iBurst Spillage

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HeXetic

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I have cancelled my iburst account because of the poor service they have provided. It worked quite well up until 3rd Nov, when I started to have connectivity problems and poor speeds. After logging several calls with the call centre and being told there was nothing wrong on the network side, I eventually managed to get iBurst to send a technician to check the installation.

Now here's where it gets interesting. I was told that because we are in the "spillage area" of the iburst coverage, we would have problems because the base station gives priority to users in the area close to the BS where the signal is stronger. What this means is that your iburst might be working well for a while and then all of a sudden it turns pear shaped and they tell you that’s how it is, tough. Can this be right? If so there must be serious implications regarding advertising, service delivery etc. and not to mention the rapidly declining iburst reputation as an alternative to ADSL. I have since had this "spillage" phenomenon/theory confirmed by a senior manager at iburst but I am having difficulty believing that a company can operate in this manner. Have any other users had similar experiences to this?

Is the "spillage' theory a reality or just another cop out on the part of iburst when they have no other excuses for their inability to solve their technical problems and deliver what their advertising promises? I wonder if the GSM service providers are going to have the same "problem" with 3G/HSDPA?

I would have posted this a few days ago but since I cancelled my account I use the iburst at the office and we have been down on and off for the past few weeks. It seems that we are also in the “spillage” area.
 
Spillage, pillage!

Its just basic contention. Many basestations are over saturated. The product is being recklessly oversold.

Additionally, the basestation arrays are periodically re-alligned to encompass the maximum number of users in an area. Too bad if your formerly good signal strength drops alarmingly as a result.

The only way to counter this is to beef up your signal strength as much as you can with antenae etc on the basis of "Survival of the fittest."

Beyond this, there is not much you can do. There is no guaranteed speed.
 
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HeXetic said:
Have any other users had similar experiences to this?
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Yes, I have experienced exactly this.

My connection quality and speeds went down by quite a lot a while ago, and our tower has in the same period got more and more loaded. It is still not overloaded at all and is capable of giving good speeds, but being far away from the tower, my signal just suddenly dropped. I used to see 5 lights very often when using the connection, now it often idles at 1 light and only gets to 3 lights when being ultilised during the day, some time at night you still get 5 lights, but not very often and not constantly at all.

However increasing your signal does help this.

And iBurst's "solution" is simply that they are putting up a lot more towers at quite a rapid rate, so hopefully this will solve people problem wrt this "spillage". Also, the tower upgrades might help..

You see it worked out okay for me, just as my speeds went down, they planned a new tower much closer to me, except they are taking for ever with this tower.. which I was told AGES (about 4 months) ago would be up the next day.
 
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I too have been a victim of the so-called spillage phenomenon. My service worked very well untill about 3 weeks ago. Now, the signal has gone from 90% to about 60% when it works, which is about half of the time. I have a 3m mast with omni antenna and was getting speeds in excess of 600k. Now, when it works I am lucky to get 150k. What now I ask my self? We are in an area North of Table View, Cape Town where ADSL is not available and HSDPA is overpriced.
 
Dentarg said:
I too have been a victim of the so-called spillage phenomenon. My service worked very well untill about 3 weeks ago. Now, the signal has gone from 90% to about 60% when it works, which is about half of the time. I have a 3m mast with omni antenna and was getting speeds in excess of 600k. Now, when it works I am lucky to get 150k. What now I ask my self? We are in an area North of Table View, Cape Town where ADSL is not available and HSDPA is overpriced.
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Well the problem is that we are not "normal" iBurst users really, if you have to use a mast with an antenna you might expect something to be able to go wrong. Its very easy for the tower to just start "ignoring" one solitary antenna away from the most of its users. A problem with the underlying technology I guess.. but I doubt if other technologies are better at this, even WiMax might have the same problem, but I have no idea really.

It is unfortunate though.. you can just hope for a closer tower soon.
 
Another victim...

