GPRS as cheap alternative to dialup

Maybe I'll add vodacom and cell c later. But their bundles is mostly for contract subscribers as far as I know. All of them have a rate of R2/MB so the differences is not that much anyway.
 
sparklehorse..... you can buy a R5 prepaid simcard from Vodacom, load some airtime on it, get it provisioned for GPRS and you are on the way.
Nothing fancier than that. Good way to keep the costs down, as there's no open ended bill.
 
Yea, I update the page to include vodacom and cell c info - I don't use them though, so please tell me if I got something wrong ;)
 
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Yeah, as far as I am concerned, for quick access to check email and chat GPRS is the way to go. When our ADSL is down (a common experience) I switch over to GPRS through my cellphone, works very well :)
 
sparklehorse said:
Does anyone know if cell c will ever provide gprs to prepaid prescribers?
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Mmmm, gprs...the are the greediest of all the operators, so thell first implement the massive RRRRRRRand, before gprs, bunch of arabian coke suckers :p
 
sparklehorse said:
I highlighted some of the costs of dialup vs GPRS on this page:
gprs vs dialup

Please send me comments and corrections ;)
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Your page says
GPRS is a little bit slower than dialup
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Well, that may be true in Stellenbosch, but out here in the Drakensberg GPRS is twice as fast as dialup. Many people in outlying areas should be advised to get GPRS because line quality deteriorates with distance from the exchange and ADSL is not likely to roll out to rural areas for many years.

Your comments re cost are spot on, I am considering changing from ISDN 64kb to GPRS, as the main connection in our office ... ISDN bill is R2500 per month. I worked out that it was R0.58 per minute (I have detailed logs)... and the most you can download in a minute is 480kb (Assuming that the ISDN connection is 100% utilised during every session then it would cost R1.24 per mb)... and since it is not utilised 100% I just know that it is costing a lot more than that per mb. GPRS would save us money, so what if it is 30% slower. On the other hand if I could drive 30% slower and save a whack of money on fuel, but somehow I dont think I can drive 30% slower. :)

Cheers,
 
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murray654 said:
Your page says Well, that may be true in Stellenbosch, but out here in the Drakensberg GPRS is twice as fast as dialup. Many people in outlying areas should be advised to get GPRS because line quality deteriorates with distance from the exchange and ADSL is not likely to roll out to rural areas for many years.

Your comments re cost are spot on, I am considering changing from ISDN 64kb to GPRS, as the main connection in our office ... ISDN bill is R2500 per month. I worked out that it was R0.58 per minute (I have detailed logs)... and the most you can download in a minute is 480kb (Assuming that the ISDN connection is 100% utilised during every session then it would cost R1.24 per mb)... and since it is not utilised 100% I just know that it is costing a lot more than that per mb. GPRS would save us money, so what if it is 30% slower. On the other hand if I could drive 30% slower and save a whack of money on fuel, but somehow I dont think I can drive 30% slower. :)

Cheers,
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GPRS is cost effective yes.

Let's say you have a crappy dial-up running 22kbps at full capacity all the time (we know this is seldomly true, but anyways). This translates to roughly 10 MB per hour. Telkom call more rates are about R10 per hour. GPRS will cost less for a medium to large volume bundle. GPRS will be twice as fast too, EDGE and 3G even more.

In peak times GPRS will be half the price of Telkom as Telkom charges about R20 per hour for peak calls. This also excludes the minimum-rip-off connection fee of 59c for every call. Alternately, GPRS will cost the same as a 44 kbps modem connection running full speed during peak time.

Have any of you Drakensbergers tried EDGE over long distance? My speed tests over short distance shows about 100 kbps with 2 bars. I am curious as to what distance will do the speed?
 
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ajax said:
Have any of you Drakensbergers tried EDGE over long distance? My speed tests over short distance shows about 100 kbps with 2 bars. I am curious as to what distance will do the speed?
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  1. I am less than 100 m from the tower,
  2. I have an Edge modem (Teltonika T-Modem USB)
  3. According to the MTN map, this area has edge
  4. Connection speed is GPRS ie 47kb/s = 5.8kB/s
Which means that the MTN coverage map is not accurate.

Cheers,
 
Ja, I don't trust those maps really.

Does an MTN cell phone say "Y'ellow Broadband?"

If you really want to be sure you're on an EDGE tower, borrow a Symbian phone like a 6630/80 with the netmonitor app installed. It has a menu that shows whether a tower is EDGE enabled. You can also monitor the data throughput by e.g. checking how many time slots you are given for downloading.
You can also lock the phone to one channel or tower. This is useful if the phone keeps switching between EDGE and non-EDGE towers.

I had a problem last night, was only getting 1 timeslot down, which gave me an average of 50-60 kbps. This morning its 4 timeslots again or 160 kbps.
 
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