Fibre internet in Gauteng on Openserve (Telkom) network

[KingBel]

Seems like my complex in Equestria is finally in planning stages for Openserve..hopefully I should be able to upgrade in September.

 

[Freakboy]

Would you be kind enough to link the line only packages?

It's not really "line only", more like 100mb line plus 10Gb data for X amount. The small cap 10Gb I never use, don't even remember what my username/password is
If you mail them they can send you the complete price-list, would be easier for you get all the details.
That's what I did and had the Telkom tech at my door in 5 days.

 

[Johnatan56]

It's not really "line only", more like 100mb line plus 10Gb data for X amount. The small cap 10Gb I never use, don't even remember what my username/password is
If you mail them they can send you the complete price-list, would be easier for you get all the details.
That's what I did and had the Telkom tech at my door in 5 days.

Well, they've stated they won't decrease pricing within the next while due to price cuts.
I'm contemplating taking a 40Mbps + something larger than 200GB. Anyone actually use them as an ISP? They state no shaping/throttling.

 

[jcheek]

Fibre speed issues on IS backbone

Interesting tests by Jaco Fourie, comparing fibre speeds on Vox-over-Openserve versus IS-over-Openserve :

[video=youtube_share;tC4XLPNOc6o]https://youtu.be/tC4XLPNOc6o[/video]

IS being the backbone used by WebAfrica, MWeb, Crystalweb et al.

 

[Mr Scratch]

Interesting tests by Jaco Fourie, comparing fibre speeds on Vox-over-Openserve versus IS-over-Openserve :

[video=youtube_share;tC4XLPNOc6o]https://youtu.be/tC4XLPNOc6o[/video]

IS being the backbone used by WebAfrica, MWeb, Crystalweb et al.

Excellent video, sadly ****all will be done to fix it.

 

[stirer@kathray.co.za]

Using analogue telephones on a fibre router

I want to be able to use my 4 x Siemens cordless phones as IP phones on a FTTH installation. I understand that some fibre routers have an analogue RJ11 port. Is my understanding correct, and which manufacturers of FTTH routers have this feature?

 

[ponder]

I want to be able to use my 4 x Siemens cordless phones as IP phones on a FTTH installation. I understand that some fibre routers have an analogue RJ11 port. Is my understanding correct, and which manufacturers of FTTH routers have this feature?

My openserve nokia ont has two a analogue ports, the phone connected it has a normal telkom number. As far as I know you cant setup your own voip service.

 

[HumanShield]

I see them almost daily still busy in parts of Eldoraign and Wierdapark too. I suspect that there may be a waiting list.

Same here. They dropped fibre lines in my complex a few months ago. Since then not a word, no flyers in the mailbox, no nothing. Hearing mixed reports that the fibre is live, but openserve website is till light purple.

 

[mister]

I want to be able to use my 4 x Siemens cordless phones as IP phones on a FTTH installation. I understand that some fibre routers have an analogue RJ11 port. Is my understanding correct, and which manufacturers of FTTH routers have this feature?

If the RJ11 ports are locked down on your ONT you can always buy your own gateway - also known as a FXS gateway. I'm not sure whether you want to use 4 phones on one line, or four separate lines.

Either way, if it's a single line / sip account shared between all the phones then you can use something like a Yeastar Analog Telephone Adapter 1 FXS.

Or for four seperate lines you could use a Yeastar NeoGate 4 Port FXS Gateway

 

[jcheek]

I want to be able to use my 4 x Siemens cordless phones as IP phones on a FTTH installation. I understand that some fibre routers have an analogue RJ11 port. Is my understanding correct, and which manufacturers of FTTH routers have this feature?

The ONT (Optical Network Terminal) that Openserve supplies has two analogue RJ-11 ports that you can plug any analogue telephone devices into. These signals travel over a dedicated sub-circuit on the fibre link and the voice quality is excellent without you having to mess around with VoIP settings or Quality-of-Service tweaks. As mentioned, you can get what looks like an ordinary landline telephone number and you can even port your old landline number, if you wish. About the only technical downside is that the phones will only work when the ONT is powered, so if you have a power failure - no phones! (unless you have a back-up power arrangement).
You can get some idea of how this looks in this post.

