Improving

koffiejunkie · Aug 30, 2004

Hi Guys&Gals,

I've been following these forums for a while now, lookging to a viable upgrade to our existing modem+telkom landline setup. Although I agree that the service from Sentech as reported here is poor, getting 3k/s 24/7 (mostly) at R650 pm is much better than getting 4k/s only over weekends at around R600 pm (we get disconnected at least 4 times per weekend).

Now, over the weekend I spoke to someone who has sentech at home. He told me two things:
1. Yes, the service is poor and speeds are worse, but it has improved over the last two months. He said when he got it two months ago, he had trouble stying connect for longer than 10 minutes at a time. Now he frequently gets 20 hours at a time.
2. Getting an external antenna is essential.

What are your guys thoughts? Is the connection speed/quality/reliability improving, if slowly?

I can live with the ADSL speed (we have it at work), but at the cost 3GB is a little restrictive, and my experiences with telkom's billing department left me very scared to do any more business with them.

Thank you

--
koffiejunkie

jgoosen · Aug 30, 2004

STAY AWAY!!! FAR FAR AWAY!!!

kickass72za · Aug 30, 2004

Give it another month or 2 ......

I wouldnt get yourself into the **** we are in........

Unless....... well i doubt you are a fool

When this forum is quiet........ then look into it but until then "STAY AWAY!!! FAR FAR AWAY!!!"

MrGray · Aug 30, 2004

As we speak I am getting 400Bps speed on international. BPS not even KBPS - i.e. 0.39KBps. Do yourself a favour and stick to dial up - relative to sentech, it's broadband.

There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of by mere mortal men - Shakespeare

GougedEye · Aug 30, 2004

STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY; STAY AWAY;

passif · Aug 30, 2004

Sounds like this is for home use, so after hours? Rather go for ISDN and Callmore combination. ISDN is more stable than normal dial-up, and is faster than what you will get out of MyWireless (bear in mind I am on the 256k 'package'). On my 256k package, speeds range from as low as 8kb (as in bits) up to an astronomical 70kb these last few weeks. Unfortunately it is more often at the low end of the scale.

Go for a short term (month on month) contract with ISDN. It is superior in terms of throughput. Wait until there are more options (iBurst for example). Do NOT sign a year / two year contract.

---
Sentech and Telkom: The pupil surpassing the master

mrbob · Aug 30, 2004

When Sentech say they guarantee a minimum of 4k per second they're not referring to KiloBytes, they're talking kilobits which is the equivalent of 0.5Kb/s. Just bare that in mind

Cause on some days I've prayed for 2K/s... just so I could view a website or download a document or receive an e-mail.

But yeah, it does seem to be improving, will have to wait and see though

gripen · Aug 30, 2004

i tend to disagree. it is still cheaper than ISDN or dialup. keep in mind those with good experiences dont really post them here for various reasons. I have ISDN at home and I get way way more out of my sentech connection (granted I use it a hell of a lot - all the time at the moment). Yes there are (major) hassles and yes it is slow.. but overall its still a lot cheaper than anything else albeit on average a little slower.

You may be lucky.. some people get 0.5KB/sec constant and others get 15KB/sec (on 128). I get somewhere between.

Anyways by the time you get thru the hassle of subscribing (sperm samples etc) it may be better (I doubt it. Honestly I dont think it will ever get better - my opinion) and if not then just pull it within your first seven days.

You are probly better of waiting for iBurst or non-telkom-ISP-ADSL.. I would if I were you. When we got mywi there was no option.

<center>**Official Sentech MyWireless 56kbps customer using patented carrier pigeon clipped wing technology**</center>

dorris · Aug 30, 2004

As good as ISDN sounds, I backed off and moved to mywireless, reason, before viewing a web page, the expense is
Telkom : R180
ISP : +/- R170
Total : R350

So, R350 before I can view a page or download an E-mail, with that as an opening price, there is never a month one doesn't go over Sentech 128 rate, my father is still on ISDN at home, he logs on every morning, before 7, for 60 minutes to get streaming audio, his phone bill to ISP is always over R400.

Before everyone flames me, my verdict, be patient, after the end of this week, if things clear up on this forum. Wait at least 2 months, then hop on board, if service has been stable.
If not, take a gamble when iburst releases next year.

For me, I would be ok with the service if I can get +64K and <5% Packet loss always on connection. With that, it still works out the most cost-effective service.
I actually have been one of the users that got consistently decent speeds right until the upgrades began.
All these pissed off forumites got that way because I abused Their bandwidth

aborg · Aug 30, 2004

I paid +-R1000 p/m for an isdn/sat combo - never again!! - and got less for it than my current mywireless. ATM though the service is really sucky. June to mid august I averaged 20KB/s on my 256k package which was acceptable - now its down to 3-4 KB/s - I hope and pray its only temporary - like they guys say wait for 2 months so the service can either stabilise or see its ass. There is some other technology on the horizon - 2005 might be an interesting time for SA internet.

Fight the system!

Turtle · Aug 31, 2004

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by koffiejunkie
1. Yes, the service is poor and speeds are worse, but it has improved over the last two months. He said when he got it two months ago, he had trouble stying connect for longer than 10 minutes at a time. Now he frequently gets 20 hours at a time.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">
It's not really better the last two months. Over the past three months my service has been up and down and up and down, but I definitely cannot say at this point that there is any actual trend towards improving. And the call center still lie as their core policy and/or claim that 5MB/hour is normal and acceptable, so that actually proves that they don't plan to really change. My advice though: wait another month or two, and check back at the forums here to see if things improve.

