No Billion modem for me ever again. Service issue.

[Seriously]

/rant on

So I have a Mweb branded Billion W40 modem. Updating firmware bricked the unit. I called Mweb they e-mail me a firmware .afw file. Obviously they do not know what bricked means. I called them again and had a discussion and I am subsequently told that they do not know nor have access the required emergency .cem file. I must take it in to them and they will send it for repairs IF it's still under warranty. So I called Nology the Billion agents in South Africa. What a bunch of r'tards. I cannot get to a workshop technician but I get passed on to an idiot that cannot take any decisions as he have to query and clear everything with higher echelons. So eventually I though let me try an e-mail to their "support". Maybe I get to someone with at least more than a pea for a brain. No Go with [-]Nology[/-]No..logic as again my e-mail ended up with pea-brain and I get the same story. See below.

Hi there
I need a emergency recovery flash file .cem file for recovery of my non working or “bricked” W40 modem which is the same as the 7402GLR3 . I am able to flash it using the Reflash_v500 or via a DHCP server via tftp but have the incorrect versions of the recovery .cem file.

The BillionW40_No_Locking_v553.s5.dm11.afw file need the Web interface to work which is unavailable with the faulty modem. Therefore I need the emergency recovery flash file.

Please help or assist
Thank you in advance
Regards

Good Afternoon

My name is Pea-Brain I would be assisting regarding your query.

For the router to be flashed please take it back where you bought it, they’ll have to send the router to us in order to be flashed.

Best Regards

My last reply!

Hi there

What a costly waste of time ? My time and petrol bill will be more than worth the modem. Why are South Africa so far behind in technology? It takes me 2 minutes to flash it if I have the correct file. No wonder we remain in the third world era!

What a waste. I would rather bin the modems and go back to Duxbury and Netgear

Thanks.

Considering the fact that all or most of the Billion router models firmware can begot of the NZ official sites except those "special" ones that are sold locally this is just poor and totally idiotic service and support.

I always wanted to buy a decent Billion modem with 3/4G fail-over but now? No go Nology. I will return to Netgear and Duxbury.

/Rant over!

As I said in my mail. I clearly understand why we and Africa will forever remain in the third world while others move forward.

 

[Messugga]

What alternatives do we have though?

Netgear... meh.

TP-Link... mine's alright, but it started randomly freezing daily for which there is apparently no known cure, although it's a fairly common problem. I flashed it to WRT which solved the crashing problem, but now any phone that tries to connect to it via WIFI gets dropped for a second or two as soon as you put load on the connection. Works fine with laptops and the like though.

D-Link? Might've improved lately but historically it's been garbage.

Linksys: They're just not the Linksys of old. Their QC standards have slipped and what you get is often garbage.

Cisco: Too expensive and probably overkill for 99.9999% (including me) of people.

 

[jacksback]

Scrap all those modem routers and get yourself a TPLink that supports DD-WRT

I have owned the WR1043ND for the last 3 years and haven't had a single issue.

It comes with a USB port and supports a number of 3G dongles if failover is required. It's only a router so an external modem is required (I use a Tenda ADSL 2 modem)

 

[SYNERGY]

Their local support may be crap - but their products are solid.

 

[rrh]

I must say that I have never had a hassle with either Billion Or Nology

 

[sajunky]

For the router to be flashed please take it back where you bought it, they’ll have to send the router to us in order to be flashed.

You have received right answer. Router is bricked, it canoot be accessed. There is perhaps recovery procedure, but not all are happy to pass this information to the end users for the reason of the risk of damaging boot block by "try and see" method. However for many devices such information has leaked to the public. Search Internet for firmware or flash recovery procedure.