The non-technical downside is that this bolt-on voice service is currently only available if you sign up with Telkom, ie OpenServe line and Telkom as your ISP.

If you're not with Telkom (eg you have an Openserve line but are with another ISP), then the analogue voice service isn't available to you. You then have to go for a "normal" VoIP solution using either VoIP phones or analogue telephone adapters as already mentioned.

 

[Johnatan56]

The ONT (Optical Network Terminal) that Openserve supplies has two analogue RJ-11 ports that you can plug any analogue telephone devices into. These signals travel over a dedicated sub-circuit on the fibre link and the voice quality is excellent without you having to mess around with VoIP settings or Quality-of-Service tweaks. As mentioned, you can get what looks like an ordinary landline telephone number and you can even port your old landline number, if you wish. About the only technical downside is that the phones will only work when the ONT is powered, so if you have a power failure - no phones! (unless you have a back-up power arrangement).
You can get some idea of how this looks in this post.

The non-technical downside is that this bolt-on voice service is currently only available if you sign up with Telkom, ie OpenServe line and Telkom as your ISP.

If you're not with Telkom (eg you have an Openserve line but are with another ISP), then the analogue voice service isn't available to you. You then have to go for a "normal" VoIP solution using either VoIP phones or analogue telephone adapters as already mentioned.

Most ISP have a bolt-on voice service.

Some forum comments suggest using http://www.freshphone.co.za/ as they have no line rental cost associated besides the number port. Use: https://www.weable.co.za/analog-tel...rt-analog-telephone-adapter-ata-gs-ht701.html to adapt older phones and/or set-up the app on your phone.

Or phone: https://www.webantics.com/yealink-w52p-voip-dect-cordless-phone-for-small-business
and maybe check CoolIdeas.co.za/voip

 

[jcheek]

Most ISPs have a bolt-on voice service.

They do, yes - in many cases (eg MWeb Talk) it's even "free" (no fixed cost) if you already use that ISP's services.
But it's "normal" VoIP that works over the LAN, not via the dedicated voice sub-circuit on the fibre link. If you go that route you're into all the normal VoIP hassle like tweaking Quality-of-Service parameters and looking for the best codecs.
The advantage of the analogue voice ports on the ONT is that they "just work" out the box. From my own experience the voice quality is also excellent - none of the usual VoIP funnies.
But for the moment anyway, it's Telkom only and it usually costs *sigh*.

 

[Johnatan56]

They do, yes - in many cases (eg MWeb Talk) it's even "free" (no fixed cost) if you already use that ISP's services.
But it's "normal" VoIP that works over the LAN, not via the dedicated voice sub-circuit on the fibre link. If you go that route you're into all the normal VoIP hassle like tweaking Quality-of-Service parameters and looking for the best codecs.
The advantage of the analogue voice ports on the ONT is that they "just work" out the box. From my own experience the voice quality is also excellent - none of the usual VoIP funnies.
But for the moment anyway, it's Telkom only and it usually costs *sigh*.

I am really curious as to where you got that information from. I would find it very strange for Telkom to have a separate circuit for it. They would maybe have different routing priorities on the same circuit, but that's it.
Normal VoIP, as long as the server isn't located too far away, it's absolutely fine. And "tweaking" VoIP settings, at most you'd do it once and then leave it.

Are you talking about ISDN now instead of FTTH? Set up a VoIP call, it's probably the same quality.

 

[jcheek]

I would find it very strange for Telkom to have a separate circuit for it. They would maybe have different routing priorities on the same circuit, but that's it.

Separate, pre-configured routing for voice is exactly what I mean, yes. Obviously there's no physical separation on the fibre link itself.

