OpenWeb ADSL Feedback Thread (Pt2)

Koosi said:
Zewp, I feel your pain. But honestly, just sign up with another ISP already, I promise you, your heart and blood pressure will thank you for it. I had to pay double this month, I just used my credit card because I had to choose between ranting here sh*tlessly and actually getting in the car and driving to Durban to give Keoma a klap, or just chilling, pay the money, and pure internet bliss follows thereafter. PM me if you need assistance please.
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The problem is that at the moment I can't risk switching ISPs and then being throttled or shaped into the ground halfway into a month. I share the connection with my flatmate and between the two of us we have insane download needs. As much as I complain about Openweb, they've got me by the balls. I cannot see that I would be able to get another account from another ISP where I can download as much while still fitting student budgets.
 
Kryptonite said:
the "pipe" the openweb clown was talking about is actually the god damn link................networking slang, ie, how big is your pipe? Oh it's a 4 meg pipe..............

Kalstar, i am all for logic and common sense but i'm trying to look at any concrete proof you have to counter all our claims......you do understand that EVERY ISP buys a pool of IPC bandwidth. Lets say 30 megs. That pool is split into groups that then have different shaping policies that take effect depending on how much capacity they purchased, most ISP's run at 100% all day as that's the most efficient way to manage your bandwidth.....through effective shaping.

What openweb were doing didnt seem to perform like this, they seemed to do it twice. They would sell you an account, sell someone the same account then claim the money from both.

THIS IS ILLEGAL as contention ratio's dont come into play here per pool as if you purchase a 4 meg account and someone else does and you both connect, if they are of the same level account and that specific pool has 8 megs available, you would each get your full speeds.

What Openweb were doing was taking the SAME account and selling it to 2 people, so when the concurrent connections took place on a 4 meg account, although they could have had 8 megs available, because of the account being policed to a maximum size of 4 megs, neither user would get more than 2 megs at the same time they were both connected if both downloaded at their maximum percentage.

Add to that the ridiculous shaping policies applied to the pools that only got removed at 11pm and you have what we call a complete CLUSTER ***** of an ISP who would then blame Telkom.............So tell me now who pays the 3 grand i spent laying new copper from the telkom exchange to my house.......i believe it should be Openweb as they blatantly lied about the way their policing worked.

I was fortunate enough to interrogate one of their clowns in the technical department and it was scary...........anyone of my junior CCNA's would have smelt the absolute bull**** that perpetuated from their side.

Luckily i backed off from going mental at their staff and starting my own investigations with Telkom tier 2 and that's when i found my flippin account connected elsewhere in cape town..........we then worked back through all my accounts and found out that at the EXACT times i couldnt authenticate it was due to the same account being used in other places. i would have to call openweb only to be given another account name which made me wonder.........

I offered to assist openweb last year by getting both Telkom Tier 2 and Saix involved as well as IS Backbone engineers........the minute i did this, all communication ceased and they ignored my please.........now you tell me Kalstar, if your client had an issue, and he was willing to get everyone on the phone that managed the service end to end to solve the issue, why the hell wouldnt you want to get involved hey?

This thread is why, they are lying and perpetuating FRAUD!
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I didn't read the whole thing, just the beginning part, but I got the jist and feel you're on my side with the "weird" OW experience, and also cox Gboss agreed ;)

I had to go through about 5 accounts right out the gate to find one that worked with my R738 per month 4mb Gold Original because this was "recommended" to be the "best", waaay back in 2009!

Luckily, I had enough experience of what internet "should" be like (as I wasn't afraid to try ISP's for myself and draw my own conclusions instead of going on other peoples advise, up to this point) to know straight away that this was not normal, but eventually got an account that worked how I expected and gave them the benefit of the doubt.

Then one day, I came home from work (my line is idle during the day anyway) to a dead account (lights on nobody home), email support, get a new account, carry on, until it happened again, and again, and again, and again,and again, and again!

Then, I finally formulated the opinion that all the people that rave about OW don't know **** and voted with my wallet to where I knew I would be happy (a real IS reseller)!
 
DJ... said:
This is a very important point here. If OW were managing their own bulk capacity then they'd have detailed sight of the throughput on each account on the RADIUS server. I do not understand how issuing a new account could resolve people's problems. Unless...:whistle:

The answer that issuing a new account is easier is just bollocks in this case. Not only does it not actually do anything in terms of support (where it may in fact be an issue completely unrelated to AAA and the customer has now in fact received diddly-squat in the way of support), but those accounts were sent back into the allocation pool for some other poor sod to suffer on. It's also just as easy to...you know...actually look at the RADIUS logs and resolve the issue if you're managing your own capacity.

The "it's easier this way" answer just shows me that Openweb have nothing but contempt for their customers and view support as a burden more than a service I'm afraid.

Now on to the issue of contending at the account level - this is somewhat fine by me. Every single ISP contends their bandwidth, so no matter where you go you'll be contending for the bandwidth with at least 5 other people (15 with most uncapped accounts). But this is built into the backend system - it doesn't happen on an account level. Further contending at the account level by sharing account IDs is despicable. Now you have at least two people contending for the same already-contended bandwidth, so the reasoning that this is normal is hogwash.

