Towers filling up or something wrong

They have already started trialling the 2mb modems. They arent going to upgrade the towers for that btw, the tower upgrade is separate and probably coming after the 2mb/s.

But I still agree, it will probably take a while, but maybe not as long as you think. The tower upgrades however could take long.
 
No new modems required...

As per a technical consultant to iBurst, the current modems are able to deliver those connection speeds and no new modems would be required – contradicting CEO statement.
 
While the 2mbs discussion is somewhat off topic I must just say that the CEO's comments related to their wimax kit to some extent... it's quite easy for non-tech bosses to confuse product lines ;-)
 
who.is.michael said:
As per a technical consultant to iBurst, the current modems are able to deliver those connection speeds and no new modems would be required – contradicting CEO statement.
Click to expand...

Then how do you explain the new modems that they are planning to release?
 
I don't...

Ask iBurst - I'm not employed by them.

"Currently deployed iBurst systems allow connectivity up to 1 Mbit/s for each subscriber equipment. Apparently there will be future firmware upgrade possibilities to increase these speeds up to 5 Mbit/s, consistent with HC-SDMA protocol."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HC-SDMA
 
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who.is.michael said:
As per a technical consultant to iBurst, the current modems are able to deliver those connection speeds and no new modems would be required – contradicting CEO statement.
Click to expand...

haha, ja those guys always contradict themselves. I actually think I'll believe the CEo and Shaun, on his blog he also said they are busy trialling the new modems..

And anyway, its been know for a long time that the current modems can only go up to 1060kb uplink.. its on their hardware spec anywhere you go. Unless that can be somehow unlocked, which I doubt. I think the guys at iBurst are just told to make something up if they don't know an answer.
 
Ekhaatvensters said:
They have already started trialling the 2mb modems. They arent going to upgrade the towers for that btw, the tower upgrade is separate and probably coming after the 2mb/s.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, that's a bit dumb if they try to increase the speed to 2mbps before upgrading the towers, as I already said many times those with slow speeds now will still have the same slow speeds and only those who get full speed now are likely (if they are lucky) to see 2mbps.

That will lead to even more unsatisfied customers who will still be crawling at pathetic speeds.

They should rather fix the problems they have at present before trying to go faster as 1mbps is fast enough for the sorta cap we have with iBurst as I also already said many times.

Going by the speed problem posts we have seen here lately it would not surprise me if we are about to see a network collapse shortly.:rolleyes:
 
MrH said:
Going by the speed problem posts we have seen here lately it would not surprise me if we are about to see a network collapse shortly.:rolleyes:
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Those speed problems are all caused by high latency. When the towers are upgraded, this issue will be resolved and Iburst can certainly then achieve 2mb/s.
 
GreatBigMouth said:
Those speed problems are all caused by high latency. When the towers are upgraded, this issue will be resolved and Iburst can certainly then achieve 2mb/s.
Click to expand...

The speed problems are caused more by overloading than latency, and as for it been resolved I'll believe it when I see no more complaints here.

All they are doing is adding yet more base stations which will also require upgrading instead of sorting out existing problems with an overloaded network.
Day after day we still see the same people complaining about tower overload, yet iburst carry on regardless adding new towers to other areas instead of sorting out those older problems.

There is no logic in the way they are doing things.:rolleyes:
 
I phoned Iburst on Saturday morning because I had a problem with my speed and it was resolved and I also asked about the 2Mbit and higher cap and they said it will happen
 
MrH said:
The speed problems are caused more by overloading than latency, and as for it been resolved I'll believe it when I see no more complaints here.

All they are doing is adding yet more base stations which will also require upgrading instead of sorting out existing problems with an overloaded network.
Day after day we still see the same people complaining about tower overload, yet iburst carry on regardless adding new towers to other areas instead of sorting out those older problems.

There is no logic in the way they are doing things.:rolleyes:
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No, the last 5 or so towers have all been in high load areas simply to reduce load. they are looking at it..

I think adding more towers in the overloaded areas is the only way to reduce the network problems and slow speeds. You yourself should know that the overall network is fine, at least in Cape Town, but its just certain towers that have problems.

As for 2mb/s, don't you think that people with slow speeds would get at least a bit higher speeds with 2mb/s? Even though they will still be slow and need to be sorted out surely with a theoretical max of 2mb their speeds will be higher?