This happened to me as well from 1.2- 1.6 Mbps down to 500kbps (when it works, if not 50kbps). (Less then 1.3Km from a tower with directional antenna)

I think it is more than the repositioning of the tower array, it seems to me the power output of the array has been reduced.

A little marketing trick of iBurst – Initially when they install a base station it runs at maximum power output, then a few months down the line they reduce the power output and realign the array to the area where the most users are.

As for taking advice from iBurst, well they know very little or give out the incorrect info - you should be speaking with WBS, who is responsible for maintaining the towers.
 
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who.is.michael said:
A little marketing trick of iBurst – Initially when they install a base station it runs at maximum power output, then a few months down the line they reduce the power output and realign the array to the area where the most users are.

As for taking advice from iBurst, well they know very little or give out the incorrect info - you should be speaking with WBS, who is responsible for maintaining the towers.
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I dont know if iBurst are really as bad as that. Why on earth would they do that? Just especially to make their service worse because they want people to leave after a few months, I mean what would they gain from turning down the power of a station? It seems ridiculous. I would assume they realign the array to try and get the best speeds for the most users, not with the intention of cutting some people off and reducing their speeds.

I am surprised that your speeds could actually decrease by that much given your amazing signal and your position relative to the tower, is there sme reason that they would want the tower to be focused away from your area?

WBS is iBurst btw. They used to be called WBS, and changed their name to iBurst, so their is really no WBS to talk to.
 
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Hi there EHV

It's not about being bad it is more about being practical and or economical.

Do some reading.
 
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who.is.michael said:
Hi there EHV

It's not about being bad (surely you should have realised by now in life there is no good nor bad, just actions and consequences) it is more about being practical and or economical.

Read, read some more and reply.
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Yes, I really didn't want to use the word bad, but I meant they aren't doing it on purpose like I thought you might have meant.

I realise what you mean now. But my question is, is it really a "little marketing trick"?

It works out nicely as one, but it might be unavoidable. They can surely only fine tune and realign the towers once they know where the majority of users are going to be situated. Now they could guess this, but never truly accurately and it would simply be a waste of time. Easier to just leave the tower for the first few months and then change things. It has a terrible effect though.. Do you think they actually try to combat this with new towers placed where old users would be left out? They should, and seem to be trying to, do this in my and others in my area's case, it is just taking them a while.

Still doesn't really explain your decrease.

And I'm still looking for more stuff to read, seems like there is quite a bit that iBurst SA don't bother telling you. But this piece of information seems to be for the better in general, it just leaves quite a lot of users with worse speeds. The yneed to fix that part with new towers. Oh.. right I was going to ask if you could link any especially interesting documents. I have read everything on arraycomm's site so far, but I'm guessing there would be more interesting articles obviously not written by them.
 
Ekhaatvensters said:
I realise what you mean now. But my question is, is it really a "little marketing trick"?

It works out nicely as one, but it might be unavoidable. They can surely only fine tune and realign the towers once they know where the majority of users are going to be situated. Now they could guess this, but never truly accurately and it would simply be a waste of time. Easier to just leave the tower for the first few months and then change things. It has a terrible effect though.. Do you think they actually try to combat this with new towers placed where old users would be left out? They should, and seem to be trying to, do this in my and others in my area's case, it is just taking them a while.

Still doesn't really explain your decrease.

And I'm still looking for more stuff to read, seems like there is quite a bit that iBurst SA don't bother telling you. But this piece of information seems to be for the better in general, it just leaves quite a lot of users with worse speeds. The yneed to fix that part with new towers. Oh.. right I was going to ask if you could link any especially interesting documents. I have read everything on arraycomm's site so far, but I'm guessing there would be more interesting articles obviously not written by them.
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Well EHV


In my opinion it’s either incompetence (array alignment not correctly done), or intentional (ensuring maximum users sign-up) and then when the complaints start rolling in from users reducing the output, so all users have a reasonable share of the available bandwidth.

There are two towers in the CBD, however the base station in the centre of the CBD is overloaded, therefore directing the second antenna array at the CBD. – incomplete speculation.

