new ASA case against WBS

[nocilah]

firstly this is not misguided.

this has got nothing to do with suspensions which i believe wbs would have won with regards to the asa case. this is about wbs speeds capped and uncapped.

over the past 2 weeks my speeds have degraded to a level where i think the advertising on ibursts site is now considered false. how many people here are recieving 100KB/s speeds (bursts). How many of you are getting the '64k' throttled speed?

if anyone is interested please respond... this is only to create publicity to put wbs under a bit of preassure and to get them to change their advertising which at the moment is misleading.

and to any wbs people reading, look at how active sentech is these days because of consumers taking action.

my polite emails for help with regards to speed issues have gone unheeded to certain techincal/helpdesk people at wbs. helpdesk staff are incredibly reminiscent of sentech (excuses, 'you are the only one', yes the problem will be fixed by 11pm). It seems to be the common practice of wireless companies in this country looking at the evidence.

perhaps iburst should be taught not to use words like 'up to 1Mb' and 'broadband' and who knows, perhaps later in the months to come they can compete with sentech in the dialup market... except there service will be capped.

anyway... any thoughts? flames? suggestions?

 

[Simple Twist Of Fate]

good point

I think there could be a case but how to prove deliberate underthrottling?
In my experience i have to reload pages 2-3 time before they finally open.
and it seems to me the WBS 64 is no where near modem 56 speeds/performance, having said that however it is very easy for wbs peeps or anyone else for that matter to start the MTU,SPYWARE....BLA BLA BLA
faulty windows etc etc firewall.

I do get fairly consistant 8k download speeds but only coz i am using a download manger.
web pages however open at very arb and random speeds some at 1-3 k and sometimes faster.

AND that fact is in their manifesto, being wireless and subject to terrain blah blah.

however if there is any stats pings etc i can send i wpuld be happy to help you buld a case.

 

[MrH]

I have been getting over 100KB/s until I was capped on Monday, and since then averaging 61 to 65kbps.

Below is the data used to calculate your download speed:

* Download time: 62.281 seconds
* Size of file: 500 KiloBytes
* Estimated line speed: 65.5 (kilobits/second)
* Estimated line speed: 8 (kiloBytes/second)

I have to admit it has been a bit eratic at times the past 5 or 6 days though.

 

[seburn]

Stop whinning about 'crap after cap service' and remember you lucky to get any sort of connection. If you have a problem move to sentech or telkom and pay more.

 

[slimothy]

ok but you shouldn't go to the ASA with this, they deal with ads, so you need an ad that guarantees 64k or even 1mbit, you probably won't find one because its there policy to use the words 'up to' a lot. You should probably talk to some consumer watch dog organisation to get things rolling.

 

[MrH]

My connection seems to fall within their specs. and the only thing I can put bad connections down to is that your base stations are overloaded since in general mine seems to be ok.

Maybe try putting pressure on them to put up more base stations in the bad areas.

The erratic service I've been having over the past few days also seems to be affecting adsl in the CT area, but that has nothing to do with wbs.

 

[nocilah]

i think if international speeds degrade further and once more and more people realise what alot of people have been saying from the start and you have 5 or more people stating facts about their iburst experience it will be up to the ASA to determine what is the appropriate action.

unfortunately in south africa there are no consumer watchdog services except myadsl, which is made up of consumers. even if the asa do find something it is something that will make the media and so the reputation of iburst begins to crack.

this very thing happened to sentech. i think in total sentech had 3 asa cases against them.

there are several ways wbs can defend it's self. the most obvious would be to improve international speeds, but i will tell you what will be the most likely. wbs will wait to see what the asa say. then they will abide by what ever the asa say because for them it is the short term and cheapest to do, or if the asa find nothing wbs will do nothing.

but ofcourse more and more ibursters will start seeing the reality of the situation and eventually 70% of users would have moved on and this board will be very much like the sentech board is today.

i am waiting to see what happens at the beggening of the month, when ibursters who are capped at the moment can access at full speed. i have come down from a fairly consistent 60-70KB/s on single threads for 5 months now to a whooping 20KB/s.
that has happened over the past 2 weeks since they had that weird international outage.

helpdesk cant help or answer any of my questions and reading this board i am not the only one. reading this board i am not the only one who has experienced these slow downs. some towers and signals are better then others and their may be varying speed patterns.

my honest oppinion iburst have either cut down on international bandwidth spend for this month or permanently. have too many users. or maybe they just dont know what they are doing.

i sincerly hope i am wrong with all of the above and things do come right but this is following the exact same pattern as sentech.... and one thing wbs and sentech do have in common. they were both never isp's to the public and their support and inexperienced public relations shows this...

anyways... like i said i hope i am wrong... other wise telkom will be smiling soon as more people will prolly sign up for adsl..

 

[nocilah]

Stop whinning about 'crap after cap service' and remember you lucky to get any sort of connection. If you have a problem move to sentech or telkom and pay more.

no i would not call it luck to get a connection after a cap is reached. i would call it a selling point of a product that we are all paying for.

reading this forum, iburst as a service, is bad. you may like to call it whining which is fair enough comment. then instead of asking people to go to another service... why not try to help? point out what possible problems could exist on system configurations... but please do not whine about people 'whinning' because it really establishes nothing.

the point of this thread is to estalish a complaint to the asa, based on the facts and curent experiences of iburst customers.

