Telkom Closer 4 is cheaper than iBurst??

I think for us, the over charged customers, will not see any significate changes in this industry till possibly 2020... as we've all seen everything is nothing but talk, look at how cleverly telkom disguises their wording of "UP TO 4Mbps" yet their minimum speed is 640 for that service... have they changed in the last decade?

So far Iburst has done the same thing. "Our plan for the year is to get 50000 users with only 250 Base Stations" where is the compeition? Customers might as well switch to any service as long as it is the cheapest at that point in time!

As for your comments Ed, not even you know what your plans for 2007 are. You say that you will give us an answer when you get it, who is the person that makes the decisions? Why not have him here to answer to his clients, after all we are paying him his nice BIG fat salary and bonuses.
 
It's quite shoddy though that Iburst have made no indications of what they are going to do with the current service. I suspose we should take their silence as tacit acknowledgement that nothing is going to change. If they try sneak in an increase in pricing I'll be off.
 
The article talks about expansion and quality, there is only one way to improve quality and that is to increase coverage. Look at Bedfordview as an example, there is already a tower there, we are going to add another one...this improves coverage (capacity). By improving coverage, all users in the surrounding areas benefit, reducing congestion. Users don't need to pull off Primrose, or EdenGlen...etc and customers that were not previously covered will now be covered.

Expanding coverage is also part of improving quality. By improving quality, you attract new customers, and expanding coverage, you also attract new customers that were previosly not covered.

Coverage is not where we want it to be, too many white areas, too many areas where the coverage is not dark orange...

Sales demand has been incredibly high and is continuing to be, with January ticked off as another bumper month in terms of high sales growth. Our sales success has lead to congestion in some areas and we are addressing this with the rollout of new base stations to increase coverage.

We are also increasing the coverage and expanding into new areas.

So in a nutshell, expansion improves quality, it adds coverage to new areas and it reduces congestion.

I really hope I have made sense here, but the article says there are two focus areas....expansion and up the ante on quality.
 
Ed Hall said:
Coverage is not where we want it to be, too many white areas, too many areas where the coverage is not dark...
Click to expand...

:D Man that quote could be taken out of context :D

I am glad that you are addressing your customers here Ed but the biggest question that people have been asking in the recent months has still not been answered.

When is iBurst going to change it's pricing structure to once again compete with it's competitors?

I have always been an iBurst fan but unfortunately due to budgetary constraints I have had to apply for an ADSL line on the Closer 4 package as it will save me money and I get double the bandwidth that I currently get.

I understand that Telkom holds most of the cards in SA when we talk about Broadband but unfortunately that is the case and iBurst need to come up with create accounting to fix the problem....

Ever thought of allowing customers to choose an ISP and you just offer the connectivity section?
 
Fishfly, you are right, I don't know the answers. So it would be wrong and irresponsible for me to say that there is going to be a price reduction, or a 2MB modem, or no more capping....

What I can say is that we continually look at our offerring and review it, and we ask the same questions that are asked on this forum.

There is some exciting stuff planned for this year and as soon as I have concrete answers...not plans, not what we are hoping to do, not what we are testing and evaluating etc etc, real answers, I will tell all on the forum.
 
Requiring more information....

Ed Hall said:
What we have found over the last few months, is where a user is in a bad coverage area according to our maps, but because he is only one of a few connecting to the base station, throughput is great, speeds are great...and then more users join, and throughput and signal quality slows. This is what we are addressing with the base station rollout.
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Hi Ed

Firstly, thank you for your forthright contribution to the discussions on this forum, it is appreciated.

Could you please clarify what criteria WBS/iBurst’s technical team would utilise to establish if any additional base stations are required in a specific area?

Take Cape Town’s CBD as an example, in 2006 the only tower was the Holiday Inn, then the load on that tower became so great that internet access from the tower could have been compared to a dial-up connection.

Then late 2006 the Gardens Tower came online (with issues – dead IP’s) however it was an alternative. After this was remedied and for a brief period I received the advertised bandwidth of 1Mbps, however after iBurst’s recent splurge on advertising, this tower is heading the same way as the Holiday Inn tower. My average access speed from the Gardens tower is now in the region of 300 – 400 kbps and dropping fast.

