Insider
Senior Member
It is interesting how the level of communication by helpdesk staff and quality of information on websites can give a user the wrong impression. The writer should rather join this forum for improved info.
Financial Mail 2005/04/29 Page: 10-11
BIT OF SPEED – Letters to the editor
The terms broadband and cellphone in the same sentence really upset me (Technology ft Communications April 8). I use my cellphone/ modem combination for Internet access. I have contract accounts with both MTN and Vodacom. The cellphone data network speeds are. slow to the point of being unusable. Vodacom allows 9,6 Kbit/s maximum speed and one data channel per user. I queried this with the help desk, and was told that was the best I could get from them. I expressed my surprise, considering that at the time Vodacom was promoting its "office anywhere" idea, showing a user on the beach using an. Internet-connected notebook. MTN allows three simultaneous data channels per user, making for a maximum speed of 27 Kbit/s. Much better than Vodacom`s policy, but you have to be aware of this and specifically request this increased "speed" to be activated. Even then, most of the time a speed of only 9,6 Kbit/s is achieved. And even at 27 Kbit/s, it is so slow that a site like Absa`s Internet banking usually times out before the page is loaded. Or try downloading your office email, when the first message has a 1 MB attachment. If you exclude 3G, in practice you cannot use a cellphone to browse the Internet or download mail. This is from my own experience, based on all the information 1 could get from MTN and Vodacom`s websites, and from my queries to their help desks asking for ways to increase my Internet access speed. Their customer service representatives were well aware of voice-related issues but not totally helpful when it came to data-related issues. So, with data speeds as they are, even a negligible cost per megabyte does not improve usability. Joe Rios, via e-mail.
Financial Mail 2005/04/29 Page: 10-11
BIT OF SPEED – Letters to the editor
The terms broadband and cellphone in the same sentence really upset me (Technology ft Communications April 8). I use my cellphone/ modem combination for Internet access. I have contract accounts with both MTN and Vodacom. The cellphone data network speeds are. slow to the point of being unusable. Vodacom allows 9,6 Kbit/s maximum speed and one data channel per user. I queried this with the help desk, and was told that was the best I could get from them. I expressed my surprise, considering that at the time Vodacom was promoting its "office anywhere" idea, showing a user on the beach using an. Internet-connected notebook. MTN allows three simultaneous data channels per user, making for a maximum speed of 27 Kbit/s. Much better than Vodacom`s policy, but you have to be aware of this and specifically request this increased "speed" to be activated. Even then, most of the time a speed of only 9,6 Kbit/s is achieved. And even at 27 Kbit/s, it is so slow that a site like Absa`s Internet banking usually times out before the page is loaded. Or try downloading your office email, when the first message has a 1 MB attachment. If you exclude 3G, in practice you cannot use a cellphone to browse the Internet or download mail. This is from my own experience, based on all the information 1 could get from MTN and Vodacom`s websites, and from my queries to their help desks asking for ways to increase my Internet access speed. Their customer service representatives were well aware of voice-related issues but not totally helpful when it came to data-related issues. So, with data speeds as they are, even a negligible cost per megabyte does not improve usability. Joe Rios, via e-mail.