Five students, one line

[moron51]

My son is moving into digs with four of his mates. They need a cost-effective, shareable internet connection.
How about Telkom's Closer 5 bundle (DSL1024 + phone service), plus OpenWeb's 30GB local + OpenBrowse offering? Looks like costing them about R175/month each for 6GB, plus lots of phone time.
The uncapped offerings are great, but a lot more expensive (student=poor...).

Any other suggestions?

And what happens when they hit the 30GB cap? Can they order another 30GB, and what happens to unused bandwidth at month end?

 

[Syndyre]

Are they going to be using local bandwidth at all? If not I'd suggest a 3GB TelkomInternet account instead, about R230 a month and you should get at least 6-8GB off it (relaxed capping) Then if they go over that they could use a prepaid WebAfrica account at R70/gig to get them through to the end of the month. The prepaid account won't expire at the end of the month whereas the other normal accounts will so if you have any unused bandwidth on a normal account you lose it at the end of the month.

 

[general_koffi]

OpenBrowse barely works with one user - let alone five.

I'd also recommend a 3GB TelkomInternet account rather, and then prepaid from Webafrica when that gets capped.

 

[moron51]

Thanks for the pointers. I wondered about OpenBrowse - I guess we're all spoilt by Telkom's wonderful broadband surfing experience!
My choice of a local-only account was influenced by an as yet untested assumption that as students they would be (a) able to access material via the university's network, and (b) well versed in what other local sites to visit for downloads, etc. However, I'll grant freely that local-only wouldn't work for me.

 

[general_koffi]

Well, you can get 10GB local-only for R70 from Openweb or Webafrica if you want to do the local torrent thing.

 

[curiouswanderer]

it might be a better thing if the router is set up to dial-up mode and get the guys to purchase their own accounts. The last thing you want to do is to have one guy blow the 6gig cap in one day and the rest suffer as a result then a big fight results.

 

[hj2k_x]

it might be a better thing if the router is set up to dial-up mode and get the guys to purchase their own accounts. The last thing you want to do is to have one guy blow the 6gig cap in one day and the rest suffer as a result then a big fight results.

I was just gonna suggest this....

 

[Syndyre]

Yeah probably a good idea. They could each have one WA prepaid account for browsing and then maybe even share a 30GB local only to do downloading.

 

[kiepie]

How many dail ups can a router in bridge mode have??

 

[hj2k_x]

How many dail ups can a router in bridge mode have??

This is a good question....Could raspppoe help at all?

 

[Syndyre]

How many dail ups can a router in bridge mode have??

Don't think there's a limit. Within reason anyway

 

[edc]

I'm a student sharing a 3G account with only 1 person, it is difficult since both of us would like to download different media. I can use 3G in 2 days. I suggest everyone use their own accounts and ask them to log off their account when they are done, that way the line is unused. They can get all the movies they want from the varsity, it is only the latest episodes of TV series which they would want to download themselves.