 

[MrH]

It's probably a case of greed and skimping on equipment, and the fact I don't think they have enough qualified staff to run the system.

As you say sooner or later more of us will start to have similar problems, and when that day arrives I will jump ship as I'm not prepared to put up with a useless system.

Right now though it seems to be ok.

 

[nocilah]

yup... unless they fix it... cuz they can always do that... unless they short on cash as rumours have suggested.

 

[seburn]

That was my personal opinion.

I really feel that they have more important things to sort out first, like all the problems ppl have without being capped.

Try the USB instead of the ethernet apparently that helps.
(I really cannot try help ppl here coz if your connection worked before I don't see why it wouldn't after unless its on their side)

BTW pls don't whine about me whining about ppl whining about crap service after being capped.

 

[MrH]

If they short of cash this early into the venture then that pretty bad business planning.

More likely trying to get as much as they can for spending and doing as little as they can.

 

[seburn]

They must have cash to expand in DBN but have it on 'hold' ie they really don't want to waste it here unless they have to.

 

[MrH]

They should first sort out these problems and get some happy customers before opening up yet another can of worms.

 

[seburn]

They can open another can as long as the eat the **** inside the can.

They will probably get sick and die though (the worms will combine and eat them from the inside out)

Who's a hungry worm here?

 

[craigsa]

Hali i am capped , just by the way and if this is 64k then i will eat my hat! My browsing is basically non existent and i mean on local sites like MYADSL. Its bullsh!t. Its more like 6.4k after being capped. Maybe they forgot to put in the "." ??

 

[ic]

Halicon, I think it is a good idea, but only if we all draft it together...

Note the title .

...
however if there is any stats pings etc i can send i wpuld be happy to help you buld a case.

That's not going to be of any interest to ASASA - they are non-technical/lawyers, and will merely refer it someone/organistaion like ISPA to interpret.

IMO the best way to prove this case is to offer to actually setup 4 PCs at ASASA:

• 1 * Windoze PC fully loaded with anti-malware, firewall & anti-virus s/w, and latest M$ hotfixes & service packs.
  
  This PC would then be used with a 56k modem to demonstrate a dialup connection side-by-side with iBurst on Windoze...
  .
  [*]Same PC setup as [a], except that it uses iBurst instead of dialup [preferably with USB and maybe if there is time ethernet can be demonstrated as well].
  .
  [*]Linux dialup
  .
  [*]Linux iBurst [PPPoE]

The point of all this being that you can demonstrate to ICASA at/on their own premises [assuming they are well placed to get a decent iBurst connection] that the throughput advertised by WBS is highly inconsistent, and not really related to signal strength/quality.

If we do this, it should IMO be done as a joint-forum-effort, i.e. together draft the complaint to ASASA in this or another thread - wording of the actual complaint must be near perfect - otherwise the ruling will end up in WBS' favour - too many complaints have been discarded by ASASA for this very reason [IMO].

 

[nocilah]

couldnt agree more... i know when i lodged a complaint with sentech it was the wording that helped... along with 5 other people which was entirely unplanned somehow asa found sentech at fault... but to be honest with sentech they were far in the wrong..

the problem is this at the moment:

wbs can fall on their connetivity. they can say that speeds are determined by how good a person's signal is and they mention this on their website. how do i prove that my signal is excellent and that up to two weeks ago i had no problems. it is my word against wbs's.

who is the best person to write out the complaint?

or do we wait and see if iburst improves?

Your line speed is approximately 395 Kbps or 48.4 kBytes/sec <--- that is th efirst time i have seen local so low on my side...

it seems iburst is degrading at an alarming rate and i believe if we wait until next month then we shall see **** hit the fan.

BTW pls don't whine about me whining about ppl whining about crap service after being capped.

okay

i think wbs should fix everything in one go.

 

[ic]

Well let's be clear on what we hope to achieve with this complaint, and what is not within the scope of ASASA's ability to deliver.

ASASA can only order WBS to change their advertising, whether on radio, in print, and/or on iburst.co.za & related WBS sites. So, we need to look at what is being advertised, and we need to draft a complaint with a view to getting ASASA to order WBS to unambiguously state what they offer with iBurst.

If we word the complaint properly, we can say that it is generally acceptable for an ISP to offer 24*7 Customer Service & Technical Support, now we can suggest that WBS has not really been offering even half decent support, and we the paying customers should not be expected to finance WBS' incompetence. Objective: ASASA should order WBS' to include a phrase like "Limited Customer Service & Technical Support" to indicate that they are not offering a full service that consumers expect an ISP to offer...

Another bug-bear: last I checked WBS was not a member of ISPA, and I confirmed with Ant Brooks that WBS did not have an application to become a member pending at the time, perhaps that has changed now, if it has not then I think we need to find a way to include it in the complaint to ASASA - that consumers expect WBS to be a member of the relevant industry organisations & have a minimum code of conduct that they subscribe to, and WBS does not...this should be stated on all WBS advertising:
"WBS is not a member of ISPA"...

Your thoughts/comments...?

 

[GRES]

I think problem is inside UUNET. They are 2 weeks under havy DOS attack :-( !
iBurst itself working for me and for lot of other users for 100%. Just now international tests show my d/l speed 780 - 977kbps. U/l is slow - 150 - 230 only (international). Average ping 48ms.