Wait and See

Yo Sup SS ! :)

Just like to say, enjoy reading ur guys posts. :) Just one thing I think is a bit dodgy, that the poster of the topic and article has not yet posted anything in response. Doesn't that seam strange to you ? I mean if you post an article like this you at least voice ur oppinion on what you think this means for the porduct/company, otherwise whats the point of posting it, just to let ppl know ?

Although I agree it's a critical part of a forum like this to be open to all views and comments but it should still be done in a fair and objective way. After all you can find faults in anything if you can try hard enough. :)
 
Please note that it was not my intention to put Mywireless in any kind of bad light. I truely hope that they succeed in their endeavours. I was not aware that the article was previously posted, as I do not have the time nor inclination to read all submissions.
 
dude, i work a "standard" 55 hour week, I don't have time, I bill by the hour.

plus, i'm not even supposed to be on the net, yet i have the time AND inclination to read every post. it helps doing it bit by bit. [:D] and not getting caught doing it [:p]
 
tisk... most topics wud be deleted if there was no freedom of speech.. remember all the speculations.. static ip's and burstability what a load of sheet. that was the first question i asked and was put in place very abruptly.why is this topic called wait and see? honestly... a news article from a few months ago has no significance on whats happening now.. until u sign a contract everything could change you should know that.
 
There's no need to delete or moderate the post, plenty of people have noted the fact that it's an old article.

mithrandi
 
Just some of my experiences with Sentech I'd like to share...

My first real problem since my VSTAR has been installed, was addressed by one of their technical "managers" whom decided it was appropriate to literally swear at me in a email... Thank god Telkom doesn't do that... yet.

The most classic outage I <b>ever</b> had in my entire life... My Service goes offline on the 23rd of December. I contact the support center to open a SR to get the service back online. The 25th, they come back to me saying it's "bad weahter" - yet, we have a perfect summers day where I'm located. On the 31st the service is STILL offline, Sentech decides to eventually send two technicians out to my premises, as there are no one working at Sentech HQ in Johannesburg (not even skeleton staff) to look after, or resolve tickets - regardless of the fact that is was logged with the highest possible priority. The technicians arrive, only to find out that Sentech has literally, switched my VSTAR Terminal off in Johannesburg. And I'm affraid to say, 90% odd of my problems are Sentech "switching off my terminal".

The Support desk was literally unable to get hold of someone at Sentech's NOC Center from the 24th to the 31st to simply push a button and reactivate my VSTAR... Not even Telkom is that bad.

Furthermore, in the 6 odd months that I've had the VSTAR Sentech is yet to match their SLA as specified in the Contract. Be prepared, the SLA means buggeral. My attempts to get credit where credit is due as per the contract has been simply met with a responce that the SLA is only credited once per year, regardless of the fact that I have to pay per month (The support desk actually believes that the SLA is on the Satellite and not on the VSTAR Service itself - to be specific to the product). I really wonder how Sentech plans to establish which 10 minute outage from 12 months ago was caused by bad weather and which was a actual outage.

On the 31st when the Sentech technicians visited me, I also had a very long conversation with them, ranging from Television broadcasts (something which we also have a problem with in our area), straight through to the VSTAR and MyWireless services. I'm not going to go into details as to what was said, but from the Technicians own mouth, Sentech is <b>not</b> ready to offer, or maintain the VSTAR range of services, and I seriously believe that the same goes for MyWireless. In their own words, they are under staffed, and lack the appropriate skills to troubleshoot advance problems on the systems.

For the record as well, since Sentech has started their "trails" on the MyWireless, my 512KBits of bandwidth has been reduced to less than 256KBits on avarage. I maybe manage to burst over 300KBits once per day odd... A month or two ago, I had no problems running for days on end maxing my throughput. My pings are also completely unstable, ranging anything between 700ms and 10 seconds - yet, a month ago it was stable at 630ms odd... I wonder what brought the sudden change on with the service.... One word - myWireless. A plain and simple shortage of bandwidth at Sentech.

Needless to say, I am staying away from Telkom, and the way Sentech is going on at this stage, I'm afraid to say I'm on the virge of staying away from Sentech as well...
 
noone said there WON'T be teething problems...

wait a minute... i DID say that [:D] [:p]
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">dude, i work a "standard" 55 hour week, I don't have time, I bill by the hour.

plus, i'm not even supposed to be on the net, yet i have the time AND inclination to read every post. it helps doing it bit by bit. and not getting caught doing it <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">noone said there WON'T be teething problems...

wait a minute... i DID say that <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

How old are you?
 
I have to go with freakazoid on this one. The sentech support is non-existent. If you think being down for a couple days is bad, try a month. In fact the problem has still not been resolved. This is since 10 Dec.

I guess sentech is hoping that ISP's will support their products in the end.

Dont get my wrong. Although support is non-existent, speeds can go quite high at times. I registered a whopping 400+kb/s not to long ago on solo24 from the bandwidthplace site. But this was during a period in which they were experiencing problem, which would've brought the contention ratios down. On average 128kb/s.

