Skyfi WISP

Location: Heldekruin Roodepoort - Johannesburg
price R1000 pm
contention ratio: 1:15
Package: 20 down, 6-15 up

pros:
gaming is a breeze with this, pings are amazing, and no jitter.
speed test after 6pm have been greater than 25down and atleast 6up
no Fair use policy(FUP) - basically can download terabytes and no throttling.
pretty much the best deal i have seen from any WISP's (at least of the ones i know of)

cons:
i am very new to them, just over a month, have not really made use of their after hours call center yet

Conclusion:
i was with Wirulink for a couple of months prior to this, they are also good but definitely not as good as these guys in terms of
speed
contention ratio
price
FUP
gaming
 
gino750 said:
Anyone uses SkyFi in Wilgeheuwel, roodepoort area? really need to know if there is a strong SIGNAL COVERAGE? I Had 10meg neotel but signal sooo bad only running at 0.5meg....!:mad:
Click to expand...

Location: Heldekruin Roodepoort - Johannesburg
price R1000 pm
contention ratio: 1:15
Package: 20 down, 6-15 up

pros:
gaming is a breeze with this, pings are amazing, and no jitter.
speed test after 6pm have been greater than 25down and atleast 6up
no Fair use policy(FUP) - basically can download terabytes and no throttling.
pretty much the best deal i have seen from any WISP's (at least of the ones i know of)

cons:
i am very new to them, just over a month, have not really made use of their after hours call center yet

Conclusion:
i was with Wirulink for a couple of months prior to this, they are also good but definitely not as good as these guys in terms of
speed
contention ratio
price
FUP
gaming
 
tommy65 said:
Location: Heldekruin Roodepoort - Johannesburg
price R1000 pm
contention ratio: 1:15
Package: 20 down, 6-15 up

pros:
gaming is a breeze with this, pings are amazing, and no jitter.
speed test after 6pm have been greater than 25down and atleast 6up
no Fair use policy(FUP) - basically can download terabytes and no throttling.
pretty much the best deal i have seen from any WISP's (at least of the ones i know of)

cons:
i am very new to them, just over a month, have not really made use of their after hours call center yet

Conclusion:
i was with Wirulink for a couple of months prior to this, they are also good but definitely not as good as these guys in terms of
speed
contention ratio
price
FUP
gaming
Click to expand...

I'm also in Helderkruin, interested in SkyFi...Can you tell me what games you play and what average ping you get in them? I'll only go wireless if it's decent for gaming
 
I am seriously considering Skyfi but one policy bugs me quite a bit. The fact they want an upfront payment of the WHOLE amount for the first months internet, as well as the hardware, and this BEFORE they have done an LoS check. BitCo did it free before you paid a cent, WiFibre does it free before you pay a cent. In fact most seem to do it free before you pay a cent.

I am quite loathe to fork out R 5k and have to wait to get it back if there is no LoS.
 
savage said:
Perhaps they need the money to buy your CPE equipment and pay the installer to do the job :P
Click to expand...

And every other small WISP doesn't ? :p WiFibre is coming friday with their own test equipment to check. Another is arriving today with their own test equipment :p I fail to see how the rest can do it and Skyfi can't. Also if they have to buy said equipment, they have to hope to sell it to somebody else if there is no LoS :p

Nope. I fail to see it :p
 
WickedMONK3Y said:
And every other small WISP doesn't ? :p WiFibre is coming friday with their own test equipment to check. Another is arriving today with their own test equipment :p I fail to see how the rest can do it and Skyfi can't. Also if they have to buy said equipment, they have to hope to sell it to somebody else if there is no LoS :p

Nope. I fail to see it :p
Click to expand...

i had to pay the installation fee upfront (~R3500) only after they checked from their side if there was LOS, if for some reason they came and could not get the speeds i was looking for, they would refund me 100%
 
Ricard said:
What equipment does SkyFi use for the CPE ? .... I want to join in and I already have a ton of Ubiquiti and Mikrotik 5.8 and 2.4Ghz toys that I would like to dust off

Any hints?

Ricard
Click to expand...

Skyfi uses Ubiquiti 5.8Ghz.
 
Hi thank you EnderZaMan, we have many high sites from Pretoria to Durban
 
I have been using it in Alberton. Not very happy with it. Speedtests are all over the place, never constant. I have the 20mbps, but have cancelled now. Suffer to much with the packet drops and online gaming is a nightmare. Will give Amobia a try and I have used them in the past and they had excellent service. Also a much better contention ratio.

