Vumatel VS MetroFibre

[devegovender]

Hi all,
I am part of the body corporate for a complex. And we are looking at getting fibre into the complex to individual houses. We have been approached by 2 installers viz Vumatel and LucertGroup which is part of MetroFibre.

Except for the installation fee (Vumatel - R1710, LucertGroup - R500), any advice on which is better?
Vumtel has more ISP's available than LucertGroup.


Regards,
Dv

 

[Drone 42]

In my area we could also choose both, body corporate went with Metofibre. They took a while to install, so maybe check this before hand and get some specific dates and commitment on when it can be done before hand.

Metrofibre also sometimes have a few months exclusivity before they become open access, check this and try and get them to make it open access from day one if you go with them. Vumatel is open access from day one.

Most of the Major Fibre ISPs are on both so don't think the choice of ISP is such a big deal, Vumatel do have more but many are small players. Vumatel charges R900 every time you want to change ISP where Metrofibre won't if you have a ONT already, if there is a fee most of the ISPs wave it.

Metrofibe line speed start on 10mbps and jump to 25, 50, 100. Vumatel starts on 4mbps then jumps 20,50,100,200 so there are cheaper entry level options although 4 mbps on fibre is a bit of a waste and not much better than ADSL.

So far I have been happy with the speed on Metrofibre and I have not had any down time.

 

[coop]

I've been with Vumatel for just over 6 months, my ISP is Cool Ideas. I have no experience of MetroFiber. With Vumatel, when they tranched in our area (I'm in a house, not a complex) they finished ahead of schedule. Also all planned maintenance on there network seems to be done between about 3 and 6 AM. I have had no speed issues.

Vumatel also have packages with upto 1GB download. The full list of ISP's and packages is available here https://shop.vumatel.co.za/packages/all so you can better compare. The fiber works well, I almost always get the full speed of the line and there is no major downtime. The only downside to Vumatel is the install fee (R1710) and the R900 for moving to a new ISP. Note that some ISP's will cover the connection fee only (the R900) and some will cover both the installation and the connection fee. But that usually results in a contract where you have to pay back the ISP if you change ISP's too quickly.

Vumatel also use Active Ethernet, which means the network is more future proof (in theory) than the GPON normally installed by other providers.

 

[cavedog]

GPON is okay for now but in the future the installer would need to add more and more OLT's if they ever plan on going higher than 100Mbps because the OLT will get congested.

So far I know about Openserve, Aeonova360 and Metrofibre that uses GPON which IMO will eventually end of like ADSL where people get poor speeds because 100Mbps is relatively cheap and SA has a hunger for high speed internet.

 

[devegovender]

Thanks Drone, Coop and Cavedog for the valuable information.

I know more now than before.

 

[Nomadman]

I have to agree that Active Ethernet is far better experience than GPON. I am currently on MetroFibre and if I compare my line with those on Vuma. The guys on Vuma their speed exceeds the subscriber speed example a person subscribes to 50mbps will experience as follows:
Vuma - 55mbps+ on up/down
Metrofiber - 48mbps (less) on up/down

And we only have half the complex subscribed to fibre. We have 40 units in our complex and only 20 are subscribed to the service, so we are no were near the prescribed max of 32 on GPON