 

[Luke7777]

So that's where November's update has gone.....must've been those rogue wireless operators that caused this

 

[who.is.michael]

Fire the bitch I say!

Please excuse me for being straight forward, however...

Whoever writes that crap should be thinking of sticking to community newspapers, cause they can’t write, never mind getting the facts right - I'm sure its a middle aged woman that knows nothing about internet / wireless technology and pretending to be running a PR shop from her garage, she does iBurst more harm than good.

 

[Ekhaatvensters]

Please excuse me for being straight forward, however...

Whoever writes that crap should be thinking of sticking to community newspapers, cause they can’t write, never mind getting the facts right - I'm sure its a middle aged woman that knows nothing about internet / wireless technology and pretending to be running a PR shop from her garage, she does iBurst more harm than good.

So now women can't drive well or write good PR material, poor things.

I think the worst part about this is that they didn't even bother to write anything new this month.. Maybe they thought it still applied, and that we would enjoy reading it again.

 

[who.is.michael]

Seen too many corporate newsletters…

It’s not about women in general; I’ve just come to know some of the old tannies that think they can write about a subject that they don’t even understand – typical corporate crap.

 

[Ekhaatvensters]

I know, I should have added on of these: to the end

 

[Alchemist]

who.is.michael, i couldnt agree with you more. I worked for a large media company, and the crap that they came up with was rather astonishing.

I wonder if we asked the person who wrote this whether they know the difference between a bit and a byte and see

 

[JTech]

Oooh, more tripe from iBurst...

Dear valued subscriber,

Wow, what a year it has been! While many of us might be slowing down as the holiday season approaches,

I think you chaps are 3 months behind. As someone above said, time warp.

iBurst knows that 2006 is not yet over because we still have much work to do to ensure you benefit from the most satisfying wireless broadband experience available in South Africa.

Uhm... 2006 was over some 6 weeks ago. Can't count, don't know what month of the year it is, can't allocate legal IP addresses, think MTU is the solution to all problems, can't bill customers properly, can't solve overseas connection issues, the list goes on... I rate the collective IQ in iBurst to be -67 at this stage.

Coverage plays a huge part in that experience. In this regard, we're pleased to announce that iBurst now covers Hartebeespoort Dam, just in time for summer and the upcoming holiday season! Wireless broadband connectivity in Gauteng's favourite watersports playground means relaxing safe in the knowledge that email and Internet are available should you wish to check that everything in the office is running smoothly.

Actually, I would say PRICE and SERVICE and RELIABILITY plays a huge part in the experience. Ja sure, one BS covering the whole of the area, and lots and lots of latency.

Other new coverage areas include Seapoint Pietermaritzburg, Arcadia, Pta CBD, Fourways.

Erm... AFAIK Fourways was covered some time ago. When are you going to cover Hillcrest, Kloof and those places????

Other exciting news since our last letter is that iBurst achieved the 100 mark in terms of the number of base stations rolled-out and currently boasts a grand total of around 115 live base stations. We think this is tremendous progress and those of you experiencing stronger signals and improved coverage will no doubt agree.

Big whoop de doo. For most the latency has gone through the roof. More basestations contending for that pipe you have into Telkom's backbone, means slower speeds for everyone.

Everybody at iBurst really enjoys pleasing our subscribers

Bwhahahaha, more like, PISSING OFF your subscribers

and no one enjoys this more than Ed Hall, our Head of Customer Support. Many iBurst subscribers would have read Ed's first customer care blog posted on www.iburst.co.za during October. Ed will be updating his blog on the 1st and the 15th of every month from now on. However, please feel free to post comments and queries regarding the blog as often as you like.

Yes and be sure to not be critical. Them censors will delete your post.

 

[Ekhaatvensters]

Yes and be sure to not be critical. Them censors will delete your post.

I've seen people saying this quite a few times, but from what I can see on the blog almost everything is critical. There would be about 20 posts if they censored half of that out.

Has anyone really had their own negative/critical posts censored out?

 

[who.is.michael]

Twice

 

[JTech]

Yeah...

and someone else besides you complained as well. I can't for the life of me remember who it was, can someone help perhaps?

 

[Ekhaatvensters]

Micheal, what exactly got yours deleted?

There are some very critical posts on there, and then a lot of people just coming with problems and complaining, so I didn't think they apply much censorship.

I also remember the others complaining about it, I guess its true.. weird though.

 

[MrH]

From what I noticed it looked like they just deleted the whole lot by making an "oops"

 

[who.is.michael]

It was in the beginning...

When the blog just started, I reposted them and they disappeared, then after the increase in negative posts Ed deleted the whole thread saying that they didn’t have the necessary software to facilitate archiving – Still find this incredible coming from a so-called ISP?

But my issues with iBurst are still the same as of day one, and I have posted them all on this forum. The only recent additions to my list of iBurst grievances are overpricing, latency and the lack of access speed (BW).

 

[MrH]

Michael, I think in general the CBD has problems and will probably have them until iBurst put up a few more towers.

For some reason my connection since this afternoon has also been unstable and somehow I think it has something to do with the bw monitor not knowing who to throttle and who has not reached their cap yet.
This also happened last month around this time where while downloading the speeds drop to +_ 200kbps for a few min and then pick up again.

 

[peterleroux]

I'm so glad iburst have sent out the real February news letter. There's lots of important news like... wait, hold on, I can do this...

 

[JTech]

This is what I think you're referring to:

It makes sense then for iBurst to take on board a new minority shareholder that is also a leading player in the wireless market. You may remember news last year that iBurst had entered into negotiations with Vodacom. Negotiations have now been completed and we are exceptionally pleased that South Africa's leading cellular network is now a 10% shareholder in Wireless Business Solutions Holdings (Pty) Ltd. WBS Holdings owns 100% of iBurst.

The minority stake will have no effect on iBurst's independence because Vodacom's stake is strategic and not operational. While there will be no day-to-day involvement with Vodacom, the benefits of the deal for iBurst include cost savings resulting from synergies relating to site sharing and acquisition, transmission, international bandwidth and distribution channels.

Cost savings that the customer will never see... more spin doctoring and justification for WBS directors to buy those new Lamborghini's this financial year end!!

So there you have it, always trust a MyADSL rumour. Some folk posted about this last year and they were right!!!

Welcome to sh1tty connections, incompetence, extreme-over-pricing, and unrelinquishable contracts, viva le Vodacom. They can't even get their network to be stable now they want to come and play with iBurst's network.