Slow Rain Fixed LTE speeds (Afrihost)

[charlieharper]

What do providers usually do in a case of congestion (when they actually do something about it)?

I mean surely too many customers is a good problem to have, considering, people are actually paying money to use the service.

 

[kabusi]

What do providers usually do in a case of congestion (when they actually do something about it)?

I mean surely too many customers is a good problem to have, considering, people are actually paying money to use the service.

They tell you to wait until infrastructure is upgraded.
I reported mine in August as being sub 1Mbps and still no upgrade in sight.
Clearly 4G is not as big a priority as 5G is.

 

[charlieharper]

11:10am



~30x slow than 6am this morning

 

[McGuywer]

Just keep reporting.
Hopefully, they will add another tower.
If you can get the other Rain users involved, that would help.

 

[AfriGuy]

Been having an absolute nightmare of an experience on the Rain network the last 2 months.

I've been a Rain (via Afrihost) customer since August 2018. I pay R1349/m for 220gb, but combined with rollover / peak + offpeak data, I get around 600gb data to use.

For the first year and a half it's been fantastic. Speeds were constantly over 15-20mbps up and down. No complaints.

However since December it's like service quality deteriorated over night. And I'm talking seriously bad.

View attachment 782966

Out of like 14 speed tests this month, only 3 of them are over 4 mbps... And I'm not saying 4mbps is fast, I just feel 4mbps is the minimum speed I can work with without completely ruining the whole experience - and I mean, it's 4G, not a 4mbps DSL line.

(Note, upload speeds are mostly fine - issues are with the download speed)

[Mid December 2019]
I contacted Afrihost to see if they can sort it out for me. They couldn't do much and asked me to fill in a form to deal with Rain, called the Rain degradation form, with details such as my router, sim card number etc.

Nothing much happened.

I've been sending out multiple emails over the last few weeks and spoke to multiple support agents, both through Afrihost who provides me with this connection, as well as Rain directly, since I'm obviously on the Rain network. All fruitless so far.

As a techie, I always do research and want to (at least try to) solve problems myself and a forum thread (over at MyBroadband) showed if I set my LTE band frequency on the router to 2600mhz instead of the default 1800mhz it's running on speed might be more stable - but apparently our tower doesn't support 2600mhz, so back to 1800mhz. My gut feeling says, congestion and I mentioned it over email.

Eventually Afrihost said I should sign up for an MTN or Telkom sim card and sent me a link - but I think it's utterly ridiculous service that I should be going through that effort of signing up for a new service + buy a new router if going the MTN route. Such BS. I told them if anything, I came to you with a problem and if switching networks is the only thing you can do, I expect you to do that for me.

I then started dealing with Rain directly again... because, after all - I'm on the Rain network.

I started DM'ing Rain related people on Twitter and a person who I believe is a director at Rain replied with an email address of someone who's might be able to help. Using the formula of the contact person, "[email protected]", I took a lucky guess and successfully managed to CC Michael into the conversation, hoping he could get more managers involved to take a look at it and resolve it asap.

Once again I had to send them my router brand + model as well as the sim card number.

After about 5 emails I did get an email from the person I CC'd at Rain this morning saying, "Please may I ask to be dropped from these mails?". Clearly doesn't want to get involved, a bit impolite don't you think?

View attachment 783144

But anyway, the guys at Rain promised me they are on it and I will continue to stay on top of them till I get a final answer where they can restore the quality of service I used to have or not.

Will keep you updated.


Also, worth noting, I'm well over 25 emails in since December. This excludes DM's over twitter.

Hi Ronald.
We see the same thread on twitter so we shall respond to that request to keep one thread going.

 

[cavedog]

Yeap. Congestion is rife.

Ironic for a small coastal town.

You talking about Margate, Uvongo or Ramsgate right?

The network in that area and other small towns like Richards Bay is build by Vodacom. They use the same sector antennas as Vodacom and in most cases there isn't enough plugs to run all the frequencies and configurations for both networks. So Vodacom only rolls out band 3 (1800MHz) on these towers. They have limited equipment also shared in the cabinet at the bottom or in some cases Rain gets it's own cabinet if they run 2600MHz TDD too.

I saw this on a tower that suddenly offered Rain coverage but no extra antennas. Only extra cables plugged in an a couple extra amplifiers mounted below the sector antennas.

