Stop complaining and get real...

jivan said:
Let’s get real…


Ok, Lets get real :

a. Our Telecommunications industry is monopolised by Telkom.
b. The telecommunications infrastructure in this country was for the most part paid for with Tax revenue.
c. Telkom are now charging you exhorbitant prices to use infrastructure that you, as a tax payer, paid to have installed.
d. Telkom are only making a fraction of the SAT3/SAFE cable available to the market. Supply and demand. Reduce supply, couple it with ever increasing demand, and the price point increases (Economics 101). Price point increases with same fix cost base = profits increase.
e. The lack of available international bandwidth is what is crippling the broadband market in this country. If international bandwidth wasnt so severely restricted and prohibitively expensive, providers like iBurst would stand a much better chance of success in the market as they would be able to support on the backend what their equipment supports at the "last mile"/"local lead"/"local connection"/"Whatever you want to call it" level. Have a look at the complaints leveled at iBurst - most of them relate to poor response due to limited onward bandwidth that is severly restricted through (necessary at the moment) draconian bandwidth management.

There is always room for improvement with anything in life. No improvement = no progress.
 
He's not ganna post a reply coz when he started the thread he thought I am right and if anyone posts here, I will not reply or even look coz its probably something relating to this

If you wish to reply, please do so with fact and intellect. Please don’t bother if you’re only capable of emphasising a point with profanity or you write like a scorned child that is upset because they’re having problems downloading the latest pirate Top 40 music album instead of paying for it.)

How wronge he was
 
jivan said:
I have been an avid reader of these forums for sometime now. Unfortunately recently it has changed from a forum to share experience and knowledge to a place dominated by negative whiners.

Let’s get real…

....

iBurst is not perfect (yet), but it is the only technology that has a future here in South Africa. Before WiMax is released here, iBurst will have evolved and then WiMax will become old news.

...


As someone has in their sig. Opinions are like an *******, everyone has one. - Dirty Harry. Technical issues and the ownership of SAT3 is one thing, but paying 400% more for a lot less, while Telkom denies us from using 80% or so of the cables capacity is a waste of a national asset and nothing more than a good, solid, capitalistic shafting the said consumer, if you like it or can abide it without complaints, fantastic, you are a better person than I.

Once again I take umbrage with the tone of the post. You are advocating and actively supporting a "do nothing and take it with a smile" attitude? Accept crap service, poor performance, exorbitant pricing, being a 3rd rate citizen of the Global World, having Telkom ensure Sub-standard education and ignorance will be with us for the next 15 years, being told we are a culturally diverse country yet 70% of its people have never seen or have no knowledge of anything outside its borders, of being the object of mockery and snide comments of the Online Olympic Gaming community :rolleyes: and all this with a smiley face :) and happy wallet??

I like many others here choose, as per our democratic right, not to take it bending over without at least voicing some complaints. By your own admission (in your post), SA has a Broadband choice that varies between k@k and crap. You have elected to remain silent along with many other 'Telkom victims'. Fine, do so, but do so without mocking peoples fundamental right to complain when they are receiving shoddy service or being abused or even just wanting better.
 
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Darke said:
You have elected to remain silent along with many other 'Telkom victims'. Fine, do so, but do so without mocking peoples fundamental right to complain
but then you have to respect his right to complain about people complaining :p
 
I have to agree

I find that I have to agree with jivan on this. South Africa is at the arse end of the Earth in telecommunication terms and we have to live with it. There is nothing wrong with constructive criticism, that's a good way to get improvements, but this constant whining will get us nowhere.

I bought in to iBurst because I think it has the best potential of the current solutions.

In my case I was previously using ISDN at 64Kb/s and paying R600 per month in connection charges as well as nearly R400 per month for ISP and line rental.

Now I pay R599 per month all in. OK, sometimes the speed drops below 128Kb/s during the day, but that's still twice as fast as I was getting for less money. Evenings and weekends it's a real pleasure.

For most business users like myself, absolute speed is not the issue. E-mail and electronic banking take up a large part of my connection time. Most times the banking is limited by the bank's secure server, and e-mail is not usually time critical.

I hope WBS get their act together. We can't afford to lose them. Look at the alternatives.
 
how come when someone hates WBS we don't say that they work for a competitor but when someone is for WBS or not as pissed at WBS they are a reseller or work for WBS.

The only people at WBS that would really stand to benifit from trying to coax people into thinking WBS isn't so bad would be share holders, everyone else gets thier set salary wether you like WBS or not and ussually employees don't give a **** either way.
 
bb_matt said:
I think that Freddo the Frog is Jivan.

Could be wrong, but something smells a bit fishy ...
You guys are a bunch of conspiracy theorists deluxe :D
 
Slim - u know who i work for and most others. All these "new" forumites are just that - new and we dont know squat about them. They have the right to say what they feel but then they must not come and give their "facts" here that are misleading and untrue. We all know that iburst service sucks most of the time and that Helkom is responsible for high prices.

To say that we must just accept the service we are given is rubbish !!
only an employee of that company would say that !!
When you go out and have bad service at a restaurant do u just accept it and say :well the GVT has bad service so.......
 
as an afterthought, I've never heard anyone in the real world (outside of TV and radio adverts) use the phrase 'get real' when talking to anyone else. Shaving ads, insurance ads, car ads - yup, you hear that. But in the real world?

as for why employees have no reason to lie, because they 'just get a salary' - thats not quite true. What about the failing self respect and increasingly dented ego's from working for an obviously bad employer? How many Sentech employees do you think boast about working for Sentech these days?

IBurst employees are probably having to tell friends and family that they're drug dealers and car hijackers - anything rather than let slip that they work for the IBurst Helpdesk :P

So having no chance at gaining respect from telling anyone what your job is, and struggle to justify what you're doing on a daily basis to endless complaining clients who have good reason to complain.. to do this day after day, and slowly lose your own sense of self-worth and self respect in the process - is actually a quite reasonable motivation to try and tip the scales in an online forum and tell people to 'stop complaining and get real'.
 
OK I respect your point of view but it doesn't suck most of the time for everyone, my experience is good but I don't say so anymore because of the backlash that causes by people who aren't happy with the service.
 
LG agreed - i would rather say i am OSAMA BIN LADEN than say i work for WBS or IBURST !!
 
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IMO a better localised one would be:

"I would rather admit to being her Poisonous Ivyness than admit to being a helpdesk orc"
 
And the war goes on...

I think from this forum we can take away two facts

1. Telkom, by virtue of the fact that they control most of the international bandwidth, are mostly responsible for the exorbitant price of internet in South Africa.

2. IBurst isn't even close to being a perfect solution for everybody. From personal experience (connecting from 6 different locations accross the country) its very unreliable depending on location. Fortunately for me it works well from my flat in Durban.

I beleive a lot of the complaints (while justifiable) on this forum are completely useless venting. Complaining is a good thing as it forces people to recognize something is wrong and to pay attention - however too much complaining and it becomes whining which is generally either ignored (my personal philosophy :D ) or responded to aggressively (some other ppl's policies).

Constructive complaints - offering up solutions - understanding that all companies have problems is a good thing. At the end of the day though if the product doesn't suit you or your environment or what you want to do with it -no amount of complaining is really going to help - switch to another product.
 
awesome post, well put, if you keep making posts like that I may have to stop stereotyping Durban people.
 
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