Supersonic Unlimited Air Fibre hands-on tested

Jan

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Supersonic Unlimited Air Fibre tested — Impressive results

Early tests of Supersonic's Unlimited Air Fibre product have shown impressive speeds and latency, indicating the company might have strong grounds for its claims that it offers "fibre-like" connectivity.

Supersonic launched the new uncapped wireless broadband product in May but has encountered some problems in its rollout due to a shortage of antennas needed to connect customers.

Supersonic CEO Calvin Collett told MyBroadband the ISP was now in weekly communication with stakeholders to push client units through and is hoping to have some stock in the country by the end of July.

Despite the issues, Collett said the tech behind Unlimited Air Fibre — which was developed by US-based firm Tarana Wireless — has exceeded their expectations.
 
This is about exactly what you would expect with a 5.8ghz ISM Wi-Fi connection.

let's see how it performs with once 50-100 people are connected to the highsite.

@Jan , I would like to suggest a 6-month follow-up

Hopefully this will help reduce fibre and highsite rental prices.
 
Sapphiron said:
This is about exactly what you would expect with a 5.8ghz ISM Wi-Fi connection.

let's see how it performs with once 50-100 people are connected to the highsite.

@Jan , I would like to suggest a 6-month follow-up

Hopefully this will help reduce fibre and highsite rental prices.
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Totally agree. The only way to test is when the stated number of subs are hanging off the same bs
 
I can believe the numbers reported here.

I'm on a 50/20 package and have been getting 30-49 download and 15-19 upload.
My tower is further than the 3-4KM reviewed here though, maybe that would explain the difference.

Overall, I'm a very happy customer.
 
So she moved from fiber to this link. I would say move to fiber, only if there is no fiber move to this link thing.
 
A_man said:
I can believe the numbers reported here.

I'm on a 50/20 package and have been getting 30-49 download and 15-19 upload.
My tower is further than the 3-4KM reviewed here though, maybe that would explain the difference.

Overall, I'm a very happy customer.
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The article said they open the taps to max for MyBB to test.
 
Those download speeds aren't very impressive for a 100mbps connection. I get faster than that on Cell C. I can't see this performing well once 100 people in the neighbourhood are connected.
 
Wireless always seem like the bees knees during early launch. The proof is in the pudding when the network gets loaded with users. I would like to see a follow up when the user base is significantly higher.
 
The fact that they knew myBB was testing it, they might have made some optimal tweaks to sell the package. It's not bad for a new product, only time and uptake will paint a true enough picture of the product's capabilities. It is by far the cheapest wireless based product in the market at those speeds.
 
As with ANY wireless technology, the real test is to see when their network has thousands/tens of thousands of users on it, if it degrades.

Literally every wireless technology I've ever seen and touted as "the best" by MyBB, eventually suffers because of popularity and then degrades to unusable and inconsistent speeds to the point where users complain and the company does nothing to resolve (other than give excuses) to the point where they lose the user-base and then continue to the "next best" wireless technology

So, again, 2 decades after I've been saying this every time and haven't been proven wrong yet..... prove me wrong
 
MTN has missed the Boat on Pricing here.

A fibre connection 30Mbps Down and 5 Mbps Up costs close to or less than R500.

If they came in at R399 and under then the take up would have been huge and the value would have been good as well.
 
I find this whole thing weird.
I can get MTN LTE in certain areas but not this. Why do they have to be sold as different products?
Why not just sell one product and call it wireless internet?
 
I thought you can't get this if you're already covered by fibre. Anyway, I'm sure the customer, Mmatankiso Botsane will be disappointed to know that Vumatel have dropped their prices finally, so her R907 20/20 vuma line is now a R897 50/50 line or a R697 20/20 line, so she's saving R98.
 
wingnut771 said:
I thought you can't get this if you're already covered by fibre. Anyway, I'm sure the customer, Mmatankiso Botsane will be disappointed to know that Vumatel have dropped their prices finally, so her R907 20/20 vuma line is now a R897 50/50 line or a R697 20/20 line, so she's saving R98.
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The way things are going In this country, if you have an opportunity to save R98 then go ahead.
 