For these tower to be upgraded they would need to install new sector antennas for Rain network only. I don't know what agreement they have with Vodacom but seems the congestion is bad especially on towers with only 1800MHz and not sure what they will do to upgrade but will lilely take some time.

 

[charlieharper]

You talking about Margate, Uvongo or Ramsgate right?

The network in that area and other small towns like Richards Bay is build by Vodacom. They use the same sector antennas as Vodacom and in most cases there isn't enough plugs to run all the frequencies and configurations for both networks. So Vodacom only rolls out band 3 (1800MHz) on these towers. They have limited equipment also shared in the cabinet at the bottom or in some cases Rain gets it's own cabinet if they run 2600MHz TDD too.

I saw this on a tower that suddenly offered Rain coverage but no extra antennas. Only extra cables plugged in an a couple extra amplifiers mounted below the sector antennas.

For these tower to be upgraded they would need to install new sector antennas for Rain network only. I don't know what agreement they have with Vodacom but seems the congestion is bad especially on towers with only 1800MHz and not sure what they will do to upgrade but will lilely take some time.

Not quite.

Little bit more north, Scottburgh.

CELL_ID:

77616130

 

[charlieharper]

I didn't request a call - I actually hate phone calls - talking to someone in a call centre even more, which is why I always send emails or use the live chat feature. (Also nice to have written evidence).

But anyway, I prepared myself mentally and knew exactly what to say, should someone call. Although it's nearly 1pm already and guess what, nobody called.

 

[charlieharper]

LMFAO...




Me: "Hey there's a problem with the service I'm receiving. Could you please do something about it? Never had this problem before. I'm sure it's an easy fix"

Any other company: "Yes sure. We apologise. Our team's on it and it should be back to normal in the next 24 hours."

Rain / Afrihost: "How about you cancel?"

 

[AfriNatic]

Yeap. Congestion is rife.

Ironic for a small coastal town.

Hi ronald911, It's been brought to my attention that your issue is been handled by the second level of support. They have advised that they have emailed you asking for a few details, please respond and confirm then I will let them know.

 

[McGuywer]

@ronald911 Thank you for the updates. I am following this and would like to know the outcome.

 

[cavedog]

LMFAO...

View attachment 783690


Me: "Hey there's a problem with the service I'm receiving. Could you please do something about it? Never had this problem before. I'm sure it's an easy fix"

Any other company: "Yes sure. We apologise. Our team's on it and it should be back to normal in the next 24 hours."

Rain / Afrihost: "How about you cancel?"

You know Michael Jordaan is the CEO of Rain if I'm not mistaken. Well there isn't much they can do for you. They can add more towers but that will take months for coucil approvals or negotiations with existing tower owners. Then they also have to take into account if fhey will get any returns on that tower or is it simply not viable right now.

I would say if the CEO can't help and suggest you cancel maybe that speaks for itself about a solution.....

 

[mrlgm007]

You know Michael Jordaan is the CEO of Rain if I'm not mistaken. Well there isn't much they can do for you. They can add more towers but that will take months for coucil approvals or negotiations with existing tower owners. Then they also have to take into account if fhey will get any returns on that tower or is it simply not viable right now.

I would say if the CEO can't help and suggest you cancel maybe that speaks for itself about a solution.....

They need to be more open he is a capped user which should be given better QOS than the 250 uncapped user who is killing the network.

My question is how is vodacom from the same tower?

 

[charlieharper]

You know Michael Jordaan is the CEO of Rain if I'm not mistaken. Well there isn't much they can do for you. They can add more towers but that will take months for coucil approvals or negotiations with existing tower owners. Then they also have to take into account if fhey will get any returns on that tower or is it simply not viable right now.

I would say if the CEO can't help and suggest you cancel maybe that speaks for itself about a solution.....

Probably easier said than done, but if congestion is a problem, it means, people are actually using the service they are providing, which is what any business wants (unless you're Eskom). It really is a great problem to have.. surely with semi decent planning, they would have known that "We can add X users on tower Y with Z capacity to maximise profits and make sure users doesn't experience degraded service (aka congestion)". Combined with some forecasting, you will know when's the right time to upgrade the network to minimise user churn rate.

Of course, profiting is another factor, which is the goal of any business, but at the same time, asking customer(s) to leave instead of investing in the problem to find a solution is extremely strange and potentially damaging to any business - and I'm not talking about the couple of Rands they will no longer receive from me.

