Telecommuting

[kaspaas]

Hi,

a line I picked up:

There are a number of people who wish to use Telkom ADSL for telecommuting. Seems as if it does not realy work.

All of us in the IT-industry know the importance of telecommuting to retain the best brains here. It is a growing sector of the economy.

Seems as it Telkom is sabotaging this.

Would those actively involved in telecommuting please share their experiences? I smell a good possible story for the press.

 

[swiftydepot]

Hi Kaaspaas,

I currently tele-commute to a London based software company. I am a programmer. I arrived here July this year after 8 1/2 years overseas. The past two years I was tele-commuting from San Francisco for the same company.

I use the ADSL connection for:
1. E-mail via IMAP,
2. Discussing work issues etc with VoIP via Yahoo or Skype,
3. Accessing source code with MS Visual Source Safe via VPN,
4. Accessing company intranet via VPN.

The 3GB cap is not a problem for me and I don't see it becomming one. International bandwidth is a problem as I cannot use MS VSS during work hours and VoIP quality is frustrating. E-Mail is fine and the intranet isn't vital to me.

The reason I mention SF is there I had a 384/128 ADSL connection with www.Covad.net and MS VSS and VoIP both worked fine at any time. In SF I also used to access mail via VPN but have kept to IMAP here as it's quicker.

I find it frustrating but the pretend ADSL won't force me to change jobs. There were plans to maybe hire local developers to work with me but I could not consider doing that with the current ADSL available here. I would have convince my employers to spend the money getting a proper office with a leased line or something so in reality less likely to happen.

Let me know if you need any more detail.

 

[swiftydepot]

kaspaas,

Sorry to mis spell your name ..[:I]

 

[kaspaas]

Thanks for your input Swiftydepot.

Any others willing to share their experiences?

 

[reech]

I'm a web dev based in London at the moment, I telecommuted from Cape town for three months last year over DIALUP (via radmin, vpn, ftp), an experience I'd not like to repeat soon. I'd love to work from cape town, but a 3gb cap and extortionate prices make it just about impossible. The cap and unreliable international bandwidth being my main complaints. This is a real pity, south africa is missing out on the chance to develop a vital dev sector.