Code: 
TEST_DATE	        DL	UL	LATENCY
10/11/2016 5:33 PM	15.51	6.82	20
11/10/2016 2:23 PM	10.05	2.69	10
11/10/2016 3:34 PM	20.29	4.15	5
11/10/2016 4:56 AM	8.83	4.70	6
11/10/2016 6:05 PM	18.22	3.09	20
11/10/2016 8:26 PM	4.90	5.04	8
12/10/2016 2:24 PM	15.62	6.10	6
12/10/2016 4:46 PM	10.27	4.53	11
12/10/2016 5:06 AM	27.16	4.63	5
12/10/2016 6:10 PM	17.45	2.38	17
13/10/2016 3:30 PM	14.58	3.27	20
13/10/2016 6:15 PM	21.59	3.58	15
14/10/2016 4:32 PM	15.50	3.47	6
14/10/2016 4:36 AM	22.01	3.71	7
15/10/2016 1:57 PM	27.02	4.77	5
15/10/2016 10:20 AM	22.56	5.24	5
15/10/2016 4:37 PM	25.43	5.31	4
15/10/2016 9:09 AM	22.24	15.21	15
16/10/2016 10:51 AM	22.61	4.32	19
16/10/2016 3:25 PM	22.03	4.23	7
16/10/2016 5:56 PM	20.29	2.80	8
16/10/2016 6:28 AM	24.80	11.68	5
16/10/2016 6:58 PM	27.26	8.03	6
17/10/2016 3:18 PM	5.68	6.26	8
17/10/2016 4:56 AM	29.02	2.64	5
19/9/2016 12:25 PM	29.39	22.71	7
2/10/2016 5:05 PM	20.85	4.46	28
20/11/2016 5:25 PM	11.89	5.78	15
26/11/2016 4:03 PM	8.12	3.20	10
29/10/2016 6:47 AM	19.23	8.49	15
29/9/2016 4:55 AM	25.34	13.55	5
5/10/2016 4:38 PM	9.16	2.54	8
5/10/2016 5:40 PM	3.38	0.63	28
6/10/2016 5:17 AM	26.00	0.89	10
7/11/2016 6:06 PM	2.56	0.23	16
7/11/2016 6:07 PM	3.20	2.03	19
7/11/2016 6:24 PM	8.27	3.02	12
7/11/2016 7:59 PM	10.91	2.69	8
 
Last edited:
My DSL is fixed so I am not in a rush right now. The closest tower for SkyFi is 8KM away, and I am actually sure I can get the equipment myself for cheaper as the company I work for sells Ubiquiti but its the 8KM range that bothers me. Line of site is fine, Fresnel zone is fine, but at that distance any weather will likely have a bad effect on the connection. At that distance I would be happier with Cambium but I need my kidneys. The Ubiquiti software recons 40MB to 50MB max and I was looking at the 20MB so all is fine there but the 3 other WISPs that came and tested were perfectly fine doing the LOS and Connection tests with their own hardware without the upfront. So Skyfi is still an unknown for me and I cannot fathom why they wont do an LOS before taking my cash. They are the only one so far that want cash before test. I am only willing to part with my cash if it works first, not keen to wait for them to decide to pay me back if it doesn't.
 
To anyone wanting to get skyfi.

Please think Twice. I have had skyfi for roughly 6 months now. The first two months speeds were good and latency low. the last 4 months how ever has been a nightmare. With my internet contstantly being down 10 times a day. Phone call after phone call and email after email did not get my problem resolved. Till I contacted the tecnition which I will not mention in this post. He finaly managed to find the problem. The trees had grown so thick my dish could not go thru it anymore. Saturday morning he installed a longer pole assuring that it will get my problem resolved in which he did. (BTW he was instructed by their managed to do so) How ever saturday afternoon a thunder came and struck the pole and blew my whole dish to pieces as well as blowing two pc's two switches a router and my DSTV dish.

After numerious phone calls to their call centre to try and speak to management I was assured that a manager will phone me back...Whic is always the case when you complain and they just don't ever contact you. They go thru all of the hassle to get your details and then never call you. Please be aware of these guys once they have your money and dish installed support becomes a nightmare. You will probably have internet downtime 2 weeks at time and bad connection all the time. The speeds are great when you can just get it to stay connected for long enough.

They also refusing to install a new dish at their cost. The long pole that they installed was not even earthed and this is because the techie had to come and do a quick fix that was ordered by their managment.
 
This does not look good for Skyfi...

I had mine installed on Friday two weeks ago, on the day of installation my download speeds were awesome. 28mb down 9mb up. For some reason the service dropped completely on the Sunday just after the installation, It was down until Monday morning early hours. when it just started working again, but speeds were down quite a bit, but not terrible.

On Thursday last week my service stopped completely again. I called and emailed Skyfi to try and get the issue resolved, but the first time a techie came to my house was on Friday afternoon. Not sure what the issue was, but luckily after he got it working, I did a speed test and got 4mbps down... :O He was already on his way out... :D

I called him back and he made some frequency changes - got it back up to 17mbps, but erratic at best.

Been struggling with intermittent drops 4/5 times a day. Spoke to a technician on duty last night who made some frequency changes again, and this morning was down to 14mbps again. Sent through the speedtests to Skyfi, now I am playing the waiting game.

I have a good mind to go back to my broken 4mbps dsl. At least it was up 100% of the time.
 
I have had my doubts about them right after their policies came through. They distances they are covering to their base stations are pushing the limits of the cheaper Ubiquiti hardware they use. Yes Ubiquiti is not "cheap" but out of the wireless hardware providers it is like the DLink vs Cisco that would be Ubiquiti vs Cambium etc. My ADSL may not be perfect but it gives me the advertised speed and other than lightning storms, is up 100% of the time.
 
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