Smart Village / MTN FTTH

[TedLasso]

So it appears I can sign up for Smart Village / MTN FTTH in my area. Currently with Vox/Openserve FTTH on a 8Mbps uncapped line which I am happy with. No complains even with the 'slow' speed. Everything works wonderfully.

However, With Smart Village, I can get a 20Mbps line for about R100 more per month or save a few bob and still get a 10Mbps uncapped line for about R80 cheaper so cost is driving this decision.

My question to any Smart Village user:-
1. What brand/model router / Wi-Fi do they supply? They haven't responded as yet (so already sorta miffed). Vox suppled a dinkum Hap Lite AC router which is frikking amazing. So strong that I got rid my extender and the device is just exceeding my expectations. Would hate to see it go.

2. Can we use our own router? I would buy a Mikrotik Hap Lite if Smart Village allowed. With VOX I had to get permission to log into the router.

3. How is the performance? I am not a heavy user per se (not to other MyBB users) - maximum about 250GB a month on Netflix, Music Streaming and perhaps a few torrents. I use VPN to connect to work and require a stable connection when working especially in the evening. Saw some old forum posts that said it appears to die at 8pm which is when family would be watching netflix!

4. Has anybody negotiated successfully with Vox/Openserve to reduce pricing or match competitor offering so that they could keep a customer. I am happy with Vox just have to consider saving where I can.

Thanks

 

[PBCool]

Should be no reason that you cant use your own router, first time I've heard someone raving about the wireless on a current Mikrotik tough . ISPs generally wont be up to negotiation as our margins are so small as it is.

 

[Lord Farquart]

Last time I checked, you are not allowed to use your own router with SV. I asked when I had a guy at my home for a quote.

Performance wise I can only tell you what the people in our estate says. In the areas where they have competition(Other available provider) they are pretty good. There where there is no fixed line competition, they are pretty horrible. Not answering calls, no feedback and people for weeks without service. Their service basically suck when they have the monopoly.

I am still on a DSL line because of this. I refuse to accept their mediocre service just to get fiber. The other problem with them is that they force you into a contract period with discounts. Their 12 month contract pricing is comparable to other ISP month-to-month prices. Their MtM pricing sucks.

Ask yourself why a company would suck you into a 12 month contract? Only because they know you would walk away in a month or two because of their bad customer service and product. My advice, stay away from Smart Village.

 

[PBCool]

Most of their fibre deployments used to be back hauled by a microwave link, so didn't really help matters .

 

[TedLasso]

Should be no reason that you cant use your own router, first time I've heard someone raving about the wireless on a current Mikrotik tough . ISPs generally wont be up to negotiation as our margins are so small as it is.

Was so impressed by the performance of the AC lite that it I took a no brainer chance to replace 6 netgear aps at work with 4 of them. Netgears had become unreliable due to age and amount of devices connecting to them. Switching to the AC lites has massively improved the quality of connection for all our users and the cost to buy them was ridiculously cheap. They have a new fan in me !

I think I will stay with Vox - but comes cool ideas - get to Parkmore soon. Apparently , MTN said when they said solicited to lay fibre in the area that it would be an open network - so somebody should make them stick to their word and open access to other ISPs ... contact Parkmore Community Assocation .

 

[TedLasso]

Last time I checked, you are not allowed to use your own router with SV. I asked when I had a guy at my home for a quote.

Performance wise I can only tell you what the people in our estate says. In the areas where they have competition(Other available provider) they are pretty good. There where there is no fixed line competition, they are pretty horrible. Not answering calls, no feedback and people for weeks without service. Their service basically suck when they have the monopoly.

I am still on a DSL line because of this. I refuse to accept their mediocre service just to get fiber. The other problem with them is that they force you into a contract period with discounts. Their 12 month contract pricing is comparable to other ISP month-to-month prices. Their MtM pricing sucks.

Ask yourself why a company would suck you into a 12 month contract? Only because they know you would walk away in a month or two because of their bad customer service and product. My advice, stay away from Smart Village.

Just for the simple fact that they have not responded or acknowledged my enquiry email - 7 days later - tells me not to trust them. With your input. Guaranteed never to consider them. I am happy with vox / openserve but would switch to cool ideas if they ever came into Parkmore area

 

[hi1pie]

Slight thread mine... Has anyone got any decent experience with Smart Village? Unfortunately we only have MTN Fibre where I am located and Im looking to upgrade my current 10mpbs Bitco conection with something faster & uncapped. Anyone know what SV's FUP is like? and are the speeds advertised on their website both upload and download?

 

[blunt]

We also only have MTN as an option and after googling around and checking these forums I decided against it.

Was almost a unanimous "don't use smartvillage" vibe that I got, so I signed up to MTN. MTN has it's issues too and the advice when using them seemed to just be "dont get a debit order".

I'm at the point where they've done a site inspection (last week) and I'm waiting for them to give me an installation date, so can't comment beyond that.

 

[e11eveN]

I think you can use most routers with a WAN port that can be configured for Dynamic PPPoE. (Mine was set to PPPoE/Russia-PPPoE, not sure if the Russia part is required nor specifically what it entails). Confirmed the cheapest router that would work is the TP-LINK TL-WR840N (R350 on Takealot).

