iBurst or iBust?

Z

Zoney

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Hi,

I am considering switching from a 3G to iBurst link and am trying to get a balanced view of their service (nervermind helpdesk and sales as this is obviously not an area of importance for SA service providers). Most feedback, as usual, is negative as it's easy to criticize but not to complement (as is the norm for SA consumers). Could someone please let me know their general satisfaction with iBurst's service? With 66000 users they must have something to offer.

Sorry for the generalisation of the majority but having spent the past few hours reading reviews and feedback sites I've found the only people more immature about handling difficult situations than consumers are the service provider companies.

Thanks very much for any info.
Regards
 
Lol. 3G is expensive bandwidth, Compare 3Gigs of data on 3G ...
ADSL is really nice and fast now, so you get to use up your 3gig cap (or whatever cap) much faster. Oh, and then PAY for more.
iBurst softcap package, download all you want. It does get slow once you get capped, but I still youtube/facebook/irc/msn and even skype when i'm capped. If you're just a little bit patient then you wont have any hassles with iBurst.
So, what do you use your internet for?
 
Hi Zoney.

I am an ex iBust user and here is my (little biased) view:

The dreaded accounts department:
In the year I was with iBust they did not run the debit order on my account on the same day of the month. It went of any time from the 20th to the 5th of the next month. I told them to put it on the 22nd.
They have access to your bank account and can do whatever the hell they want. My friend had a double debit go off one month and when he phoned the accounts department they could not tell him why. After fighting a few days they told him he missed a debit order a few months before. He did not. He had proof. They told him he is wrong :sick:. They sent him an excel file with some copy paste figures in there that did not make any sense at all and they tried to use it as proof that he owed them money. Two months later he got his money back.

The connections:
My connection was almost perfect 1Mb/s all the time. Slowed down a but at peak hours but not a lot. My friend was lucky when his connection went above 100Kb/s (1 tenth of what he should get) and had a lot of packet loss. His tower was very badly oversubscribed. The reason we say this is that when we both signed up we got the same wonderful connection. After a few months his connections started degrading down to a pointless frustration.

The 64k throttle:
The only reason iBust was worth the effort. Don't go over 20 or 30 gigs or they phone you :D

Latency:
No clue, never really played online games.

The price:
Total ripoff and you get a R2000 modem that is worthless to you if you do decide to ditch them.

Sales:
Very good, I was connected in 2 days.

Support:
Only phoned them once (to figure out how to connect) and it was good.

The reason I left them is the fact that they put their filthy fingers in your bank account and do with it what they want. NOT RECOMMENDED. :sick:
 
Apart from the incompetent Accounts Department (I've personally also had a very bad experience with them), the terrible browsing service we have had in the past month, the technicians that don't have a clue on how to help you except how to tell that you should "Change your MTU to 1352", the unreplied emails that get sent to helpdesk.... This list goes on... - i must say I'm quite happy with iBurst :D

I must say the only reason I am with them is because of the softcap, and that there is nothing else available in my area ;)
 
Softcap. If you subscribe to iBurst, don't take anything less than a Pro Classic. Make sure you get the soft cap - it (in my slightly demented mind) beats the pants off anything else. For the record, I have moved twice since getting iBurst, and have gone from 40kB/sec to unusable to 108kB/sec to my current situation, which depends on where I place the terminal. One side of the house points at one tower that gives me <30kB/s, the other side points at another tower that gives me >80kB/s average. YMMV.

[Added]
Oh, and I deposit money into their account - not the other way around.
 
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Should you be intending to use your connection mainly for browsing, the sending and receiving of emails and with the use of extensive downloads with mobility being a key factor; iBurst could be the appropriate choice.

iBurst’s port prioritisation, intermittent DNS / Email failures and lack of international bandwidth can be really frustrating at times but usually only occurs once a month and lasts approximately a week before the connectivity issues are resolved.

You should only be considering the service if the softcap is a deciding factor; since the HPDSA service from Vodacom and MTN is far more stable and offer much better throughput and access speed with far better value for money.

Regards

Michael
 
I was with iBurst but then switched to ADSL.

