diabolus
Executive Member
According to my usage history on Screamer's site:
8.8GB from 1 Jan 2010 .
So that is about 1.25GB per day . Considering that i tried to keep the connection online 24-7 , that would mean my "effective" speed was 14 kBytes/sec on a 384 line which is capable of 48 kBytes/sec.
EDIT: Note that's just an average and obviously includes the fact that Screamer was down for an entire day on the 1st and up and down with no connectivity after that.
That means i only get 30% utilization out of an already slow line. Dialup was 56.6kbps-96kbps ( 7 kBytes/sec - 12 kBytes/sec ) . So if you -really- get down to it, i could potentially pull down the same amount of data on dialup if it's stable 24-7. (Which is suddenly becoming an enticing option , i should investigate this...anyone know what dialup costs these days? )
Now of course, while it all sounds horrendous, when we start calculating costs: I pay R400 a month for this service. Telkom would charge me R60 p/GB , so the 8.8GB would've cost me R520 right there. If i went to Afrihost @ R30 p/GB , it would've been R260 .
This is of course 7 days into the month, and the -cheapest- solution would be R260 . If i assume i continue to get about 1.25GB a day out of the Screamer connection = 37GB a month . Do the above calculations again, so as much as i might be upset about all this, there's just NO OTHER WAY to pull down 30GB (international) in a month for R400 .
So i'd be willing to estimate, Screamer Uncapped effectively costs me R10 p/GB at this stage. With all the downtimes and slowdowns, i don't know of an ISP who beats that pricing (maybe dialup callmore-time thing from Telkom, maybe...)
Now if the service mysteriously starts to work full speed, then we're talking the potential of getting in the lines of 70GB a month.
Ultimately as i've mentioned before, this particular uncapped service is good for mass downloading, even with down times i already got my R400 worth i suppose.
It is however, not so good for "day to day live internet activities". When it's up and running, yes it's fine, but having connection slow or drop every hour is not how i want to spend my evenings. Maybe it'll improve dunno, but lets just say the 8.8GB i got so far, was NOT while i was sitting in front of my pc or actively browsing/streaming stuff. So i can't exactly recommend Screamer as your "primary" or "main" ISP (not yet anyway) , best to keep the 1GB/3GB Telkom account somewhere also so you can at least use your browser + messengers + email properly.
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