Is it worth it?

A

ASF

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A few days ago a mate showed me how his MyWireless worked. Looked great. Easy to install and setup. Checked my zoning and was pleasantly surprised to see that my area had coverage (must have come online in the last few weeks). So far so good....

Went to the Sentech site to apply. Read their terms and conditions and WHOA... Their contract is completely one-sided. There is no out clause to cancel the contract as an end-user... Well that's just rubbish. So I phoned the call center and spoke to very nice lady called Dorothy.

When I asked how I cancel my contract if I am not happy she quite correctly informed me of the 7 day cooling off period... Nope I say, I am aware of this - I mean AFTER 7 days. She says there is no way to cancel. I say, OK I can accept this IF Sentech has a reasonable Service Level Agreement associated with the service (that way one has an out of the contract if one can prove they are not delivering...)

SLA - she responds that Sentech guarantee 24*7 access to their network and call center - bah what a joke! So I respond - what do I get in return for my contractual agreement to pay Sentech R 21 k over the next 2 years - She reponds with the same BS. So I reply - nowhere in the contract does it state what the actual technical service is that Sentech will be delivering to me. The very nature of the service is technical - therefore surely it should have some technical metrics by which service delivery is measured - i.e. throughput, uptime, latency - in black and white! Off she goes to call a supervisor (now sitting at 15 mins on the phone to them). Comes back - please can I have your details - need to pass on to the technical ???? department - they will contact you....

That was last week sometime - to date - not a peep from Sentech, nothing, nada, f*kol.

So - firstly my comments to the Sentech folks who watch this forum:
1). DON'T say you'll phone me as a fob off - NOTHING is more infuruating than being ignored - tell me to p*ssoff, tell me you don't care, tell me whatever -> BUT DON'T BLOODY IGNORE ME!
2). I suspect the reason I have'nt had a call back is because Sentech doesn't have a SLA for MyWireless? Is this case? Does Sentech have a SLA related to the MyWireless offering or not? If not -> why the bloody hell not! Seems to me Sentech is riding the anti-Telkom bandwagon but actually acting EXACTLY like Telkom in terms of "best effort" BS offerings...

Question to existing MyWireless users:
Is the MyWireless offering worth it? I would very much like to get it for myself at home but sure as sh*t am not going to get suckered into a 21 grand commitment for a cr*p service.....
 
HEheh ASF

Those of us that have signed the agreement are bending over, preparing to take it where the sun does not shine EVERY time there's a f-UP ....

Personally the service has been worth my while... I get 8-9K a sec 24/7 when I'm NOT getting dropped from the tower - it seems someone in my area may be broadcasting on the same frequency - doing some investigating on my own before kicking up a fuzz ;-)

If you are concerned I'd suggest looking at the shorted period options available from Sentech's resellers... It's STILL not attractive but a tad better.

R


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The views expressed on this site are my own and NOT those of my employer.
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by ASF</i>
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1). DON'T say you'll phone me as a fob off - NOTHING is more infuruating than being ignored - tell me to p*ssoff, tell me you don't care, tell me whatever -&gt; BUT DON'T BLOODY IGNORE ME!
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
I long ago lost count of the number of times Telkom customer reps lied to me and told me "I'll call you back" and never did. I swear it's practically a Telkom trademark. It's not professional.

I've never actually heard of any large ISP targeting the home market that guarantees any service levels 'on paper', neither here nor overseas. My impression is that none of them will do that because they don't want to leave themselves liable if there are service delivery problems (and there are *always* unforeseeable technical problems that come up in things like this, sometimes not even the ISPs fault but the upstream provider's fault, and they can't afford to refund thousands of users if, say, their upstream provider's link goes down and they're put on a slower backup connection, or something), but also because they don't (even in the US) actually buy enough upstream bandwidth to be able to deliver maximum 'advertised' throughput to all or even most of their users at the same time - they operate on the assumption that statistically only X percent of users will be downloading something at any specific time. They all advertise the maximum possible bandwidth, of course. I would be very surprised to see 'minimum network performance specifications' such as latency put 'on paper', anywhere! Perhaps I'm wrong though, anyone know otherwise?
 
The contract may be onesided, but it is clearly in Sentech's advantage to provide excellent service : In a duopoly scenario like this one, the short term benefit of taking the money without providing the service is not worth it. Rather build a strong brand name and a good reputation.

Just think of the MTN Vodacom Duopoly. They also forced a lot of people to take contracts. But because their service never deteriorated the Minister of Communications did not think it was necessary to issue many new licences. So the duopoly remained. Now MTN and Vodacom are 2 of our biggest companies.