My experience with them:

Overall I don't have too much to say. I did not have an issue with their billing department like many seem to have had, even when it came time to cancel my subscription, the process went smoothly.

In terms of service, I found the fact that I was forever tower hoping to be a very unpleasant experience, and the claim of 1mbps speeds to be rather exaggerated.

I did the good little iBurster thing and bought an external panel arial, in an attemot to get a more directional signal but to no avail.

At the end of the day, the slow speeds and highly restrictive practices, i.e. throttling, and the fact that they were no longer competitive price wise (Getting access to ADSL had a big pull factor) I decided to change.

As for my recommendation. Avoid them if you can, and only deal with them under extreme circumstances, i.e. there is no other means for you to get internet access.
 
I just very recently got iBurst (this morning :-) ) and I am quite satisfied thus far. My connection speed, ping etc is comparable to the university of the free state's 8Mb/s international and 2Mb/s local line (during normal working hours). I think your main concern should be overloaded towers. In Bloem we have no problem with overloading, since the people are conservative with their caps...

That being said, be on the safe side and deposit your money into their account, NOT the other way round...
 
I'm still with iburst, I've been toying with the idea of switching over to aDSL... BUT

Softcap: 64k I still get around 15gigs (casually) over and above my 3gig limit - only use ddl i.e rapidshare ftw

My connection when uncapped is always 120Kbps (Hyde Park Tower)

Why not use Iburst:
Billing Department - I was with FusionReactor but now another company is maintaining their accounts...
Support - "Have you checked your MTU?" The standard **** question they always ask, wasting 5 minute of phone call, giving a explanition that I don't need front line support!
Receiption - if you don't have receiption or very bad signal THEN DO NOT GET IBURST!
 
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Thanks

Thanks everyone for decent, 'non-rant' information. This has helped me a lot with my decision. Unfortunately ADSL is not an option for me due to location and after many phone calls to Telkom trying to get WiMAX (which according to them is available but we don't know what it is or how you get it) I've given up on that. I've decided to go with iBurst on a month to month basis as my 3G has declined over the past few months from often well over 1Mbps to a lucky 100kbps bursts with no improvements with their 3.6Mbps upgrade.

iBurst's pending increase to 2Mbps and price reduction should be interesting otherwise holding thumbs for glimmers on the horizon like WiMAX , 4G etc.

Thanks again everyone :)
 
Zoney said:
Hi,

I am considering switching from a 3G to iBurst link and am trying to get a balanced view of their service (nervermind helpdesk and sales as
Click to expand...

Go for MWEB Iburst rather. They also give you 300Wifi minutes, 2Gig mailbox,
5 mailboxes plus 5 email aliases and 20MB webspace. Plus they have a very decent SPAM blocker. You don't deal with iBurst at all, so they won't screw
up your billing. You can add dial-up for a few bucks extra per month.

A local mailbox outweights a Googlemail box any day. It also looks better to have an ISP email account than a free ad supported one.

In Bloubergstrand, I get a 100% Signal Strenght virtually 100% of the time (not using supplied antenna). I only had one 3-4 hour tower crash in the last 3 months.
The tower stays up even during load shedding.
Speeds vary from 20-100KB/s. On sites like Microsoft/Apple I get 100KB/sec - more or less constant, on very heavily taxed servers
in North America I get as low as 20KB/sec but that's not iBurst's fault.

I've used R250 HDSPA 7.2Mbps internet in Europe (10GB cap) and it's nice but also with that I had problems with some remote site servers.
Your iBurst is portable too, get a PCMCIA or Express modem and you can surf in most urban locations.

I would suggest you buy the modem and go for Month-2-Month on a Pro package. That way you're not tied to a contract.
Prices are coming down in April, so you may want to wait till then.
 
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PeterCH said:
I would suggest you buy the modem and go for Month-2-Month on a Pro package. That way you're not tied to a contract.
Prices are coming down in April, so you may want to wait till then.
Click to expand...

They should adjust the prices for month to month "contracts" taken out before April too. In any case April is next month :p so you'd probably only cancel 3G by then.

Are the Mweb prices higher than standard iBurst rates? MWeb usually add a preium for their services.
 
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