Normal VoIP, as long as the server isn't located too far away, it's absolutely fine.

Mmmm. Depending on the codecs in use, it can be OK.
At best, it's comparable to a good-quality analogue PSTN line. Which in itself is quite a rate thing ;-)

 

[jcheek]

Interesting tests by Jaco Fourie, comparing fibre speeds on Vox-over-Openserve versus IS-over-Openserve :

[video=youtube_share;tC4XLPNOc6o]https://youtu.be/tC4XLPNOc6o[/video]

IS being the backbone used by WebAfrica, MWeb, Crystalweb et al.

Jaco has a whole thread charting the results of his speed quest and comparative speedtests. Makes for interesting reading.

 

[Johnatan56]

Separate, pre-configured routing for voice is exactly what I mean, yes. Obviously there's no physical separation on the fibre link itself.
Mmmm. Depending on the codecs in use, it can be OK.
At best, it's comparable to a good-quality analogue PSTN line. Which in itself is quite a rate thing ;-)

Let's take Skype as an example, I have clear, perfectly good calls using it without noticeable latency. If I would pick WhatsApp, we'd both agree that the calls are of ~medium to mediocre quality, though it has improved in terms of the delay issues, which all stemmed from a server with not enough capacity located too far away.

I have a good quality ADSL line, normal phone calls are fine/clear. The quality of Skype calls if both sides have good mics and a moderately decent net speed (even 10Mbps ADSL), the call quality is great. If it's 192Kbps or higher, you probably can't tell the difference.

With the pre-configuration topic, also depends on your ISP network configuration, they could also prioritize all VoIP/real-time traffic.

 

[jcheek]

Let's take Skype as an example, I have clear, perfectly good calls using it without noticeable latency.

Agreed - Skype's voice quality is generally excellent, especially when making PC-to-PC or PC-to-phone calls into the "first world". Skype's not that representative of "normal" VoIP, though, IMHO.
Skype was originally developed specifically as a VoIP tool and part of the reason it was so successful was that it worked so well on the low bandwidth lines common in those days. I made many awesome and cheap Skype calls in the early 2000's using a humble 384/128kbps ADSL line.
The reason is that Skype poured an enormous amount of effort into developing custom voice codecs (Opus/SILK) and techniques - some of them a bit questionable! - to drill holes through firewalls to ensure the low latency and jitter needed for good voice performance. Best of all, it did all this behind the scenes, without the user needing to configure anything or know anything at all about VoIP.
You have to have an inherently good internet connection and do quite a lot of tweaking to get close to that kind of performance with conventional VoIP. You may even need to pay money to use the better codecs like G.722 or G.729.

If I would pick WhatsApp, we'd both agree that the calls are of ~medium to mediocre quality, though it has improved in terms of the delay issues, which all stemmed from a server with not enough capacity located too far away.

On a mobile data network - agreed. WhatsApp's still pretty sucky. When on Wi-Fi at both ends it can be quite good.
The generally poor voice performance when using mobile data has a lot do with the variability of the medium (jitter and packet loss) and not so much to do with raw bandwidth.
Interestingly, I believe WhatsApp now also uses the Opus codec originally developed by Skype.

I have a good quality ADSL line, normal phone calls are fine/clear. The quality of Skype calls if both sides have good mics and a moderately decent net speed (even 10Mbps ADSL), the call quality is great. If it's 192Kbps or higher, you probably can't tell the difference.

Speech is actually not all that demanding in terms of bandwidth - even digitising at a measly 4kHz can still give pretty decent speech reproduction, and a 64kbps channel can handle that nicely. If you ever had the experience of making voice calls on a 64kbps ISDN line, you may agree this was pretty much a gold standard for voice.
Much more important than bandwidth are characteristics like latency, jitter and packet loss - things that mobile data networks don't do all that well unless specifically configured for speech (think GSM voice).


