Openserve

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We have just received the news that openserve will be installing our fibre in the complex within 2 weeks.. I'm pretty disappointed that openserve will be our provider considering they are owned by Telkom...

With that being said... Everyone with openserve.. How is your experience so far?

Im stuck now between getting an openserve line.. Or using my friend who lives nearby's connection. He is on vuma. And has 100mbps internet we want to spit 50 each. My plan is to shoot it wirelessly to my house, and I know some of you are gonna say.. Thats illegal or... Icasa will be after you.

But my plan was all along to get a solid fast speed and send it over wirelessly to my house...but openserve has jumped into action to install our fibre

So now here is the question

Go with shitty openserve

Or get a shared connection with a friend.. Knowing its kinda illegal.. But at the same time.. Icasa being icasa, they probably won't do anything... And yes I have permission from my friend's ISP to split the costs and speed
 
Oh... Don't ask about that pictures... I just put it on the ladder to test it won't be there permanently
 
I have a 100Mbit uncapped fibre connection on Openserve with Cool Ideas as my ISP. Costs R1.5k pm and is absolutely awesome. Pretty much no issues and never slows down during Netflix time in the evenings.
 
I have a 100Mbit uncapped fibre connection on Openserve with Cool Ideas as my ISP. Costs R1.5k pm and is absolutely awesome. Pretty much no issues and never slows down during Netflix time in the evenings.
Jho jho jho, 100mbps down and 50 up.

Vuma costs R1220 for 100 down 100 up
 
I have a 100Mbit uncapped fibre connection on Openserve with Cool Ideas as my ISP. Costs R1.5k pm and is absolutely awesome. Pretty much no issues and never slows down during Netflix time in the evenings.
It depends where you live. Openserve apparently uses a shared fibre line meaning you share a line with 63 other houses. Vuma, frogfoot, octotel ect give you your own dedicated line to the main point where it goes to... This is what I heard
 
Jho jho jho, 100mbps down and 50 up.

Vuma costs R1220 for 100 down 100 up

I'm not making the case for Openserve being the superior fibre network. I'm just saying it can still be excellent. Considering how many people desperately want fibre but cannot get it, I'm just happy to have a decent option.

It depends where you live. Openserve apparently uses a shared fibre line meaning you share a line with 63 other houses. Vuma, frogfoot, octotel ect give you your own dedicated line to the main point where it goes to... This is what I heard

I'm not sure what the standard procedure is with Openserve, but there are clearly protocols to manage the connections. The pole my fibre connects to has 4 available fibre connections and can take no more than that. Strangely, none of my neighbours who would connect to it have taken out fibre connections yet. It's still just my property connected to it.
 
I'm not making the case for Openserve being the superior fibre network. I'm just saying it can still be excellent. Considering how many people desperately want fibre but cannot get it, I'm just happy to have a decent option.



I'm not sure what the standard procedure is with Openserve, but there are clearly protocols to manage the connections. The pole my fibre connects to has 4 available fibre connections and can take no more than that. Strangely, none of my neighbours who would connect to it have taken out fibre connections yet. It's still just my property connected to it.
Ah ok cool. Thanks for your feedback. Ill think it through
 
It depends where you live. Openserve apparently uses a shared fibre line meaning you share a line with 63 other houses. Vuma, frogfoot, octotel ect give you your own dedicated line to the main point where it goes to... This is what I heard
You're talking of the GPON access technology, Frogfoot does that same. Not sure on Vumatel as it depends.
It really has no impact on you as a user. It might limit your upgrade path when you hit 10Gbps (though you can upgrade the switches, so probably only limits at 100Gbps).

That said, is it clear line-of-sight? Then you can try it out and see how stable it is. If not, go with OpenServe.
My usual suggestion if you want a 100/50Mbps is to go with Afrihost 100mbps + 25GB cap as that covers installation, and then add a Vox account on top of that for data. You can also look at ISPAfrika for the line but you'll have to message them directly.

For good uncapped, go Cool Ideas as Bryn said, but that's R1500.

My set-up is 100Mbps Afrihost thing, 300GB data cap (fat pipe), total is about R1050pm, on which I pull on average 450GB of data (about 250GB midnight), which is virtually uncapped for my household.
 
You're talking of the GPON access technology, Frogfoot does that same. Not sure on Vumatel as it depends.
It really has no impact on you as a user. It might limit your upgrade path when you hit 10Gbps (though you can upgrade the switches, so probably only limits at 100Gbps).