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<center>http://rational.co.za/MyWireless/calculate.html</center>
 
With respect nicroets - 21 grand is 21 grand. What you are saying may be true but it still does not allow me to pull out if the service stinks. And Ditch is probaly correct about ISP's and SLA's to the home market BUT then at least provide the client with a pullout clause...

Come on Sentech - how about a response - we know you guys monitor what's happening here....
 
I'm happy.

1 month two weeks later, I've had about 3 hours downtime and maybe 5 days of about 3k per second issues (which everyone had)

I can tell you one thing, there will be a way out of this contract if you have a legitimate reason to do so and a semi-decent laywer. There's a way out of any contract.

It's essentially a Cell Phone contract when it comes down to it.

I've got no problem with it so long as my service level stays within a certain boundary.

On a 128k line, if I get 99% uptime and 60% of the time am at top speed, I'm happy. So long as during that time, my overall speed stays at around 6k (128k contract) per second lowest, it's damn good bang for the buck.

Right now, I'd recommend going for the entry level 128k contract and viewing from there. With a 256k or 512k contract, you cannot downgrade if your unhappy. With a 128k you can upgrade if you feel the need to.

Personally, I've seen people with 256k and 512k not getting much better than 128k, but that's probably still some launch problems sentech are having.

If your truly worried, heck, wait 6 months - people on sentech now are "early adopters" and thus bare the brunt of troubles.
 
Well I have read the Telkom ADSL terms and conditions and even that is just as scarry as hell. It almost makes you feel like there's nothing a South African Consumer can demand, even if the service is bad.

I must say i'm ok with the service upto know, the only thing I was not to happy about is the fact that they do not give you any details on what the pop and smpt adresses are. They also don't give you the web address of how to get your e-mail via http, or even tell you what the page is where you can see your account details (only picked this up by noting the page when it installs the software at first)

The other thing is the drivers, would be nice if it doesn't hang your PC with hyperthreading, and there Web site is very poor with informative content.

I'm just wondering if they are going to up these type of services, along with trying to boost there signals a bit. I'm on tower 82 in Radiokop and get a constant 2 light (12%) signal and average around 3.9 - 5 kb I would like to see at least a 8-10kb

anyways my 2c
 
I think the issue of an SLA is a valid one. I don't know of any ISP's that offer any form of SLA to their clients for connectivity as up until now, the ISP has no control over connectivity.

However, imagine the hue & cry if say, M-Web or Tiscali were constantly fiddling with the modem banks in their POP's and every time you called they'd say "we're just having some modem problems, give us an hour or so".

One of the big motivators for me using Sentech was that it is a single company offering and end-to-end service, they provide connectivity and Internet services. This means they should be accountable for the complete service.

If I was paying R60 per month for some budget ISP service I could understand the lack of support and poor connectivity, but when I'm shelling out R1500 per month, I expect the leves of service that go along with that:

Published change control in suitable CC time windows
Network availability statistics
Suitable measurement tools to show contention, etc
Competent technical support

Think about it, there are a whole host of free tools out there that could be implemented at various points in the Sentech network to show current performance.

If my 512k link is only giving me 128k speeds I should be able to check some simple stats that show:

- If I'm contending with other users for bandwidth, as per the contract
- I've got great local connectivity and it's just the international links that are swamped
- There's a problem with the tower and I have a legitimate "beef"
- I've left my P2P client running and it's eating up my bandwidth ;-)

I accept the point that early adopters must go through some pain, but on the whole it's the early adopters that have a good understanding of the technology and are not satisfied with nebulous statements of "we're working on some towers try again in 30 minutes". I expect to be provided accurate and informative information on why my service is so badly degraded I might asw ell be on a 128k not 512k package.

Sentech would do themselves a favour to ensure the highest level of communication and technical service to their existing client base as we're the ones who are going to become their biggest advocates or detractors based on our experiences.

I've already told a number of "lay" users to go for ISDN or ADSL over Sentech because of the unpredictibility and poor reliability of the service. If my experiences were better this would be money in Sentech's pocket.

an active Sentech representative on this forum (I don't count ProAsm, he does this in a personal capacity) or a moderated forum of their own on the Sentech site even, would be a pretty good start I'd think.

We could be helping Sentech resolve their inadequacies rhather than simply exposing them.
 
Hey, I am still waiting for Clinton to give me a call...T-infinity.

I think they need to get their Helpdesk Staff more trained and motivated. I bet you there's not track and trace at the Call Centre (ie CLIP or Voice recording) so the Agents can promise you anything without any comeback.

Which reminds me of a saying dad has: " A man with his hand on a woman's breast will promise her anything"
 
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