Only have PDF's for reading will source links and paste them shortly.
 
who.is.michael said:
There are two towers in the CBD, however the base station in the centre of the CBD is overloaded, therefore directing the second antenna array at the CBD. – incomplete speculation.

Only have PDF's for reading will source links and paste them shortly.
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Thanks.

Okay I see what your problem could be. But that would be a really bad idea by iBurst SA. Leaving everyone on one side of the tower with a terrible connection despite having amazing signal. Um.. hmm..How would that work anyway, you still have good signal, so even if the arrays are turned, you are still capable of connecting to them?

So then why would speed decrease by that much if signal has been almost unaffected?
 
Please ask iBurst...

Hi EHV

I suggest you direct your questions at the iBurst employees on this forum, as they get paid to answer and resolve these issues.
 
Hi guys
It all comes down to coverage, I have customers sitting 5km's outside our coverage and with a Yagi or with Webb directional antenae are getting good speeds and throughput. But as the customer base increases in the coverage area, this particular customer will slowly but surely start getting less and less from the base station...

CBD is a heavily used base station, but as our coverage increases, this will increase capacity. The answer is more base stations and thats our priority right now, especially in the Cape.

Having said that, the quality of the service in the region is good...unless you're in a lousy coverage zone!
 
Out of Zone Coverage

Hi Ed
I'm going to assume you are talking about me, after our last chat.
I am 5km into the white zone (zero coverage), and do not have line of sight to the tower, which is about 15Km away.
I live in a rural smallholding area, to the north east of pta, and I am sure there are many similar such cases.
I have no 3G coverage, no ADSL, No "my wireless", and telkom have run out of available lines, so I have no telephone service and therefore no dial up.

IBurst is my ray of hope at the moment, and I am thoroughly enjoying the great service I get from it.
I have over 100% signal and typically connect at 500k, fastest was 780 and the slowest about 2-300.
Yes, I put up a huge gain yagi, and when usage picks up I may get dumped, but for now its great.
The question is....without too much effort and cost....couldn't i-burst point a directional antenna into the rural areas...there may not be the same customer density as in other areas.....but for the little expense it would be worth it...no?
Cheers
Graeme
 
Great to hear that you are enjoying iBurst, Radiant Antennas. It was also good to talk to you the other day. We need to get it right in the main areas first in terms of coverage and we want the quality of service to be spot on for our customers in our existing coverage areas. The rural areas are important to us though. It would be great if we could cover the whole country. One step at a time...
 
Coverage is one thing Ed, but when are you going to get Kyocera to mod the firmware to allievate the problems that I and many others experience when there's a lot of basestations about, such as the case in Wilropark-Roodekrans where my UTD picks up Kenmare, Roodekrans, Wilro Park and sometimes Roodepoort. Basestation hop is not nice...!!
 
Hi guys
It all comes down to coverage, I have customers sitting 5km's outside our coverage and with a Yagi or with Webb directional antenae are getting good speeds and throughput. But as the customer base increases in the coverage area, this particular customer will slowly but surely start getting less and less from the base station...

CBD is a heavily used base station, but as our coverage increases, this will increase capacity. The answer is more base stations and thats our priority right now, especially in the Cape.

Having said that, the quality of the service in the region is good...unless you're in a lousy coverage zone!
Click to expand...

Ed, why is it that the users who has been signed who signed up 2 years ago with iburst get lower priority than new users???

Shouldn't it be your companies policy to keep all users happy and give the users an even distribution with regards to priority? (IMHO Loyal customers should get the top priority)

It's rather unfair for users who's signed up with iburst 2 years ago to be snubbed for newer sign-ups.

If the base station is overloaded why give new users top priority? what about the loyal users?
 
I don think its about loyalty, but rather position.

You signed up two years ago when you could be 5km from the BS and get great signal/speed, but as more new users sign up closer to the BS it gives them priority because they have better signal and are "easier" to service.
 
Absolutley right Ekhaatvensters.

Our early customers are very important to us and that's the reason behind the big drive for capacity towers throughout all the main regions.
 
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