Does iBurst intend erecting another tower in the CBD of Cape Town and / or are there any other plans in the pipeline to improve connectivity in areas that have a high concentration of users? My final question; what is the lowest average access speed that I could expect, before the situation will be remedied if at all?

A frank and clear answer will be appreciated.

Regards

Michael

PS: I am utilising a Yagi directional antenna, 1.2 Km away from the tower with direct line of sight and supposedly in the “best” coverage area and a single user on a 9Gig account. (Average Cost -57db)
 
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who.is.michael said:
Hi Ed

Firstly, thank you for your forthright contribution to the discussions on this forum, it is appreciated.

Could you please clarify what criteria iBurst’s technical team would utilise to establish if any additional base stations are required in a specific area?

Take Cape Town’s CBD as an example, in 2006 the only tower was the Holiday Inn, then the load on that tower became so great that internet access from the tower could be compared to a dial-up connection.

Then late 2006 the Gardens Tower came online (with issues – dead IP’s) however it was an alternative. For a brief period I received the advertised bandwidth of 1Mbps, however after iBurst’s splurge on advertising, this tower is heading the same way as the Holiday Inn tower. My average access speed from the Gardens tower is now in the region of 300 – 400 kbps.

Does iBurst intend erecting another tower in the CBD of Cape Town or are there any other plans in the pipeline to improve connectivity in areas that have a high concentration of users? My question in a nutshell is; what should the lowest average access speed be, before the situation will be remedied if at all?

A frank and clear answer will be appreciated.

Regards

Michael

PS: I am utilising a Yagi directional antenna, 1.2 Km away from the tower with direct line of sight and supposedly in the “best” coverage area and a single user on a 9Gig account. (Average Cost -57db)
Click to expand...


Hi Michael

We typically look at a potential customer base of about 300 before we look into the feasibility of a base station.

The Cape Town region is difficult in terms of site acquisition because of its geography and the environmental demands are high with a lot of tight criteria that needs to be met to satisfy the environmental people. To build the base station is easy and quick...it's getting the site and permission to build that can often take months.

We keep a close eye on the connection experience of the users around the base station. Your Yagi does distort this statistic though for us when looking at the connection quality. There isn't a hard and fast rule, but rather a combination of factors, load on the base station, RF factors, local and international bandwidth usuge, weather, connection patterns etc etc when looking at base station performance and congestion.

There are base stations planned for the Cape region, nothing for the CBD over the short term. But remember we keep monitoring and the outlook may change with congestion. Then the site acquisition process starts, and the environmental.....which can take months. Worse case, we cannot secure a site where we want to (to give the right coverage) and we look at alternatives.

To summarise, nothing planned for the CBD right now, base station performance looks OK for now, but we keep watching.

Hope this helps
Ed
 
Ed, thanks for the replies at least you are responding to queries which is a big plus in your favour, but from your reply to who.is.michael I somehow don't think he'll be too happy about "nothing planned for the CBD".

Hopefully iBurst will reduce rates or increase caps or better still remove caps in the near future since as already stated it's about time iBurst made some positive changes which benefits the customer.
 
Yeah, I bet you wont find a customer-care representative from Telkom on here.

Ed Hall, any idea if any of these new base stations will be in Durban. Would really like you guys to set one up on top of Overport city. From it's location on your map it would really benefit the light orange dudes in that area...including me :D
 
Disappointed but thanks for the answer…

Thanks Ed

Well here is a tip for the planners of the new Cape Town CBD tower, Bo-Kaap it's available it’s cheap and it is the best location. If not consider the tampon towers, but make it soon!

Seems odd that one of S.Africa's major cities only have two transmitters in the CBD, any idea how this compares to the cellular fraternity?

****
Hi Mr H - good to see you still ibursting around.
 
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erm.. and Constantia, never forget Constantia.

Theres a great Telkom tower right next to my house, really its about 3 houses away. It would be an amazing place for a tower and I know the access and permission won't be a problem because Telkom own it, and um .. ja... they are committed to free competition and all that, being a monopoly.

