iBurst or HSDPA?

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esterl

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I'm not very technical. Have read some of the threads. Seems like the marketing talk of iBurst (1Mb/s) and Vodacom (1.8Mb/s) is just talk. What should I buy? My Telkom dialup is sooo slow (even with Accellerator). Don't want to wait for ADSL.

I am currently using my Nokia 6020 as dialup using pay-as-you-go at R2/Mb. My laptop's network connection says I am connected at 115.2Kbs. Is that good and will either iBurst or HSDPA give me any better.

According to iBurst I will have 'dark green' coverage. The sales rep said approx 800Mbs. Don't want to buy their modem if I'm not going to get much better than I have now.

I have read the threads on Vodacom HSDPA and it seems there is as much problems with speed there.

Any advice?
 
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I will definitely recommend Iburst over HSDPA, mainly because of the price. If you take the G1 package you can buy an extra 1gig for something like R170. And after reaching your 1 gig cap it kicks you onto a 64k throttle services and if you have a good signal, the speed is a bit better that Telkom dialup.

Much cheaper than R2 p/mb.

Never used HSDPA so I can’t say anything about the speed, but Iburst will definitely be better than your dialup connection, especially if you have good a signal as it sounds like you will have.
 
If you are in the dark green your speed should easily be in the 800's...

I recommend iBurst IF you are not planning on being very mobile with it. HSDPA has 3G and GPRS as a backup so it's great for mobility.

If you want to surf from home, iBurst will work perfectly
 
If you are dark green, go for Iburst, and there is some mobility, but if you were going for ADSL, it will just be a plus for Iburst.
You obviously arent looking for mobility.

It is mostly talk, but Iburst is much more capable of reaching advertised speeds that HSDPA is, especially with good coverage. Like you say, HSDPA is probably never going to hit 1.8mb and there are lots of problems with speeds more like Ibursts, so with the price advantage go Iburst.
Iburst could well outperform HSDPA in good conditions.
 
I saw a comparison on http://www.hellkom.co.za - the speeds of IBurst, ADSL and 3G (HSPDA, EDGE etc) were compared. Take a look at the site for more information, basically IBurst was slower than 3G HSDPA but not by much. The price of 3G was expensive compared to ADSL and IBurst.

There is a guy (don't know the details) who advertises on the MyADSL site (http://www.myadsl.co.za) - his offer is to come to your home and perform and IBurst demo. Get him in and see for yourself. If you cannot find him, have a look at the IBurst re-sellers on the IBurst site, I am sure someone there will give you a demo at your home.

IBurst, 3G etc will certainly be much faster then your current connection.
 
I had to make a similar choice recently. I had two main criteria namely low cost and access to services over the internet. If you exclude the equipment cost the monthly iBurst fees are good value compared to other options. As far as accesibility goes the iBurstSA (note - not iBurst) site was, in my experience, far more accesible than the competitors (everything worked), from online interactive text advice right through to purchasing of hardware and tracking delivery.

As far as the promise of connecting within 48 hours goes, I was a bit disapointed because I wasn't connected until about 4 days later. Even though my area was "dark green" I couldn't log on due to signal interference and I had to buy and install a plate antenna. I am now connecting at about 0.8-0.9mbps which I find more than sufficient for e-mail, banking and general internet browsing.
 
esterl said:
I'm not very technical. Have read some of the threads. Seems like the marketing talk of iBurst (1Mb/s) and Vodacom (1.8Mb/s) is just talk. What should I buy? My Telkom dialup is sooo slow (even with Accellerator). Don't want to wait for ADSL.
Click to expand...

Why don't you want to wait for ADSL?

Ekhaatvensters said:
It is mostly talk, but Iburst is much more capable of reaching advertised speeds that HSDPA is, especially with good coverage. Like you say, HSDPA is probably never going to hit 1.8mb and there are lots of problems with speeds more like Ibursts, so with the price advantage go Iburst.
Iburst could well outperform HSDPA in good conditions.
Click to expand...

+1

sabagamma said:
There is a guy (don't know the details) who advertises on the MyADSL site (http://www.myadsl.co.za) - his offer is to come to your home and perform and IBurst demo. Get him in and see for yourself. If you cannot find him, have a look at the IBurst re-sellers on the IBurst site, I am sure someone there will give you a demo at your home.
Click to expand...

GRES, i think.
 
Saw the article "HSDPA versus iBurst" under the Broadband Forum (dated 11 July 2006). If I go on that, then it seems HSDPA outperforms iBurst in download speed and latency (don't know what latency is?).

Anyway, I will ask iBurst to do a demo at my home.
 
Unforuanatley that article seemed very flawed in HSDPA's favour. Maby Vodacom commisioned RPM to do that one..

It didnt really reflect what most of us (or any one in dark green coverage) get from Iburst.

Latency is how fast the connection can get to something, like if you want to download a file, your internet has to first make a connection to the file and then your speed in kbps only comes into effect. This efects browsing the most, where mutiple files must be downlaoded from the server in order to display the page.
Latency is actually more important to how fast browsing seems than actual speeds, once you are over about 400kb. However it doesnt affect how fast you will actually download a file at all.
Its also the most important thing for online gaming and makes streaming, MSN, and interactive online aplications faster.

ANyway, point being that you dont need to listen to the comparison and Iburst is much better value for money for a home/mobile service.

EDITL oh and latency on Iburst is also very dependant on signal strength. So dark green will once again have good latency and you shouldnt have to worry about it.
 
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