There is more to this though - they claim that one cannot accurately glean anything from the concurrent session IDs on a single login other than from their system, but this makes no sense - they're not a tier 1 provider. This only makes sense if they have removed all contention from their backend and are contending solely at the account level, so sharing user IDs, but this is preposterous as it would entail changing passwords for all users on the same account each time. Although it does go to explain why they opted to disable password changes on their system and issued the same passwords combos to just about everyone. It also explains why people then would be issued new accounts when they had troubles. It means that all you need is a trained monkey on support who knows how to copy 1122 and a username.

So perhaps they did after all opt for the unethical contention at the account level by sharing user IDs. Explains a lot. The puzzle pieces fall into place. Just means more people will have issues but then their support simply has to have a batch of logins to send out, or issue a new one each time from the revolving pool.

Either way, they lost my trust with this fiasco and their refusal to address it. All they needed to do to qualm people's troubles was to offer the affected users a copy of their connection logs, upon which nothing confidential would exist. The fact that they chose not to indicates to me that they opted to contend at the account level by sharing IDs instead and assumed their customer base to be morons or pushovers. Whether they contended additionally no-one will probably ever know...
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This was my conclusion in 2009. Things just didn't add up, I'm a very logical person and things must add up! :D
 
Koosi said:
Zewp, I feel your pain. But honestly, just sign up with another ISP already, I promise you, your heart and blood pressure will thank you for it. I had to pay double this month, I just used my credit card because I had to choose between ranting here sh*tlessly and actually getting in the car and driving to Durban to give Keoma a klap, or just chilling, pay the money, and pure internet bliss follows thereafter. PM me if you need assistance please.
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+1
 


My line is rocking....doing 1GB/25mins....

8mb line....6mb openweb gold


Zewp said:
Isn't it lovely being an Openweb customer?



Getting international latencies on local servers on a Friday night when you were hoping to settle down for some gaming? And Openweb's site saying the network status is green.

Pure love. :love:
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OW Cancellation Notice said:
… Your account will cancel at the end of June 2014 as per the calender months cancellation notice period required.

Cancellation request sent to [email protected] after the 1st of May 2014 therefore the account was already provisioned for the month of May 2014. Therefore June 2014 will be the calender month cancellation notice period.

Please note that as per our terms all cancellation requests are required to be sent to [email protected] before the 25th of the month prior to the month in which the cancellation is in effect.

Your final debit will occur on the first working day of June 2014 and your cancellation reference number is (#). ...
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Sure you couldn't have added a few more sentences stating the same thing? Way to treat your customers like idiots on the way out.
 
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Gogo! http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/617783-Throttling-is-ridiculous-ISP

Dr Keoma Wright said:
Amid a looming broadband price war in South Africa, OpenWeb CEO Keoma Wright says that unscrupulous ISPs derive their profit from throttling the living daylights out of their clients.

The Minister of Communications, Yunus Carrim, recently met with the Council of the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa), and urged all parties to work together to cut communications costs in South Africa.

Wright noted that the broadband market is becoming ever more competitive and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are now offering packages like never before.

In the ADSL arena, an increasing number of providers are promising unshaped ADSL for next to nothing.

Wright says with ADSL you pay for what you get. “The less you pay, the less bandwidth you will ultimately be able to use on the network.”

As Telkom controls the price of ADSL in South Africa, private ISPs have had to come up with creative ways to offer a good service and derive a small profit. “Unfortunately, some unscrupulous ISP’s derive their profit from throttling the living daylights out of their clients,” Wright said.

“When a client complains, they simply point them to section 65215411544 million A to Z in their 74th Amended Acceptable Usage Policy stating that throttling is a way of life, take it or leave it,” he said.

He warns unsuspecting consumers to read the fine print before signing any ADSL contract.

“Be careful, the catch is in the fine print. What many ISPs advertise as Unshaped, more than likely comes with a complicated, draconian style Fair Usage Policy hidden deep within the realms of their Terms of Service.”

Wright said that throttling is ridiculous. “My advice is to leave throttling, one can rather shape heavy downloads during peak periods, yet still offer a great service on browsing and similar.”

Some ISPs even shape and throttle capped accounts. When clients purchase capped accounts, they already have one limit imposed – the cap. Why must further limits be imposed? Capped should be completely unshaped, he said.

“It is your bandwidth, you have a right to use it as and when you please,” Wright said.

He noted that ADSL is still cheaper than mobile data and is much more reliable. Whilst gaming on mobile is nearly impossible due to jitter, lag, latency and other technical challenges, fixed line Internet works better for streaming, gaming VoIP and a number of other protocols.

“When was the last time you saw a truly Uncapped Unshaped Mobile data deal? Never. ADSL might look more expensive, but when you total up what you get, ADSL is still a much better offering overall,” Wright said.
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It seems the issues are not only limited to my Openweb account. I'm now getting high, unstable latencies on the Telkom capped account as well. I guess there's probably an issue in the area.

Oh sigh.




It keeps fluctuating. Earlier this morning I was getting 400ms pings to Cape Town servers. :/
 
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