Neotel Vs Other Wireless Services

[TMan2801]

Hi Guys,

I stay in a townhouse complex (relatively new) in the Fourways area, and the complex, like most others in the area does not have fixed lines. My only option is wireless internet.

What options are available other than Neotel, with a good quality of service (being both internet service & customer service) and best value for money? I have only really had experience with Neotel wireless, through a previous company I worked for, and they were quite good a couple of years back.

I am aware that they currently rolling out FTTH in the area, but how does this work? Is it similar to the ADSL situation where they still need to run a line into the complex? With ADSL, we need a certain number of owners to show interest in the ADSL service before they could implement. However, we are way below the minimum and this will therefore not happen - If fibre follows the same fixed line principle, where it requires a physical connection to your home, then it will be out of the question.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[SideWinder]

If someone is not already digging up you pavements in your area, don't hold your breath in getting FTTH within 12-24 months. Even if you petition (or subscribe) to so-an-so company wanting to deploy FTTH, they use the Google Glass model, first get up to certain % of willing subscribers, and then the glass is laid.

So short term solution would be to do a 24 month or so contract with one of the LTE suppliers that covers your area well. When that contracts gets to 3/4 = 18 month, see again what is happening in your suburb. If some FTTH player is around, then go for it. Preferably go for one that has a OPEN ACCESS policy, i.e. when contact completes, you can change ISP, much like what ADSL has from Telkom now. This way you can do ISP shopping, and not be stuck. Last choice would be a dedicated fibre.

 

[koeksGHT]

If someone is not already digging up you pavements in your area, don't hold your breath in getting FTTH within 12-24 months. Even if you petition (or subscribe) to so-an-so company wanting to deploy FTTH, they use the Google Glass model, first get up to certain % of willing subscribers, and then the glass is laid.

So short term solution would be to do a 24 month or so contract with one of the LTE suppliers that covers your area well. When that contracts gets to 3/4 = 18 month, see again what is happening in your suburb. If some FTTH player is around, then go for it. Preferably go for one that has a OPEN ACCESS policy, i.e. when contact completes, you can change ISP, much like what ADSL has from Telkom now. This way you can do ISP shopping, and not be stuck. Last choice would be a dedicated fibre.

Pretty much this.

 

[SpaceCadet]

Tried everything else, is Neotel the answer for communicating with the Far East?

This is partly a general discussion, but I am particularly interested in Neotel for reasons which should become clear.

I have been trying to get a connection to a server in Taiwan which satisfies two basic requirements: (1) upload speed at least 0.5 Mbps (for video/phone) and (2) latency less than 500 ms. We had an MWeb-managed ADSL line already installed (put in new in May this year, there was no cable to the house previously) with a "4 Mbps" uncapped package, which was adequate for our other needs, but not for the Taiwan link. We could satisfy the latency requirement with ADSL but not the upload speed (we might manage 300 kbps if we were lucky).

We had an existing contract with Vodacom, so we added an LTE bundle and got an R216-Z modem. Although we had good LTE coverage in our area (Glenwood, Durban), living in a wood-and-iron house (a great Faraday cage) meant we had poor signal indoors. So, using some helpful posts on mybb, I installed a Poynting antenna outside, and the signal is always 5/5. We have obtained good enough speeds to Taiwan (down 4-5 Mbps, up 1-2 Mbps typically), but the problem with LTE is the higher latency, and we regularly have ping times to Taiwan greater than 500 ms.

So we then tried an "upgrade" to our ADSL line to "10 Mbps", which MWeb suggested "could" give us the required upload speed. It didn't. To a local server we were getting less than 7 Mbps down, 0.75 Mbps up, and to Taiwan upload was still nowhere near 0.5 Mbps.

I read in another mybb post that MTN had lower latency, so for my most recent attempt (today) I bought an MTN prepaid LTE card and, again with some helpful tips from you guys, put that in my R216-Z. Maybe it's different in Cape Town and Gauteng, but here MTN's latency is worse than Vodacom's.

Which brings me (finally) to my initial point: some discussion around Neotel suggests that, for the Far East in particular, they have significantly lower latency because they use the Indian Ocean cable, rather than routing everything through Europe as all the other ISPs seem to do, as shown using traceroute. Does anyone have experience of using Neotel to the Far East, and does it indeed live up to these expectations? From what I can see, Neotel doesn't do prepaid, so I would have to take out a contract, and I would like to be reasonably sure it was worth it. And could they use my existing antenna? Many thanks in anticipation.

 

[sajunky]

Here is a trace route from Cell C LTE, it might help.

C:\>ping ftp.asus.com.tw

Pinging ftp.asus.com.tw [103.10.4.40] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 103.10.4.40: bytes=32 time=489ms TTL=239
Reply from 103.10.4.40: bytes=32 time=486ms TTL=239
Reply from 103.10.4.40: bytes=32 time=487ms TTL=239
Reply from 103.10.4.40: bytes=32 time=487ms TTL=239

Ping statistics for 103.10.4.40:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 486ms, Maximum = 489ms, Average = 487ms

C:\>tracert ftp.asus.com.tw

Tracing route to ftp.asus.com.tw [103.10.4.40]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  homerouter.cpe [192.168.1.1]
  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  3    32 ms    20 ms    22 ms  41.48.22.34
  4    34 ms    20 ms    19 ms  10.228.233.193
  5    26 ms    21 ms    20 ms  41.48.16.1
  6    24 ms    15 ms    25 ms  41.48.0.3
  7    27 ms    20 ms    20 ms  41.48.1.5
  8    29 ms    23 ms    20 ms  41.48.253.33
  9   204 ms   199 ms   195 ms  pos14-1-0.parigi8.par.seabone.net [213.144.183.209]
 10   200 ms   200 ms   200 ms  xe-0-2-1.parigi16.par.seabone.net [213.144.183.124]
 11   365 ms   361 ms   350 ms  te0-9-4-0.londra16.lon.seabone.net [89.221.43.212]
 12   356 ms   350 ms   342 ms  pos0-6-0-0.newark11.new.seabone.net [195.22.216.160]
 13   335 ms   335 ms   333 ms  xe-2-3-0.paloalto2.pao.seabone.net [195.22.206.144]
 14   358 ms   349 ms   350 ms  xe-0-1-2.losangeles2.loa.seabone.net [89.221.35.144]
 15   359 ms   349 ms   341 ms  pacnet.losangeles2.loa.seabone.net [89.221.35.186]
 16   502 ms     *      498 ms  xe-2-0-0-0.gw6.tpe3.asianetcom.net [61.14.158.29]
 17   510 ms   509 ms   500 ms  61.8.40.2
 18   511 ms   493 ms   498 ms  103.10.4.40

Trace complete.

LTE adds 30ms to the latency it could be achieved over cable.

 

[SpaceCadet]

Thanks, sajunky.
Unfortunately Cell C doesn't appear to have LTE coverage in my area of Durban, only north of the N3.

I found out my neighbour has Neotel. I asked her to run a speedtest and it indeed shows lower latency to Taiwan
(in the 350 ms range, rather than close to 500 ms). So I'm going to give them a try.