Seriously though, the tower anywhere around would be nice :)

Michaels problem still seems strange. Is the tower really that bad? Even if it was overloaded, he would be getting the best connection out of everyone else on the tower. I recall other people saying the tower works fine for them, even though they would almost definitely have a worse signal/LOS. Sounds like some very strange isolated problem.. if not, well they should get a new tower up right away :/
 
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Well hello there..

Hi EHV

Long time no speak, hope you well.

Yes my connectivity problem persist, have had everyone around that is a wireless technician or think they are - seems no solution is to be found, however I've had to educate myself on wireless technologies, which I now enjoy.

Just as they fixed the dead and dying IP issues, the tower bandwidth dies out, possibly due to the amount of users and now the dead IP issues resurfaces with a vengeance, what luck.

I think most user’s aren’t even aware of the connectivity issues as they are on networks and could find other reasons for the poor connectivity, but as I am the only one on the account and utilising the internet throughout the day, I am acutely aware of iBurst/Verizon/Saix network issues.

The worst is, if you need to connect via VPN or RD and the connection drops or the application freezes, but hell I bought the modems and I shall persist even if it is unreliable, more expensive and provides poor CS.

While there are ppl like Ed around I still have hope for iBurst.

How is your connection on that side of Cape Town?
 
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who.is.michael said:
Hi EHV

Long time no speak, hope you well.

Yes my connectivity problem persist, have had everyone around that is a wireless technician or think they are - seems no solution is to be found, however I've had to educate myself on wireless technologies, which I now enjoy.

Just as they fixed the dead and dying IP issues, the tower bandwidth dies out, possibly due to the amount of users and now the dead IP issues resurfaces with a vengeance, what luck.

I think most user’s aren’t even aware of the connectivity issues as they are on networks and could find other reasons for the poor connectivity, but as I am the only one on the account and utilising the internet throughout the day, I am acutely aware of iBurst/Verizon/Saix network issues.

The worst is, if you need to connect via VPN or RD and the connection drops or the application freezes, but hell I bought the modems and I shall persist even if it is unreliable, more expensive and provides poor CS.

While there are ppl like Ed around I still have hope for iBurst.

How is your connection on that side of Cape Town?
Click to expand...

I'm good thanks :)

So have you tried using the Gardens tower from any other location before? Even though it makes no sense for the fault to be with your connection...

My connection is still at what it went down to after the tower maintenance/realigning. It's basically stable at its current speeds, so I'm hoping thats what will happen with a new tower and better general speeds too.
 
Hi there EHV

Tried different, modems, different locations, different notebooks - all the same issues... Why nobody else complains I can’t fathom, I can only assume that for others it is not a priority to have a stable and fast connection.

EDIT: Having just said this at present (03/02/2007 00:24:20) my connection is brilliant, good IP, latency is back within normal range, no timeouts and my access speed is 1.01 Mbps - haven’t been this good in many months, can it just last beyond Monday 9am!

NOTE TO Ed: Please thank your network guys and ask them not to change anything – leave it as is it’s working again.
 
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Future real broadband offering and none of the current establishment involved yet.

Well this seems to be a promising solution for the future… And hopefully they wont be just another rip-off ISP and on the consumers side for a change!

http://www.goal.co.za/
 
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It's the ideal solution to the broadband problem here, except been in sa you can be sure they will also be greedy.
 
Ummm.... Guys ...... Ummmmmm... You are aware that this (GTS) is tied in with that other great South African monopoly Eishkom !!!! Hell, At this rate, SAA's gonna be offering broadband solutions soon .... Oh, Hang on, they already do ........
 
I'm holding out for Department of Health broadband- we'll have the minister telling us that SAT3 doesn't cause ADSL and that we need to plug garlic and lemons into our routers to prevent packet loss :)
 
peterleroux said:
I'm holding out for Department of Health broadband- we'll have the minister telling us that SAT3 doesn't cause ADSL and that we need to plug garlic and lemons into our routers to prevent packet loss :)
Click to expand...

Lol. Don't forget the beetroot. And not only do they decrease packet loss, they also work wonders as a firewall and anti-virus.
 
I'm holding out for Department of Health broadband- we'll have the minister telling us that SAT3 doesn't cause ADSL and that we need to plug garlic and lemons into our routers to prevent packet loss
Click to expand...
LMAO!
 
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