Is it possible that all WiMax ISP's suck?

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LotusHead

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Hi all ~

I'm looking for a redundancy service to our 2 x Telkom ADSL lines that we can use for our offices.
WiMax seems like the best option in terms of wireless options, and thus far I have costed Neotel WiMax and Screamer WiMax.
Telkom WiMax is busted according to their sales people, so that's not an option.

Reading these forum's about both, I cant help but think OR WiMax is not an option, since it's unreliable and very slow OR that this forum is packed with a bunch of moaners?
I mean honestly, is it possible that ALL ISP's SUCK?

No good word for Telkom, Neotel, iBurst, Screamer ect ect ect...

All I want is a back up service with reasonable speeds for a good price, is that asking too much?
WTF? :wtf:
 
It's not the WiMAX part we are complaining about. It's the crummy upstream it is connected to.

When the upstream isn't a heap of crap, it works quite well.

The problem is the companies behind the wimax, not the technology itself. It gets a bad rap as a result..
 
Heya Cda ~

Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated. I understand what you are saying about the upstream suppliers, so by deduction I would thus assume that WiMax is not an option for a redundancy service since none of the suppliers have a service worth subscribing to?

That's quite sad really, as it seems to be a generally affordable alternative to ADSL lines.

Suppose it's not a cut and dry call to make if you are looking for an alternative, since none of the forum groups seem happy with any of the other services on offer. Maybe moaning is just the nature of a forum, since there are really no satisfied customers on this forum? I find it hard to believe though that there are no services worth subscribing to in totality...

What in your opinion would be a good alternative connection should our ADSL decide to go belly up again? I'm a bit stumped... :confused:
 
LotusHead said:
Heya Cda ~

Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated. I understand what you are saying about the upstream suppliers, so by deduction I would thus assume that WiMax is not an option for a redundancy service since none of the suppliers have a service worth subscribing to?

That's quite sad really, as it seems to be a generally affordable alternative to ADSL lines.

Suppose it's not a cut and dry call to make if you are looking for an alternative, since none of the forum groups seem happy with any of the other services on offer. Maybe moaning is just the nature of a forum, since there are really no satisfied customers on this forum? I find it hard to believe though that there are no services worth subscribing to in totality...

What in your opinion would be a good alternative connection should our ADSL decide to go belly up again? I'm a bit stumped... :confused:
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Lotus, to be fair the Wimax technology and Screamer (ISP) do work ( /hides at the stones been thrown) if all you want to do is e-mail and browsing. However most of us complaining here need a little bit more than just a "connection". Us gamers are the worst in a sense that we want near perfection in bandwidth availability and response times. If we don't get it, online gaming is waste of time :(.

So if you want use Wimax as your "redundancy" as per my first example then yeah great go for it. Honestly i can count the number of times my browsing hasnt worked on one hand. If however you require a bit more from the connection then in my opinion at this present time, the Wimax ISP's need to sort out their BS and spend some money to fix the issues they have before it will truly be a viable option. Of course this is all just my two cents worth. (FYI i have been a wimax customer for over a year now and tbh i can count the number of days on one hand that i have been truly satisfied with the product (via a gamers perspective of course)).
 
Wicked Ciruis ~ thanks for your opinion!

Well, that does make sense to me - we have a couple of staff that play some TF2 after work from time to time, but connectivity is my major concern. General low speeds are not really fun to anyone I think, but if it keeps you alive online, then it does the trick.

Telkom's ADSL lines are generally speaking quite stable, but hell's bells when something goes wrong, it goes wrong in a big way - and can take WEEKS to repair...

Seems you guys being users of WiMax are quite well informed, besides for the lag in gaming performance (that bites, I hear you), what WiMax ISP would you best recommend? I priced Screamer and Neotel (Telkom does not sell WiMax currently) and the prices are quite drastically different between the two?

Screamer - No cap 512kbs - R971 p/m
Neotel - No cap 2Mb - R4500 (month to month) or R3500 (12 month) or R3050 (24 month)

That's quite steep, since a 4Mb ADSL + Uncapped Afrihost will cost you a fraction, and perform much better for browsing and surely gaming as well. I much prefer Screamer for the price, or do you get what you pay for here?
 
You certainly get what you pay for in my experience with Screamer, but for your purposes it makes sense to take the Screamer route. I certainly don't see any objections with Screamer for your type of usage. However just be warned if you want to use it for anything else (like i mentioned in the previous post). Even for a business a difference of R3500 between providers is insanity. Beleive me Neotel isn't much better, dare i say worse?

Anywhoo matey i think its picking the lesser of two evils here. As someone mentioned before on this forum. Anywhere in the world you pay for what you get, in South Africa you just pay :(
 
Surely if connectivity is that crucial to your business you should be looking at real business services such as diginet, metro ethernet etc with decent SLA's attached?
 
SliverZA said:
Surely if connectivity is that crucial to your business you should be looking at real business services such as diginet, metro ethernet etc with decent SLA's attached?
Click to expand...

+1 but if budget is a problem why not just get a 3G router with a external aerial. You can then use prepaid bundles when the ADSL lines go down.
 
TheGuy said:
+1 but if budget is a problem why not just get a 3G router with a external aerial. You can then use prepaid bundles when the ADSL lines go down.
Click to expand...

Whoa 3G ? That's a tad ambitious i feel. Costing on 3G last time i checked was madness. I stand to be corrected though. From a versatility point of view, yeah i agree with you 100% (since you won't actually be paying anything unless you are using it. I.E load bundles as and when you require).
 
Hi Lotushead

I have to admit that the latency for our gaming customers has not been the best and we are currently making a concerted effort to try and prioritise their traffic on our network. Most of the comments on this forum are from our gamers and so we have already made some investment in systems to prioritize their traffic and another major upgrade is scheduled for this Monday evening and hopefully this will give them one of the best gaming latencies available on a network.

As far as normal HTTP browsing and downloads are concerned our network is extremely stable.
 
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