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">2. Getting an external antenna is essential.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">
NO, only if you really struggle to get a signal where you are. When the service was working well back in March, and also now and again when I've had "fluke" good speeds, it's been without any additional antenna and even with only two or three lights lit on the modem. I'd say if you're only getting two LEDs or less, maaybe three, then spring for an external antenna.

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">
I can live with the ADSL speed (we have it at work), but at the cost 3GB is a little restrictive, and my experiences with telkom's billing department left me very scared to do any more business with them.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">
All signs are pointing to (*) Sentech's new "bandwidth management" system will mainly consist of some sort of BW capping on international, which effectively amounts to a usage cap at the end of the day.

(*) Hey I'm speculating, but since Sentech have officially stated that they are not going to tell any customers any details of the "upgrades" then I think that forming judgments based only on the information I have at hand is 100% acceptable. Moreover it tells you that they have something to hide.

loosecannon · Aug 31, 2004

i would not recomend it for serious use but that said it is a cheap internet connection and sutable for email/browsintg but dont expect to be blown away as it is currently slower than dialup ...

it depends on what you want but to tie yourself down in a contract with technicaly inept company ... is not a good idea

CBL · Aug 31, 2004

I would agree with these replies - WAIT till things improve,
and stay improved for a month or so.

But IPWireless technology *can* work well:
last night i had a torrent running that got 400MB in about 9hrs
approx 12 KByte/s or 96 Kbit/s - wow! nearly half the 256Kbit i am paying for.
BTW, this was without any ext. aerial, 17% signal on tower 82(was12) Mintek.

To be honest this was like 10x better that what i have seen during the last month or so.

( During the last month, i have often plugged in my modem and dialed up when MyWireless to damn slow to use )

I'm guessing last night was a fluke - maybe most
users were kicked off at 01:30 when Sentech did "maintainance" on
their server room ?

The problem is that Sentech tell us absolutely Nothing about
what is happening. We have to guess and hope for the best.

Wait and see... Good Luck [

]

koffiejunkie · Aug 31, 2004

Firstly, thanks for the input.

Here's why I'm thinking of being a lunatic and going for this at this dodgy stage:

- Dialup works out at the same price as sentech, at the moment, and that's only over weekends. I would like to download my mail everyday, and so would my flatmate. I wouldn't mind having my IM open every evening at home to chat to relatives who live overseas. This will cost a fortune on dialup, be it ananlog modem or ISDN.

- "other ISP" ADSL = telkom ADSL. The same rules apply. There's the same 3GB cap, and anyone who's used ADSL will be able to tell you it's completely useless for international traffic once you got capped. You can't even get the google front page, and I use google heavily. I'm and R&D guy for an IT company, so I use the internet heavily, but don't have great bandwidth demands. dialup is more than fast enough, it's just to bloody expnsive. Either ways, ADSL is expensive. Even if "other ISP" gives you an ADSL account for 99 cents per year, month, you still have to pay Telkom something like R800 pm for the line rental.

- Lastly as mentioned before, people who join these forums to post are mostly the ones who have something to complain about. It's difficult to know how many people are happy with Sentech (not counting of course the uninformed who don't know the difference).

To add something more, I e-mailed Nowire and told them something like "I hear and read a lot of bad things about Sentech with regards to how they treat their customers, ect" (regardless of the actual service supplied) "are you any different" Got a call back from Desmond Jackson, who, from what he told me, sounds more like one of the technical guys. He was very open about the problems and told me a few interesting things:
* They are using some Telkom (adsl) guys to help sort out the bandwidth management issues. In fact, they're moving over to different software (I assume to what Telkom's using. Most of the problem seems to be a result of bandwidth managent).
* Their contract is the same one that Sentech uses, just a different header/name ect on. But they won't be hard up if I feel the service is not what I'm paying for and want out.
* A bundled modem package will be available in the next few weeks - right now the modem is a separate purchase.

So I think I'm going to try this. At the very worst I can cancel in the first week, which should be enough time to decided if the package is sufficient for my purposes.

Thanks to all who replied, I appreciate the input

--
koffiejunkie

Staind · Aug 31, 2004

just remember the days of 64k ok cool we cud play games, but goddam wiaitng till 7pm to login how *** was that? and that was the only time the bandwidth was actually in your hands.. during the day it was also slow.. i like being able to go on the internet when i want, download at night, i just deal with it

lewstherin · Aug 31, 2004

Dude, the bundled modem package has been around since the start. Its the original MyWireless offering.

I agree with you on the whole dialup vs MyWi thing.
If one considers the costs of just staying connected at 4Kb/s, dialup is prohibitive if used outside of peak hours. So in that respect MyWi is a markedly cheaper alternative.

The big problem is that Sentech's branded it as broadband, when really its more like 24/7 dialup.

Telkom needs a leash, ICASA needs some guts, and the SA consumer needs to make it happen

lewstherin · Aug 31, 2004

KoffieJunkie check your mail [

]

Telkom needs a leash, ICASA needs some guts, and the SA consumer needs to make it happen

Luke7777 · Aug 31, 2004

The bundled offer was with ST, not NoWire. They only had the unbundled one until now.

128K|21%|13SNL|36 Menlopark 2530

lewstherin · Aug 31, 2004

Ah i c [

]

Telkom needs a leash, ICASA needs some guts, and the SA consumer needs to make it happen

Inevitable · Aug 31, 2004

Trust me i was in the happy category...but now since this stupid upgrade my intl bandwidth is slow like cuck...evry1 is slow on intl now.

Glory Glory Man United!

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