The bigger picture is that, now this whole thread (amongst others) is and will remain on the internet, future potential Rain customers will google "Rain", see that some people had bad experience, which could've been resolved, instead, Rain had no interest in resolving the problem. I made No Interest in bold, cause if I was a new potential customer looking for a ISP, there's a huge difference between, "There was a problem and they quickly got around to sorting it out" vs "No interest in sorting out, asked to leave" - directly from the CEO. That leaves a scar...

 

[charlieharper]

They need to be more open he is a capped user which should be given better QOS than the 250 uncapped user who is killing the network.

My question is how is vodacom from the same tower?

My phone's MTN LTE gives 30-60mbps.

Will test my dad's Vodacom LTE soon.

 

[charlieharper]

Hi ronald911, It's been brought to my attention that your issue is been handled by the second level of support. They have advised that they have emailed you asking for a few details, please respond and confirm then I will let them know.

I was on the phone with a consultant just now. Nicest lady ever, 5 stars. I was however a little bit shocked when she asked in the beginning, "So what is the problem....". I mean, seriously, I sent like a gazillion emails, tweets, dm's and spoke to another consultant in the past.

I don't blame her at all, she really did her absolute best, given her the ticket was passed to her 10 seconds prior to calling me, cause from what I've been experiencing, it appears to be that you have an internal organisational mess over at Afrihost HQ.

Instead of handling cases, case by case, it feels like things are being tossed around to different call centre consultants.

Anyway, they want to give a Telkom sim card to test out or something, cause apparently that's the only alternative that my current router supports. Only other option is MTN LTE.

 

[cavedog]

They need to be more open he is a capped user which should be given better QOS than the 250 uncapped user who is killing the network.

My question is how is vodacom from the same tower?

Well Vodacom will perform depending on congestion. Remember that Vodacom users also roam on Rain network could also be a big contribution to the congestion.

 

[charlieharper]

Afrihost wants to put me on Telkom LTE now... but I'm not happy with the packages they are offering.

I need them to match this:




Also worth noting, I was on the 330gb initially - then they introduced the Peak + rollover thing, which made me downgrade to 220gb - and then, we also went away for a whole month early last year, which caused almost no data to be used the entire month, giving me a total of over 600gb cap to use every month in theory.... Although we're not heavy users, it does allow us not to be shy to use data, knowing we wont be capped before the end of the month. Nothing is worse than watching a movie on Netflix, knowing, there goes 5% of my cap.

That being said, the Telkom LTE 220gb + 220gb night time (which is only 12am-7am) ain't gonna cut it.

440gb available 24/7 will be good - or even like 7pm - 7am is more reasonable.

 

[Impala]

Afrihost wants to put me on Telkom LTE now... but I'm not happy with the packages they are offering.

I need them to match this:

View attachment 784172


Also worth noting, I was on the 330gb initially - then they introduced the Peak + rollover thing, which made me downgrade to 220gb - and then, we also went away for a whole month early last year, which caused almost no data to be used the entire month, giving me a total of over 600gb cap to use every month in theory.... Although we're not heavy users, it does allow us not to be shy to use data, knowing we wont be capped before the end of the month. Nothing is worse than watching a movie on Netflix, knowing, there goes 5% of my cap.

That being said, the Telkom LTE 220gb + 220gb night time (which is only 12am-7am) ain't gonna cut it.

440gb available 24/7 will be good - or even like 7pm - 7am is more reasonable.

The Telkom anytime data also roll over to the next month. Only the nighttime will expire at the months end.
I also do not see any other option for you. The Telkom LTE will be your best. MTN's best package is 150gb and 150gb nighttime

 

[charlieharper]

The Telkom anytime data also roll over to the next month. Only the nighttime will expire at the months end.
I also do not see any other option for you. The Telkom LTE will be your best. MTN's best package is 150gb and 150gb nighttime

I'm sure Afrihost can make a plan.

I'm currently paying R1350... With Telkom 220gb I'll be paying R350 less, but I'll be more than happy to pay the same for same amount of data.

- can probably hack it out, with multiple routers / sim cards, smart plugs etc, but that's a hassle, especially for my parents. And when I go travelling again, and something goes wrong, I don't want them to have to troubleshoot a setup like that.