That said, i would avoid Smart Village like the plague. Carrier pigeons would provide you with a faster and more reliable service.

The following might just apply to my specific complex and/or Cape Town, but buyer beware:

- On a service level, the lady specifically handling signups for our gated complex was fast, helpful and friendly. Everything admin related from there on was a shambles though.

- In terms of contacting them, email is pretty much it. They have multiple numbers listed in their emails, most of which do not even connect properly, none of which will get you to a human. Their central support number's automated process can take you via various journeys but all of them will end with a "We have a high load at the moment, please wait" message that never results in an actual human.

- You HAVE to pay a setup fee / activation fee of R550. If you choose to self-provision your router and for some reason this fails then you have to book a technician and pay a call-out fee of R550 again. In other words you are forced to book a technician for the initial setup otherwise you may have to fork out twice.

- I was on the technician's personal account for a few days due to mine not being activated when he arrived (surprise). He said it's a 4MB uncapped shaped package. I never got more than 2MB down / 2MB up on it, but didn't test thoroughly until i was on my order package.

- I ordered a 10MB unshaped capped package. After reminding them to activate my account (via email of course) i switched over to this on a Monday night around 7pm.

- On that night between 20h and 23h i did various speed tests to local and international destinations using Speedtest.net and Bandwidthplace.com. Local (Cape Town) speeds were okay, around 7MB up/down. National speeds were at a terrible 3MB down/2MB up to JHB. International (London/Frankfurt/Amsterdam/New York) speeds were laughable. Best download speed attained was from London at 1.7MB. Worst was 0.27MB from New York. Average international download speeds over 15 tests over 3 hours: 700kb! On a 10MB unshaped line!!

- Yes this is not rigorous multi-day scientific testing but seriously that is only 7% of the speed i was paying for! For R819 per month!

- I immediately contacted them to ascertain, in a nutshell, WTF?!?. After various emails I was shunted to a techie that was obviously too honest for their own good and should probably find a better company to work for. Relevant quote from his response:

> "You are correct about the insufficient backhaul capacity for the user base, I have pushed for this to be increased because there have been multiple complaints out of <complex name removed> about speed issues but the company refuses to do so until we change our networks over to MTN's backhaul as they have recently just bought us from Multichoice. We are scheduled to start cutting over Cape Town to MTN in May, I'm not exactly sure when we will get around to <complex name removed> but hopefully it would be before the beginning of June."

In other words, they are selling a service they knowingly cannot provide. Maybe getting on the MTN network will make things better, but with a company this mismanaged and dishonest i would not bet on it.

- They have promised to refund me my setup fee. However after 3 weeks and several emails they have not done so yet. The account person handling my refund (who also has a number that never gets answered) had to be emailed several times and the last indication before she stopped replying to my emails is that my refund should happen at month end with their next "refund run". Maybe. I'm not holding my breath.

The bar for poor service from telecoms companies in SA is set pretty low, but Smart Village has managed to meet and exceed this in every way.

 

[hi1pie]

Thanks for that reply, very helpful. My experience so far has not exactly been earth shattering as I had sent smart village an email more than a week ago with a bunch of questions, they only replied this morning with an answer to only one of my questions.
Unfortunately we are now stuck as we do exceed MTN's highest offering of 1000GB on some months and with a 50 or 100mbps line our household may well exceed that much more regularly.

 

[mic_y]

hiya... My building in CPT is served only by Smart Village on DFA backhaul. While their processes for signing up are a bit archaic and their network setup in my building is a bit strange to say the least (see details here: https://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/837759-Smart-Village-Publicly-Routable-IP-Address), so far I have received exactly what I have paid for and have had one outage that was rectified fairly quickly (within 6 hours on a weekend).

I started with a 1mbps uncapped shaped package, and over the course of a year have slowly upgraded to a 10mbps uncapped shaped line. Speeds have consistently reached maximum line speed both up and down using both HTTP as well as torrents. If all goes well, I will be upgrading to a 20mbps as soon as finances allow.

 

[hi1pie]

If anyone is interested as this doesn't seem to be available on their website. This is the info I have gathered from smartvillage so far:

- the lines are symmetrical (i.e. 50/50, 100/100)

- the FUP is a soft cap at these levels:
10mbps = 100GB
20mbps = 200GB
50mbps = 500GB
100mbps = 1000GB
(I don't know what speed they would throttle you to - still waiting for a reply)

- no restrictions on P2P other than the FUP.

- no restriction on Netflix etc or any other real time services at all.

- you can use your own router.

 

[mk_aldatym]

I know it's an old thread but here's my 2 cents:

I live in Jackal Creek and the only service provider we have access to is Smart Village. I've been with them for over 2 years and for the most part, I've been satisfied with their service and stability.

I average 140 GBs a month streaming and gaming and I've never been throttled. I do NOT, however, understand why their best package (in my estate at least) is a 10mb/s line and it costs R899.00 pm (12 month contract too of course - how archiac). R899 pm when people are paying a R100 less for 20mb/s and the same price for a 50 mb/s line!