http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=75201
Above is the link to the post I made, it has been about a year since I moved away from Telkom dial-up
My phone bill has been on average R 145,00 a month - even when I made a call overseas at Christmas time, in fact if anyone were to change to the Waya Waya service, you could cut your phone bill down to half of that
Here is a bit of it:
Goodbye to Telkom
Goodbye Telkom Dial-up, a lot of us have said that given half the chance we would drop you, even if it meant giving the same money to someone else it would be better than handing it over to what a lot of people see as an over grown school bully
While there is nothing new with what is written here, it is important that other people outside the MyADSL circle become aware that there is another way of doing things, a cheaper way and a friendlier way. I have seen people wasting money trying to get on line during the day to get pictures of their Grand Children, then get disconnected half way and then having to start all over, or people that need to do their banking, the list goes on
As from Thursday I will not be using dial-up to access the Net, I have done trials for two months and feel the time has come for the switch and report the results as they come along - Also get some feed back from others, and if there is anything that is wrong, I am sure someone will point it out
HERE IS THE PLAN:
Out goes the old 56K modem and in comes a V360 on Virgin Mobile
The object of the exercise is to how well users can cope without Telkom, Virgin Mobile was chosen because they offered the best data rates on pre-paid 50c per one Meg - while Vodacom and MTN currently charge R 2,00 per Meg
Looking at the money side of it:
If you are on say the Telkom closer 3 plan with Internet, you are paying R 80,00 a month or R 2,63 per day
With Virgin Mobile the cost per Meg is 50c - so for R 80,00 you get 160 Megs of data (appox 5.2 megs per day)
You do not need to pay an ISP - So this is another saving of say R 70,00 per month or R 2,30 per day
This then gives the user an extra 4.6 megs a day which takes the daily total up to 9.8 Megs a day
If the user does not have a Telkom fixed line this is another saving of R 100,00 a month or R 3,29 per day
Now this adds a whopping 6.58 megs a day to the total, giving us a Grand Total of 16.38 Megs a day
The Big Issues:
PLUS
Like ADSL time is not an issue, you can go on-line and stay connected and only pay for what data goes through, so if you are reading posts on MyADSL which has cost say 60c - you can go off to the movies and when you come back it will still be 60c that you have used
The user can go on anytime of day and pay the same price, none of this callmore, curfew BS - This is great if you have to do banking and stuff, in fact I have tried it out already - going on-line, collecting two invoices via email, logging onto my banking, transferring the money, sending the email with the transfer details, all for the cost of 27c - That's right, 27 Cents - Done during the day, when I would have had to pay Telkom 59c per 90 seconds - Now you can do your banking, have a cup of coffee, and not have to burst a blood vessel when the line is slow, or worry about when people pop in and your money pops out and goes to stay with Telkom
On Pay-as-you-go what you do not use rolls over to the next month
Using Opera Mini on the V360 allows the user to access to the web on the move, and because Opera Mini thins the data down, the cost is even less, a typical morning for me entails reading the paper and looking through posts, all for the cost of a meagre 10 - 20c
You can get a free POP3 email from Google or Yahoo UK which are very good a dealing with spam, also you have an email for life, this then allows you the freedom of moving from ISPs without losing your email address. You can also check your email on line and delete any emails without downloading them
The V360 will work on Windows 98 - Using Motorola Phone Tools, which makes ideal for people on a small budget
MINUS
Up-dates are a problem, both for Windows, Virus, Spyware Etc - One work around is to up-date via Media (CDs etc)
Flash, Pictures, Banner and Animations can be a problem as they gobble up data, sometimes it is better to turn off images and stuff in the browser to stop this
Virus and Spyware can leach bandwidth as they have a chat to their on-line friends, the user needs to check that when they are on-line their modem is not ticking over while they are not doing anything, this can be live up-dates for software, hardware and OS, but it can also be spyware or hacking
Mobile Data connections can be a bit spotty at times, normally (with GPRS) it works twice as fast as Dial-up
