Villa Italia Fibre Access

[-Misfit-]

My friend is moving to Villa Italia next month and is looking at getting fibre. The agent he spoke with told him that they are covered by Smart Village and that the current tenants are also using them.

Thing is, from what I've seen, Smart Village can be a real disaster. From forum posts that I found, like this one, the service they offer seems to be really bad. Plus the prices that they have are really expensive compared to other providers. For example, a 10Mbps shaped uncapped account costs R999. With other providers you can get 100Mbps for that price!

Checking Frogfoot's coverage, it does look like they offer fibre in the area. Thing is, my friend's place is not in a blue area but rather in a white area. We have no idea what this means since there is no legend for the white colour, so I don't know if this is a possibility.

Can anyone shed some light on the situation? Does the white area mean he can't go through Frogfoot at the moment and will have to settle for Smart Village if he wants to go for fibre?

 

[coop]

I'm not sure which map you are looking at, but the key is very clear on this one https://www.frogfootfibre.com/frogfoot/myaccount/home/frogfoot/coverage.jsp maybe that map will be more helpfull

 

[-Misfit-]

Hi coop

Thanks for the response. I was looking at that map and while the key is helpful, it doesn't explain what the white areas mean. It only lists blue, yellow and red.

 

[savage]

Have a look at Century City Connect's site. They install the fiber in CC, and have detailed coverage maps and details in terms of what is / is not covered by fiber.

I don't think Villa Italia has fiber, from what I remember. In terms of Smart Village - yes, avoid as far as possible. I had to threaten them with ICASA back in the day to just get a Telkom DSL line installed! Used to stay in Villa Italia

 

[-Misfit-]

Hi savage

Thanks for the reply and advice on Smart Village. We'll contact Century City Connect to hear what's possible.

 

[satanboy]

ISP Afrika

 

[coop]

Hi coop

Thanks for the response. I was looking at that map and while the key is helpful, it doesn't explain what the white areas mean. It only lists blue, yellow and red.

OK, I see your confusion. What you call the white area seems to be just buildings on the image, so no coverage by frogfoot in the white area and currently no plans to roll-out there. So unfortunately, it looks like Smart Village is your only choice.

 

[-Misfit-]

@coop

I'm not so sure if that's correct either. There are plenty of buildings that aren't in the white area. Rather, the white area seems to be put around other blue/yellow areas. See below screenshot of Stellenbosch that I took a few months back.

My initial guess was that the white is just put around smaller blue/yellow areas so it's easier to see when zooming out.

@satanboy

Thanks for the suggestion. We did contact ISP Afrika, who informed us that Villa Italia is not connected by the Century City Connect fibre footprint. They also indicated that we should contact the body corporate as they might have signed exclusively with one provider, which I fear is the case. It seems his only option if he wants to go fibre is Smart Village.

Thanks for the assistance everyone!

 

[steel_dog]

Hey -Misfit-
Call Century City Connect and chat with Hein. He runs things there. Ask if and when Villa Italia is going to be connected.

I stayed there many years ago and had SmartVillage. Didn't dig it. Was expensive as heck, suffered from connectivity issues in bad weather - yep they were using some line of site system, support was slooowww... BUT to be fair that was many years ago.

VDSL in the area is stable. Just choose a good ISP and your bud will be fine. For reference I was on Afrihosts capped DSL service and it was not good . I moved to their Fibre service and it's stable bar uploads not achieving the upload linespeed to International destinations. But that seems par for the course across ISPs. *shrug*

 

[StrontiumDog]

Weird, I could have sworn I heard that Century City Connect did fibre for Villa Italia in the last 18 months or so. Check out their FB page, or call them and/or contact the Body Corporate at Villa Italia to confirm. CCC did the fibre setup at Century View, which is next to Villa Italia, in 2016.

 

[-Misfit-]

Hi guys

Thanks for the suggestions! We'll try to find out more info on the facebook page and give Hein a call.

 

[-Misfit-]

So update, my friend settled for SmartVillage since Telkom was asking for installation fees and SmartVillage was already set up. So far so good, no issues that he has had.

However, two days ago he got a flyer from http://lighttree.co.za/

They seem to be installing relatively soon in the complex, but I can't find anything else from them, apart from the flyer that he got, see below.

Website doesn't show much apart from marketing, and following through to http://www.lighttree.co.za/villaitalia only gives a sign-up page. Only other information from this is that they seem to be part of or affiliated with Snowball.

Has anyone used or heard of this provider before?

 

[paul5186]

So update, my friend settled for SmartVillage since Telkom was asking for installation fees and SmartVillage was already set up. So far so good, no issues that he has had.

However, two days ago he got a flyer from http://lighttree.co.za/

They seem to be installing relatively soon in the complex, but I can't find anything else from them, apart from the flyer that he got, see below.

Website doesn't show much apart from marketing, and following through to http://www.lighttree.co.za/villaitalia only gives a sign-up page. Only other information from this is that they seem to be part of or affiliated with Snowball.

Has anyone used or heard of this provider before?

They seem to be a reseller of snowball, that's all

 

[John_Phoenix]

Don't input your Id number on that form! It's http. I am getting as much info as I can, I'll report back here when I have solid details, more specifically availability and how to show smartvillage the finger, cause 650 for a 4mb line is akin to theft.

 

[-Misfit-]

Oh snap, didn't see that. Thanks for the update, will definitely not enter any sensitive information.

 

[ArKaSm]

Does anyone in Villa Italia have the fibre from snowball/lighttree? If so, how is the connection and the actual speed of the 20mb line? is the uncapped package actually uncapped or is there that limit where they throttle you after?