Pricing - WTF?

[koffiejunkie]

So, I'm moving house, applied to move my adsl line, and found out today that it will take 30 to 40 *working* days. I have an unused UTD at the office, so I thought, what the heck, I'll sign up for iBurst in the meantime.

R599 for a 3GB account? What are they smoking? R159 per gig for extra bandwidth?

 

[viceroy]

Get used to it. I'm in the same dilemma as you, but I'm not in a position to just sign up for a month or two cos I don't have any equipment, I'd need to take out a contract.

The best I could do is MTN 1gig bundle for R500

 

[Gatecrasher]

So, I'm moving house, applied to move my adsl line, and found out today that it will take 30 to 40 *working* days. I have an unused UTD at the office, so I thought, what the heck, I'll sign up for iBurst in the meantime.

R599 for a 3GB account? What are they smoking? R159 per gig for extra bandwidth?

Yes, but you pay no line rental fees (saving you R760pm for a comparable 1Mbps ADSL service), and no installation or setup costs.

So where can get a 3Gb ADSL 1Mbps package for an all-in cost for less than R599?

If you opt for the G9 package you get an extra 6Gb for R500 (R83 per Gb) and as an added bonus, p2p is unshaped.

All things are relative. And as we all know, broadband in SA is relatively expensive! Like 5 to 10 times what it should be.

 

[Ekhaatvensters]

^ +1

You arent looking at it the right way. Iburst does work the same as ADSL, plus hte unlimited 64kb after your cap often gives you double or more then the cap you payed for. Some people do around 15GB on the 1G package (can be hard though...) and thats only R469 for lets say 10Gigs+ all costs included.

And the point is that on Iburst you DONT buy extra gigs, you arent hard-capped remember. Why pay that much for a faster gig when its right infront of you at 64-100kb speeds.

Actually since Telkom started hard-capping, I think Iburst is probably alot better/cheaper (does depend) that SAIX at least.

 

[koffiejunkie]

Yes, but you pay no line rental fees (saving you R760pm for a comparable 1Mbps ADSL service), and no installation or setup costs.

Well, from what I remember from iBurst when we used it, it was no where near comparable to 1Mb ADSL.

So where can get a 3Gb ADSL 1Mbps package for an all-in cost for less than R599?

Well, my 192 line (which is really running at 384/128) costs me less than R600 with 5gb. And it performs much our iBurst at the office used to.

All things are relative. And as we all know, broadband in SA is relatively expensive! Like 5 to 10 times what it should be.

True. If iBurst performed like a 1mb line (even allowing extra latency), I wouldn't have been surprised, but I know from experience the only time it did perform like that was before the official launch. Those were good days. After that it has pretty much sucked considering what it *could* be.

K

 

[koffiejunkie]

You arent looking at it the right way. Iburst does work the same as ADSL, plus hte unlimited 64kb after your cap often gives you double or more then the cap you payed for.

Ooh, I wasn't aware of this. This changes everything. 64k is sufficient.

Is that 64k both ways? More to the point, can you skype on it?

Thanks

 

[Ekhaatvensters]

It is (apparerntly) 64kb both ways, and it often goes over 64kb. Infact almost always, it wil jump around 40/50 - 120. Well when browsing atleast.

And Iburst is comparable to atleast 512kb ADSL, but usually a bit abovethat, while not quite where 1mb ADSL is...

And arent all 192kb packages being slowed down to their proper speeds now? Thats what the general feeling was in the ADSL forum a while ago... you shure yours is even 256kb anymore?

hmmm..skype. I believe so, 64kb is about even right.. latency doesnt change while capped and it is fine for Skype when uncaped.

 

[native]

I guess your 64kb is as good as your "original connection"

If before the cap you are able to get around 850kb+ then you should be able to get 64kb after the cap with relative ease.

 

[koffiejunkie]

Ekhaatvensters, I checked last night. I had my numbers wrong, I guess it changed somewhat when they "fixed" it. My router connects to the exchange at 384/356, but my acutal down/up speeds are (I tested last night) 192/192. I'm definitely getting 192 up - I can upload stuff to our servers at a steady 24kbytes/s, but downloads seems to be chocked to 24kbyts/s too now :-(

Either ways, my comparison between comparison of iburst and ADSL takes more than just the raw speed in account. Latency (which is even more important than speed if your main internet applications happens to be ssh and rdesktop) is far better on ADSL. And reliability is just not comparable. I guess the area has something to do with this - at the office we bounce between two towers. iBurst claim that they have fixed this, but it still happens. Which means constant disconnect/reconnect. Now my new place is just a few blocks from the offce, so I don't expect it to be any different.

Anyway, I don't have much of a choice, unless I want to try to use skype over gprs....

 

[Ekhaatvensters]

You can fix that tower bouncing with a directional aerial and it will increasew your speed/reliabilty to a degree.

It does depend on the area, I have very little to no downtime except for a few incidents in about 6 months. ADSL might even have more if it goes down for hours or even does like it sometimes does.

About the cap.. if you only want the account on 1gig purely for downloading (i.e. getting capped and going at DC++ etc at 64kb) then you could have almost any signal strength... you could still reach 64 kb easily, too bad it would effect your latency.