Out of interest : if anyone wants to assess their internet connection's readiness for "conventional" VoIP, there are some really good tools around, like the one from 8x8 Communications (warning : needs Java, so probably needs to be run inside IE, not Chrome).
The results can be quite humbling, even on what many would consider to be an "excellent" internet connection like VDSL or FTTH.

 

[Johnatan56]

Spoiler

Agreed - Skype's voice quality is generally excellent, especially when making PC-to-PC or PC-to-phone calls into the "first world". Skype's not that representative of "normal" VoIP, though, IMHO.
Skype was originally developed specifically as a VoIP tool and part of the reason it was so successful was that it worked so well on the low bandwidth lines common in those days. I made many awesome and cheap Skype calls in the early 2000's using a humble 384/128kbps ADSL line.
The reason is that Skype poured an enormous amount of effort into developing custom voice codecs (Opus/SILK) and techniques - some of them a bit questionable! - to drill holes through firewalls to ensure the low latency and jitter needed for good voice performance. Best of all, it did all this behind the scenes, without the user needing to configure anything or know anything at all about VoIP.
You have to have an inherently good internet connection and do quite a lot of tweaking to get close to that kind of performance with conventional VoIP. You may even need to pay money to use the better codecs like G.722 or G.729.

Spoiler

On a mobile data network - agreed. WhatsApp's still pretty sucky. When on Wi-Fi at both ends it can be quite good.
The generally poor voice performance when using mobile data has a lot do with the variability of the medium (jitter and packet loss) and not so much to do with raw bandwidth.
Interestingly, I believe WhatsApp now also uses the Opus codec originally developed by Skype.

Spoiler

Speech is actually not all that demanding in terms of bandwidth - even digitising at a measly 4kHz can still give pretty decent speech reproduction, and a 64kbps channel can handle that nicely. If you ever had the experience of making voice calls on a 64kbps ISDN line, you may agree this was pretty much a gold standard for voice.
Much more important than bandwidth are characteristics like latency, jitter and packet loss - things that mobile data networks don't do all that well unless specifically configured for speech (think GSM voice).

Out of interest : if anyone wants to assess their internet connection's readiness for "conventional" VoIP, there are some really good tools around, like the one from 8x8 Communications (warning : needs Java, so probably needs to be run inside IE, not Chrome).
The results can be quite humbling, even on what many would consider to be an "excellent" internet connection like VDSL or FTTH.

I don't think you have to really worry about codecs as an end user if you're just a normal home user, if your router has proper QoS set up you should be fine. Of course if you're using it to run a business and have multiple simultaneous calls, definitely invest some time into it. Just use the one recommended by your VoIP provider.

Skype is nice that way, using UPnP to automatic port forward, but a lot of other applications do that as well. What I'm trying to state is that it depends on the provider you're using.

Yep, the jitter. That's what I am trying to state.

With the bandwidth, I am stating that you could increase the quality as much as you'd like, with even your entry level fiber product, you'd be able to use studio quality sound (of course equipment matters and there is only so high you can go before diminishing returns, using a good codec can nicely compress it, as you've mentioned).

That's just a speedtest, the jitter value is also quite heavily dependent on the individual connection. You can use: https://www.voipreview.org/speedtest as well.

And VDSL/FTTH doesn't mean excellent, FTTH I would expect a very low jitter though.

 

[1nsane!]

Same here. They dropped fibre lines in my complex a few months ago. Since then not a word, no flyers in the mailbox, no nothing. Hearing mixed reports that the fibre is live, but openserve website is till light purple.

I spoke to a tech from Huawei on Friday. He was busy splicing fibre in our complex in Clubview. I asked him if he has an ETA for go-live. He mentioned that the area circled below is his responsibility and will be spliced and ready by the en d of August. Then there is another 2 weeks of assigning circuit numbers and finalisation. I believe Eldoraigne will have a similar time frame:

 

[ponder]

I spoke to a tech from Huawei on Friday.

The guys in the field are usually just techies and they dont know when it's gonna go live.