South Africa’s worst and best ISPs during lockdown

[Hanno Labuschagne]

South Africa’s worst and best ISPs during lockdown

The Q2 2020 MyBroadband ISP report revealed that Cool Ideas, Vox, MTN, and Afrihost were the top-rated Internet service providers (ISPs) during South Africa’s COVID-19 lockdown.

The national lockdown started on 27 March, placing tremendous pressure on fixed and mobile networks as most employees began working from home.

Network traffic increased significantly, and support lines were under pressure with many people looking for new services or upgrades to their existing Internet access.

 

[Saba'a]

Surprised as Vox consistently rip off customers with their equipment?

 

[Binary_Bark]

Helcom is the worst?!

I am shocked

 

[MRTOM]

I am in process of moving to Cool Ideas from Vox which could not fix my latency to EU gaming servers for 5 months my ping went from 160 ms to 230ms.Final answer from them its a routing issue out of their network they cant do anything.They dont go out of their way to retain customers looks like they dont need business so here i come Cool Ideas

 

[GlassMirror]

I am in process of moving to Cool Ideas from Vox which could not fix my latency to EU gaming servers for 5 months my ping went from 160 ms to 230ms.Final answer from them its a routing issue out of their network they cant do anything.They dont go out of their way to retain customers looks like they dont need business so here i come Cool Ideas

Come here, my ping to the EU gaming servers are constantly between 134ms and 148ms

 

[Smiley_lauf]

That table showing % should show the number of subscribers in each ISP and which of those responded postively and those that gave a negative mark. Else it is just a reflection of denominator bias.

 

[Zukat]

Im with Cool Ideas, the only critique their way is not passing on the double speed from the line provider, otherwise happy customer here.

 

[cyb3rt]

I am in process of moving to Cool Ideas from Vox which could not fix my latency to EU gaming servers for 5 months my ping went from 160 ms to 230ms.Final answer from them its a routing issue out of their network they cant do anything.They dont go out of their way to retain customers looks like they dont need business so here i come Cool Ideas

Good luck with that...

I moved away from them because I got that answer from them, on issues I have with Warzone. But on LTE and the new ISP (Cybersmart) it has no issues.

 

[Thepax]

Pity they don't have Accelerit on the list both my neighbours and I are with them and cannot complain. I never get time to play games anymore but my son plays plants Vs zombies online and never seems to have issues.

 

[TheRoDent]

Im with Cool Ideas, the only critique their way is not passing on the double speed from the line provider, otherwise happy customer here.

We did, based on the terms of most of our Fibre providers where it didn't attract additional costs for the additional capacity from the provider. Which provider are you using ?

Promotions - Cool Ideas - Your Fibre Guy

The following free upgrade promotions are available (please read the related announcements further below): Vumatel Double Up Promotion Frogfoot Double Up Promotion Link Africa Double Up Promotion CoolFibre Double Up Promotion Announcement regarding free line speed upgrades: Mitchells Fibre...

www.cisp.co.za

 

[Stain9369]

Afrihost speeds and service has been so utterly shocking! I cannot believe they are one of the best...? Says a lot for the rest. If you read this please DO NOT choose Afrihost as they are a useless ISP and customer service is disgusting. I am paying for 20Mbps package and I am getting 8Mbps for 3 months they cannot find a solution.

 

[Apogee]

Afrihost speeds and service has been so utterly shocking! I cannot believe they are one of the best...? Says a lot for the rest. If you read this please DO NOT choose Afrihost as they are a useless ISP and customer service is disgusting. I am paying for 20Mbps package and I am getting 8Mbps for 3 months they cannot find a solution.

Why are you then still using them?

 

[maccaman]

Afrihost speeds and service has been so utterly shocking! I cannot believe they are one of the best...? Says a lot for the rest. If you read this please DO NOT choose Afrihost as they are a useless ISP and customer service is disgusting. I am paying for 20Mbps package and I am getting 8Mbps for 3 months they cannot find a solution.

Totally agree that their customer service is crap. Impossible to talk to someone. Logged a call back request yesterday, received an SMS to say they will call me between 15h34-16h04. I eventually got a call at 21h30, but was on another call at the time. The agent didn't call me back, but closed the ticket as resolved. I then get an SMS today asking me to rate their service! I rate it 0, they promise someone will contact me for my feedback. Still waiting.
Logged another call me back today. SMS said they will call back between 12h01 and 12h31. It is now 16h22, and I am still waiting.
I signed up with them because I trusted Gian when he asked customers to give them another chance, but clearly it was a mistake.
So my search for a new SP starts again...