That said, is it clear line-of-sight? Then you can try it out and see how stable it is. If not, go with OpenServe.
My usual suggestion if you want a 100/50Mbps is to go with Afrihost 100mbps + 25GB cap as that covers installation, and then add a Vox account on top of that for data. You can also look at ISPAfrika for the line but you'll have to message them directly.

For good uncapped, go Cool Ideas as Bryn said, but that's R1500.

My set-up is 100Mbps Afrihost thing, 300GB data cap (fat pipe), total is about R1050pm, on which I pull on average 450GB of data (about 250GB midnight), which is virtually uncapped for my household.
Ah ok. Ye im not that familiar with GPON. I just read it somewhere. But having that aside, we are clear line of site. Will be testing it tomorrow, just found it that it is legal, just need permission from ISP which I have. So I guess that will be where im heading to. But if something does however go wrong,I'd have a fibre connection if needed. The budget is only about R800 so looking at speeds it won't bring me very far. I'll have a think about it
 
Ah ok. Ye im not that familiar with GPON. I just read it somewhere. But having that aside, we are clear line of site. Will be testing it tomorrow, just found it that it is legal, just need permission from ISP which I have. So I guess that will be where im heading to. But if something does however go wrong,I'd have a fibre connection if needed. The budget is only about R800 so looking at speeds it won't bring me very far. I'll have a think about it
You should be able to do that by dropping to 50Mbps. Tbh, that is more than enough for most, going above ~20Mbps for most is a want thing. It allows me to quickly download something when I need it while not impacting the other people in the house streaming.
 
Quick question, getting fibre for the first time.
The installation would be done by Openserve, now there is a line running past my property but nothing running into my property.
The guys are coming tomorrow to do the installation.
How does this work?
With ADSL it's easy because most properties already have a line inside the house.
 
Quick question, getting fibre for the first time.
The installation would be done by Openserve, now there is a line running past my property but nothing running into my property.
The guys are coming tomorrow to do the installation.
How does this work?
With ADSL it's easy because most properties already have a line inside the house.
They dig a very shallow trench to the wall you want it to enter by, then use a drill to make a hole. Mine is on the second floor and they added conduit on the side of the wall.
They will pull it to the location you request, they will not use the same ducting as the ADSL line as far as I am aware (mine it definitely wouldn't have been possible due to being far underground with the piping taking many 90 degree turns).

Inside it's an exposed cable to the location you want, ONT at that spot, you plug a LAN cable into port 1 and the other end to your router's WAN port, from the router you dial a PPPoE connection like ADSL.
 
They dig a very shallow trench to the wall you want it to enter by, then use a drill to make a hole. Mine is on the second floor and they added conduit on the side of the wall.
They will pull it to the location you request, they will not use the same ducting as the ADSL line as far as I am aware (mine it definitely wouldn't have been possible due to being far underground with the piping taking many 90 degree turns).

Inside it's an exposed cable to the location you want, ONT at that spot, you plug a LAN cable into port 1 and the other end to your router's WAN port, from the router you dial a PPPoE connection like ADSL.
Thanks, the existing ADSL line is on the other side of the drive-way and is still running on overhead wooden poles, so I don't think they would be using that.
 
Thanks, the existing ADSL line is on the other side of the drive-way and is still running on overhead wooden poles, so I don't think they would be using that.
If Openserve have not trenched your area, then they will run the fibre along the same poles as the copper.
 
I'm not sure what the standard procedure is with Openserve, but there are clearly protocols to manage the connections. The pole my fibre connects to has 4 available fibre connections and can take no more than that. Strangely, none of my neighbours who would connect to it have taken out fibre connections yet. It's still just my property connected to it.

On my pole the box is completely full now after they installed my fibre two weeks ago. Apparently I got the last slot. Thought that there would be bandwidth throughput issues, but none at all. Getting my full 100/50mb speeds via Cool Ideas. No complaints.
 
Got the installation done first thing this morning.
Took these people 2 working days to get to my place and do a installation from scratch, but Telkom has now taken 7 weeks to send someone to do a simple line move
 
On my pole the box is completely full now after they installed my fibre two weeks ago. Apparently I got the last slot. Thought that there would be bandwidth throughput issues, but none at all. Getting my full 100/50mb speeds via Cool Ideas. No complaints.

I think the point of the limited connections is precisely to avoid contention on the lines or other hardware nonsense. So getting the last slot should be no different to getting the first one - I doubt they are even numbered or that the order that they are used or quantity in use matters at all.
 
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