The BIG reason why 8ta has gone down the drain..

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Nitrate

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Ok well firstly let me start by saying what I have experienced..

1. frequent Random disconnects
2. Very high and unstable ping (mostly in the evenings but for the last 2 weeks this has been happening during the day as well.
3. Pages wont open or load and times out.
4. Download speeds has dropped from 600kb/s to 0.50kb/s
5. Disconnect and cant connect for 30 min .. connection terminated
6.3g available but no data coming through..
7. massive Jitters and ping spikes with terrible through output.( meaning its connected but hangs with no data being received)

Ok the main reason for everyone experiencing these issue are due to the fact that 8ta use to piggy back on most of the other Cellphone companies tower which had a combined total of more than 13000 towers throughout SA...

Now 8ta has decided to go solo (November 2011) and they only have 1500 towers in South Africa..

I'm not sucking this out of my thumb.. The guys (engineers / technicians) managing 8ta's 3g towers and operations confirmed this info for me..

They came to my house which is 350m from the towers. Did some tests and he basically told me the issue is that 8ta cant handle the load....

He also said that Vodacom's CEO has joined 8ta and that hopefully he can sort out this ***** they have gotten themselves into.. I seriously doubt that though.

I don't know what else to say other than we are all fighting a loosing battle and my personal feeling is that we have been conned.

And for all the haters. before all this happened my 3g connection was better than ADSL , had 50ms ping and 700KB download ... My issues started when 8ta decided to go solo and use only their 1500 towers.
 
Exactly.... but be warned, you're going to get a bunch of "know it all" "expert" pretenders coming and saying that no, there is no problem, *their* connection is fine, therefore the problem is on your side, blah de blahaha.
It never gets old, does it.
 
Nitrate said:
Ok well firstly let me start by saying what I have experienced..


He also said that Vodacom's CEO has joined 8ta and that hopefully he can sort out this ***** they have gotten themselves into.. I seriously doubt that though.
Click to expand...

I think Vodacom's CEO actually joined CellC not 8ta (Alan Knott-Craig)
 
When it works it's awesome!

Pity it's only when I'm not at home and don't need it ... between 5pm and 11pm it just plain sucks (mainly random disconnects etc.) :cry:
 
You were given some really bad info. 8ta never "piggy backed on most of the other cell companies". They had a roaming agreement with MTN and they still do. Nothing has changed except that now you phone will automatically connect to the 8ta network when it is available and automatically roam onto the MTN network where 8ta is not available. If you have one of the promo data packages like the 10GB for R199 deal, you can only connect to the 8ta network, but this has always been the case since those packages were introduced. The problem with mobile internet is that it is almost impossible for the operator to prevent an area from becoming congested - they can’t control your movement and which towers you connect to. Once a tower becomes oversubscribed it is impossible to rapidly respond and provision more capacity because putting op new towers takes endless environmental impact assessments and opposition from local residents in the area. The moral of the story is to never give up your ADSL if you have a line and need a connection for anything sensitive to high latency or jitter.
For cellphone use I personally believe 8ta subscribers currently have access to the best overall network of all the cell companies. In addition to their own network you also get full access to MTN who have arguably the best voice network in SA and have data coverage almost everywhere.
 
Must say I've found my 10GB 8ta connection to be very much hit and miss. Some days I'll get a proper 3G connection with superfast speeds and the next day I'll only get Edge with snail speeds
 
I've got the 60GB + 60GB data bundle and my experience with 8ta has been better than my 12th months with Cell C's speedstick. I get the occasional disconnect, but generally it is great, and fast.
 
Sensorei said:
I've got the 60GB + 60GB data bundle and my experience with 8ta has been better than my 12th months with Cell C's speedstick. I get the occasional disconnect, but generally it is great, and fast.
Click to expand...

Good to know. Will be buying the R1800 airtime later today. I've been very happy with the occasional 2+1GB promo bundle. Gave Neotel the boot today, finally. :D
 
@ JMP

The info might be wrong but then plz explain to me something, seeing as you have the answers...

Why do I and a friend of mine who lives in another town about 70km km away also get get same issues at the exact same time a I do ...

The ping and latency becomes unbearable , and strangely enough this happens after a random disconnect which he also experience at the same time as me. when you are finally able to connect again everything is trash.....

This obviously tells us its a 8ta issue and not tower congestion.
 
I can confirm all above issuses, except #5.
I had technicial visiting my place 2 weeks ago, I could replicate most of these problems, so the guy could confirm this. After his visit something have changed. Pings are still variable, but long fixed-amount (around) 1500ms spike delays disappeared. It didn't help web sites loading partial pictures, fixed on reload. Disconnects were random (mainly on the start of connection), now problem disappeared. Other problems are still here and network is not so smooth as Cell C.

Question is is this: how it affects me? Not much. On the end of the month I downloaded 700MB file from the local mirror in less than one hour. 500MB from the international site took longer, around 70 minutes during peak hours, but no single disconnection during donwloads. I left with 350MB unused, it would be less, but Escom Midrand received lightning strike and electricity was down for almost two days.
 
Then log a fault and if it does not get resolved try to cancel whichever package you have. On a 3G connection you should get reasonable download speeds and web pages should not time out but that is about all you can reasonably expect from a mobile connection. From your posts I gather that you are also using the connection for either voip or gaming hence the complaints about jitter and high latency. 3G is simply not reliable enough for serious online gaming or voip despite what some others around here may say. You may get good evenings where you have a decent connection but with 3G there are no guarantees and your ping will vary throughout the day. If you absolutely need stability get ADSL or WiMAX.
 
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