But a upgrade of 100mb/s to the towers would do wonders, they should definately do that as soon as possible.
 
Ekhaatvensters said:
No, the last 5 or so towers have all been in high load areas simply to reduce load. they are looking at it..

I think adding more towers in the overloaded areas is the only way to reduce the network problems and slow speeds. You yourself should know that the overall network is fine, at least in Cape Town, but its just certain towers that have problems.

As for 2mb/s, don't you think that people with slow speeds would get at least a bit higher speeds with 2mb/s? Even though they will still be slow and need to be sorted out surely with a theoretical max of 2mb their speeds will be higher?

But a upgrade of 100mb/s to the towers would do wonders, they should definately do that as soon as possible.
Click to expand...

Thats just it, why add more towers to reduce load if they can upgrade the existing overloaded towers to handle more users.

We all have our own thoughts on this matter and as far as I'm concerned they are doing it arse about face.
As for the 2mbps speed improving the slower existing connections I doubt it will help any of those slower problems.

What they should do is get the whole network up to a stable speed of 1mbps and then maybe introduce a faster 2mbps, but no they want to introduce the 2mbps on a crippled network which is back to the no logic in the way they are doing things.

In CT most of us are fairly lucky up till now but just wait till the JHB congestion problem hits us which will happen sooner or later as load increases.
 
MrH said:
wait till the JHB congestion problem hits us which will happen sooner or later as load increases.
Click to expand...

The overload of certain towers will be resolved when the towers are upgraded. Thus, Cape Town won't get congested, since the upgrade will prevent it.
 
GreatBigMouth said:
The overload of certain towers will be resolved when the towers are upgraded. Thus, Cape Town won't get congested, since the upgrade will prevent it.
Click to expand...

You talk as if you have inside info on this problem, but what you are forgetting is that the CT CBD are already has the overload problem.

Anyway not much point in continuing this subject as it's just bouncing back and forth, and by most of your replies in this forum it almost seems as if you are working for iburst.:rolleyes:
 
Well luckily for us CPT CBD is pretty much the only overloaded one in Cape Town, and the (mythical?) Constantia tower will actually help out the Plumstead tower even more. Not like you guys need it :p

Well I guess we can just hope for 100mb towers coming soon. It does seem stupid to implement 2mb/s now.. but a lot of people will see their speeds increase, like most people in CPT I would guess.
 
Upgrading the backhaul infrastructure of the towers to 100Mb/s will not solve overloaded towers. To solve that, the power output of the towers need to be increased so each modem that connects receives sufficiently strong signal.

In a previous post it was explained how the coverage area of a tower decreases as more modems connect to it. I am experiencing that exact phenomenon at the moment. I live about 3Km from the Benoni tower. Speed used to be 80Kb/s - 100Kb/s. These days I'm lucky to get 45Kb/s and frame error rates have increased exponentially.

Unfortunately I am locked into a contract so there's not much I can do except pay the same subscription amount for half the service I used to receive.

I agree with the opinion that IBurst has no real interest in the satisfaction of the majority of their customers. The attitude of their account department, when I inquired about cancelling the contract sums it up nicely; "Sorry for you, nothing we can do. So shut up and pay"
 
But a lot of people get good signal from a tower yet because it is overloaded they dont get good speeds. There was a post like that yesterday, and Gatecrasher iirc said its better for him to connect to a weaker signal tower because the one with the best signal is overloaded.

Anyway, im sure with more towers and a upgrade they can manage to sort things out. Hopefully..
 
Well the problem is 2-fold:

1: Contention ratio's for bandwidth on the towers. If there are 50 users connected to a tower, all at a theoretical maximum of 1mb, and all downloading at the same time, but the tower having only 20mb capacity, then those 50 users will have to share that 20mb capacity. The speed increase (to the rumored 2mb) would not help at all, since it would jsut double the contention ratio. The only way to solve this is to increase the bandwidth to each tower, thereby lowering contention ratio's.

2: RF problems due to tower load. This would be solved by rolling out new base-stations that service smaller areas, with fewer users per tower.

Now in my eyes, iBurst is doing the right thing, though they are taking their time about things, but this is just a normal characteristic of the SA telecoms market in general.
 
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