 

[CeeBee]

Afrihost …...

i'm surprised they are so high up... I've been with them for many many years, both personal, and for business... customer service really taken a nose dive recently.
just after lockdown started, one of the villages with SADV and Afrihost as ISP, fiber went down... one of directors home.
took a week to resolve, only get response and feedback every few days.... excuse of the agents they been really busy.
i'm in IT also, sometimes you cannot get response or feedback within an hour, or all day... but really, if it takes more than 2days to get the slightest feedback on a case, there is something wrong.... incompetence, or severely understaffed.. neither is OK
recently as well.... fiber (of same director) went down in complex. call opened... AH agent says, he can see the user is connected, he must check LEDS, reboot. user has done that, in fact, fiber to the complex disconnected due to break in cable in area, everybody is off. so really, he can see the user is connected? 3 days after fixed, and connected... agent comes back... "i see the link shows online with usage... is it restored?" clever
unfortunately SADV is the sole cable provider to the complex, and AH the ISP... user no choice


what makes the bad service even worse... when call is closed, "Gian" sends sms, how was interaction with XXXX
generally its a different guy who follows up on call, so the last guy couldnt do any better if he tried, so service with him is as good as can be expected. so how do you score him? nothing he could do better, so cant get bad score.
why is the SMS not "how was the service during the support call"? no minus-mark offered

 

[smarhaule]

South Africa’s worst and best ISPs during lockdown

The Q2 2020 MyBroadband ISP report revealed that Cool Ideas, Vox, MTN, and Afrihost were the top-rated Internet service providers (ISPs) during South Africa’s COVID-19 lockdown.

The national lockdown started on 27 March, placing tremendous pressure on fixed and mobile networks as most employees began working from home.

Network traffic increased significantly, and support lines were under pressure with many people looking for new services or upgrades to their existing Internet access.

Afrihost Top-rated, they are by far the worst ISP. I have them for our accounting business and my 4 relatives in and around Johannesburg but I even show you communication and numerous support cases. Every 2nd month or so we have a problem. Before lockdown, I'd have to drive to their offices in Rivonia, and to my surprise, there were 10's of people there and some if not everyone was a business owner or homeowner. I won't even mention the 60mins that you hold before they answer their helpline. Just these past two days I called them because yesterday morning we woke up to no connectivity, only to be told they forgot to allocate data for our business account.

 

[Zukat]

We did, based on the terms of most of our Fibre providers where it didn't attract additional costs for the additional capacity from the provider. Which provider are you using ?

Promotions - Cool Ideas - Your Fibre Guy

The following free upgrade promotions are available (please read the related announcements further below): Vumatel Double Up Promotion Frogfoot Double Up Promotion Link Africa Double Up Promotion CoolFibre Double Up Promotion Announcement regarding free line speed upgrades: Mitchells Fibre...

www.cisp.co.za

Metrofibre

 

[AfriNatic]

Afrihost speeds and service has been so utterly shocking! I cannot believe they are one of the best...? Says a lot for the rest. If you read this please DO NOT choose Afrihost as they are a useless ISP and customer service is disgusting. I am paying for 20Mbps package and I am getting 8Mbps for 3 months they cannot find a solution.

Ohh no looks like we dropped the ball here big time. I can assure you we care for each one of our clients and would do our best to make sure you get the service you expect from us.

Allow me to see what went wrong and maybe patch things up?

 

[AfriNatic]

Totally agree that their customer service is crap. Impossible to talk to someone. Logged a call back request yesterday, received an SMS to say they will call me between 15h34-16h04. I eventually got a call at 21h30, but was on another call at the time. The agent didn't call me back, but closed the ticket as resolved. I then get an SMS today asking me to rate their service! I rate it 0, they promise someone will contact me for my feedback. Still waiting.
Logged another call me back today. SMS said they will call back between 12h01 and 12h31. It is now 16h22, and I am still waiting.
I signed up with them because I trusted Gian when he asked customers to give them another chance, but clearly it was a mistake.
So my search for a new SP starts again...

We had a very long call back queue that our team tried to work through as fast as possible. We let you down and I can only personally apologise for that. I want to help with your query. Mind sending me a pm?

 

[AfriNatic]

Afrihost Top-rated, they are by far the worst ISP. I have them for our accounting business and my 4 relatives in and around Johannesburg but I even show you communication and numerous support cases. Every 2nd month or so we have a problem. Before lockdown, I'd have to drive to their offices in Rivonia, and to my surprise, there were 10's of people there and some if not everyone was a business owner or homeowner. I won't even mention the 60mins that you hold before they answer their helpline. Just these past two days I called them because yesterday morning we woke up to no connectivity, only to be told they forgot to allocate data for our business account.

I'm sorry for this poor experience you have had. It's not something we are proud of. I would like to assist. Please drop me a private message let me get this sorted for you?

 

[wildpot]

WEBAFRICA's logo is on the article but no feedback on their service? How do people rate them? What is Mybroadband's view on them?