IPWireless in Africa

R

regardtv

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Hello All,

Interesting to see Tanzania's signed with Fastcomm. I also see they offered a 64K option... while I think it would be good to introduce it in SA I think Sentech would not be able to keep up with the orders ;-)

http://www.cats-net.com/htmls/simplyrate.htm


Rig
 
Well they have Cable too, so hey SA is lagging

Fantasy is what people want, reality is what they need.
 
Will be interesting to see what they charge for 64k.
When MyWireless was still in the planning stages 64k was an option but no matter how we looked at it we could not do it under R550 pm, so we dumped the option.


<hr noshade size="1"><center><font color="blue">MyWireless Stuff</font id="blue">
<font size="1"><font color="black">The opinions expressed here are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of my employer</font id="size1"></font id="black"></center>
 
ProAsm, what factors were taken into consideration when deciding on the monthly installment for the MyWireless service? Excluding modem and weather you chose the 128, 256 or 512k option.

What makes up the bulk of the monthly installment? What factors will influence the price if it was dropped?

I guess this info is usually confidential, but it would be interesting to know.
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">When MyWireless was still in the planning stages 64k was an option but no matter how we looked at it we could not do it under R550 pm, so we dumped the option.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
I think a 64k option should have been introduced (but not at R550 of course). I just need an always on connection for email and some moderate surfing/downloading (I'm no slave to porn like some others on this forum [;)]) and internet radio.
If it was priced at around R400 per month that would have been acceptable, for now at least.
 
64k permenant connection

Perfect for 56k dowloads,email,surfing and being on msn and chat for those chatters.

R399 a month plus the initial R500 + R70 delivery + R500
for the modem(to balance with the contract mayb)

I would of gone for that

..- dot dot dash ;)
 
But only if it were a Gauranteed 64k connection.
If not, it wouldn't be worth it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the packages basically have a half speed gaurantee - i.e. 128k your guaranteed to get 64k minumum ?

A true 64k connection would be great for the user who just needs to surf and do a bit of emailing - if Sentech priced it at, say R400 a month, they'd be seriously competing with Telkom.

But - and this is a big but, your average home user has a landline that they already pay for. You also get ISP's who charge maybe R100 per month - heck, Absa charge R50. So that user can hook up with thier modem when they need to and thier connection phone bill and ISP can be under R400, plus they still have thier landline to make calls on.

For them, getting Sentech would only be useful if firstly it was R400 per month and secondly, they ditched thier landline to Telkom.

So, I agree with Sentech, that in this country, a 64k connection isn't really a neccessity right now.

It would be interesting to know what the current demographics of Sentech users is.

One thing I do know, I've had lots of business people ask me how Sentech is going for me as they are so pissed of with Telkom that they are considering Sentech.

I think Sentech should seriously invest in more customer support - hopefully they are in the process of doing so. I'm just thinking of those business users who have contacted me going through some of the trouble people on this forum have been through - not good.
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">But only if it were a Gauranteed 64k connection.
If not, it wouldn't be worth it.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Only diginet offers this and what does that set you back per month ?
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Correct me if I'm wrong, but the packages basically have a half speed gaurantee - i.e. 128k your guaranteed to get 64k minumum ?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Where did you see this ?
Nothing is guarenteed whether its MyWireless, ISDN, ADSL or 56k dialup.


<hr noshade size="1"><center><font color="blue">MyWireless Stuff</font id="blue">
<font size="1"><font color="black">The opinions expressed here are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of my employer</font id="size1"></font id="black"></center>
 
No half speed guarantee. Thats a rumour. Have you experienced anything less than half your speed and can prove that you should be getting more?

According to ProAsm you shouldnt worry about this. Sentech contention ratios are pretty good. Personally, I am quite happy and dont seem to have any problems due to the "shared" connection. Well at least so far that is.. but it will probably get worse later on.
 
No - I've been fine connection wise, not a problem at all.
I must've heard the same rumour - my post about this didn't say it was true, I did say "Correct me if I'm wrong" :)

Won't catch me spreading false rumours ! - er, well, not today anyway [:p]
 
That "rumour" (which sounded a little fishy to me) seems to come from Rodent's FAQ http://rodent.za.net/MyFAQ:

"* Q: Is the bandwidth good? Is there a CAP?
* A: The bandwidth is good. Keep in mind, that if you buy e.g. a 128k package, 64k is guaranteed, and the other 64k is shared amongst approximately 30 people. How exactly the "shared" portion is split, is undefined at this point. The same holds true for 256k, or 512k packages. Half the bandwidth is shared."

Rodent, where'd you hear this?
 
Well, I was starting to think this was half speed was fact, first, I saw it on Rodents faq, and then, came across it on http://www.nowire.co.za/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=169.
Proasm: I think you guys should speak to your partners, and clue them up,
plan B : Create some sort of guarentee, I'm keen for slightly more than half what we pay for[^]
 
From a query sent to support on 22/04, I received replies from 2 ppl (indicated as S1 and S2) :

2.. 128Kbps - Is that 128Kb up and down ?
S1: The speed is 128 download and 64 upload
S2: 128kb/s down and 64kb/s up

3.. Would "shared" imply that my bandwidth will deteriorate as more people in my zone sign up, to the point where it might become unusable ?
S1: The contention ratio is 20/1, If you devide the connection speed by 20 that will be the worst case .
S2: You will share your bandwidth between 20-30 users on the network. So take 128/30 and your slowest it will get is 4.26kb/p if 30 users use it at the same time as you.

4.. From the FAQ, maximum bandwith would be whatever package chosen. Is there a (theoretical) guaranteed minimum ?
S1: The contention ratio is 20/1, If you devide the connection speed by 20 that will be the worst case .
S2: 4.26kb/s in the lowest minimum.
 
Ok, so the lowest is basically dialup speed - I can live with that so long as it doesn't happen too often [:)]
 
Luke7777 is correct, it is in bits per second. This means your guaranteed minimum is (4.26 / 8) = +-0.5 kilobytes per second... still probably better than ADSL when capped.

Having said this I wouldn't worry too much about the contention ratio, as you scale up the numbers the possibility of EVERYONE downloading at the same time is miniscule. Let's take a hypothetical example of 500 128k users sharing a 2 mbit section (1:32 contention), the possibility of all 500 downloading full out at the same time is small. Now scale this up to 2500 users on 10 mbit and it's even less. This is why most of the time you will get full speed unless Sentech over contends the bandwidth.

Happy everyone? [;)]
 
Well I can vouch that it most definitely is not 128 down and 64 up. Its more like 128 is capped and shared while uploads are contended only. For example, for 1000 users each user is capped to 128kbps and amongst the users (assume 33:1) 3.5Mbits/sec is shared. Thats for downstream. For upstream there is no per user cap but those 1000 users now share for example, 2Mbits/sec. So thus, on uploads if there is enough capacity you will get your 128kbps and on uploads, you will get extra capacity ie. more than 128kb.

Personally, I have pretty constant 128kbps down and maximum 256kbps up.

Remember that (as above) the contention ratios are split up over a large pool and not for 33 people. So 33:1 doesnt mean that you are sharing with 33 people.

Moral of the story: stop panicking and ignore all instances of the word "shared". For now that is..
 
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