The only problem is there is no clear Rollout plan for this and all you can do is show interest on their website.
I stay in Pietermaritzburg that in theory is their initial rollout plan, but there is no way to even try work out if there is coverage this side yet.

Would sign up straight away as Vuma is just to expensive.
 
I was on the Supersonic Unlimited Air Fibre for R999.01 per month.

When I first got it in February 2022 I was disappointed because I didn’t achieve the speeds all the hype promised or the advertised hardware. Directly off install and setup I was only getting around 5/10 Mbps on my download tests using the supplied TP-Link Archer MR600 v2 router.

Which still today more than 2 years after its release in South Africa is using the default released beta firmware and has never had a firmware update release where as Europe and the USA are already in their v21 and higher of the firmware upgrade release. Showing how little support there is for this LTE router in Southern Africa.

The promised Tarana Wireless G1 Antenna they advertised that comes with the AirFibre package, which I specifically needed form my setup being on a small holding and one of the key reasons I chose to go with the Supersonic AirFiibre with no direct line of sight to the towers or phone line/fibre options due to rampant line theft in the area.

Back then they kept saying antenna stock would be coming but never has. I was left hanging with a very slow and unstable connection. Then I found articles on the Poynting XPOL antenna here in Mybroadband so I bought the XPOL-2-5G antenna at R8700 including all fittings and pole from Poynting for my setup.

As soon as I connected the antenna my connection went to 110Mbps download speeds in my tests.Untitled-1.jpg
For around 4 months my internet rocked, then I noticed it slowing down. I was lucky to get 25 to 30 Mbps during the day and 50/60 after 10pm/11pm at night. And since around July this year if I go over 25 gigs in data use it drops my connection to 5/8 Mbps. Cant do much when that happens, loading simple web pages is even a challenge. Usually by the next day it speeds back up to the usual 20/30 Mbps range until I go near the 25 gig mark again.

And in-case you might be thinking this is due to Load-shedding, its not. I have Solar and inverter with big battery bank and the tower I point to is at the Lanseria airport which has extra power supply and security being at the airport. So I generally don’t feel Load-shedding unless they kill my power for more than 12 hours and its very cloudy. Which has happened more than you would think. Thanks Eskom and the ANC, you are awesome!

Its also not my signal that has dropped because my signal strength is constantly at 100% and on very dark stormy conditions it drops to 75% due to the awesome XPOL antenna.

I have submitted loads of support tickets complaining about it, when they do answer the ticket I get the same stupid questions they give everyone in a ISP call centre, have you checked your plug, and stupid noob questions every time. Other times my ticket gets ignored and I just get a ticket closed notification.

And after a very frustrating back and forth each time, they pass the ticket onto their technical department which then answer me very quickly telling me to test the connection and bang its running at 100 Mbps again, this always lasts for around 24 hours then goes back to 20/30 and the usual 25 gig limit and the frustrating cycle repeats its self again.

So to sum it all up!

A top of the range 100Mbps AirFibre service that’s uncapped, unshaped and unthrottled for R999.01 per month are a blatant lie and is false advertising. Your account gets changed to an FLTE account because there are no antennas, It is shaped and throttled and does not give you 100 Mbps connectivity. You do not get the advertised G1 antenna, so you have to buy your own substitute and that cost me close to nine grand which I wouldn’t have minded so much if they actually gave me the advertised100Mbps connection I am paying for. Where I am located I doubt there is much network congestion so why I am shaped and throttled confuses me.

Supersonic was truly the best for maybe a year and a half, but since Calvin Collett stepped down from CEO the company and its service has become the normal rubbish service we get from all the providers, and that’s South Africa for you. Loads of crap options with not a single good one.

Now that Southern Africa has the new Google's Equiano and the Meta-backed 2Africa sub sea internet pipes and the recent pipe snap issues in the Cape sorted out, maybe South Africa’s internet will improve over 2024. Dont hold your breath!
 
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