Another worrying thing about sentech is they are providing public ips to the mywireless clients. What is stopping adsl users tunneling through mywireless? This would kill the whole system. Users found doing this should be shot[}:)]


The opposite of war is not peace, It's creation
Jonathan Larson Rent
 
I have been trying to contact sentech via telphone(Got Put on hold or no answer )They do not reply to any e-mails either......And why not make people pay for the equipment and give them maybe just 12month contract or so all they do is making you pay off the stuff via the contract same with the vsat option


<u><b>hurt yourself, then find someone to sue about it. </b></u>
 
Well, I'm glad to find out that I'm not the only one!!! Though, sadend by the fact that there actually are 'others'. No one should be put through this thing Sentech calls a "service"...

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Anthen</i>
Another worrying thing about sentech is they are providing public ips to the mywireless clients. What is stopping adsl users tunneling through mywireless? This would kill the whole system. Users found doing this should be shot[}:)]
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Absolutely nothing? Quite frankly, I wont be surprised if it happens - and I can almost guarantee you it will happen as well. The contention ratios on the ADSL as well as MyWireless will thankfully limit the impact but it still can consume vast amounts of bandwidth very quickly.
 
To the question on my age, I'm 24 and loving it. Workoholic extraordinare.

To the people who are suffering from lack of support and downtimes, what difference is this to telkom? Almost nothing? I remember waiting 6 months (and alot of my friends as well) just to get ISDN installed, then having problems with it every other day, and even having downtime for more than 3 weeks.

The people on the VSTAR package, and freakazoid, remember, the weather factor isn't only at your residence, but at the sentech satelites as well, although, I do understand the whole "switching off your terminal thing"

chill, they're still new at this...

besides, every time I called to enquire about mywireless or vstar, their support staff answered my calls immediatly.

BTW, sk33t, what the hell does my age have to do with things?! :P
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by noone</i>
To the people who are suffering from lack of support and downtimes, what difference is this to telkom? Almost nothing? I remember waiting 6 months (and alot of my friends as well) just to get ISDN installed, then having problems with it every other day, and even having downtime for more than 3 weeks.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Yes. Exactly my point... Esp. in regards to the MyWireless, I am getting the suspecions (spelling I know) that people are more and more expecting a "miricle cure" over the Telkom alternatives. This was basically merely a warning that they will be getting allot less than it. In all honestly, if I have to choose between Sentech and Telkom, I'll most definately choose Telkom. In my experiences and usage (This may be area specific I know), Telkom is far more superior than Sentech on availability of service. Quite frankly, from what I have experienced from Sentech so far - *ANY* ISP is more superior.

For one thing, except a single piece of fiber optic between Sentech and IS, Sentech has zero other connectivity, nor redundancy. And yes, that single piece of fiber did actually break once, leaving me (and 99% of the rest of Sentech's customers I'm sure) without connectivity for about 3 hours while they re-spliced the cable...

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">
The people on the VSTAR package, and freakazoid, remember, the weather factor isn't only at your residence, but at the sentech satelites as well, although, I do understand the whole "switching off your terminal thing"
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Yes! Now tell that to Sentech please! "Bad Weather" is about the only excuse I get out of them, and I *KNOW* it isn't bad weahter in JHB (That's now besides the point that every time my VSTAR went down because of "bad weather", my DSTV still worked - they use the same satellites in the sky). If I am offline due to bad weather in JHB, all of Sentech's other VSTAR clients will be offline as well because of the fact that Sentech's HUBs in JHB will be unable to link to the Satellite in the sky. Not once did I receive any confirmation from the support desk about a single other client that was down due to "bad weather" as I was. Sentech CPT also links to their HQ via a VSTAR installation - ironically, they have been offline once in almost a year, and that was due to scheduled maintenance (If I remember the stats 100% from what the technicians told me on the 31st). If I am off on this stat, it won't be much...

Yesterday, I had another outage on my Terminal again. Sentech promptly came back to me, denying the fact that my terminal was down. I will be buying myself a digital camera now, and will be emailing them pictures (proove) of every time that my terminal goes down... I wonder what lies they are going to make up then. Quite interesting as well, when my service did come back, I was faced with pings in the region of 160 <b>seconds</b> for about 20 minutes afterwards - yet, Sentech says "nothing is wrong"...

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">
chill, they're still new at this...
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Rubbish. VSTAR has been operating easily for a year to a year and a half already. If they can't manage to iron out most of the issues and provide a stable service in that time, then I honestly don't know. Remember, I'm not asking for a perfect service (I know that doesn't exist). I dont think asking for a STABLE service is to much however, neither is asking for honesty from Sentech's staff.

Secondly, if they are still testing, my contract does definately not include being a lab rat. They should go set up a test rig and run their funky little tests and outages on that - not my service which costs me a absurd amount of money for on avarage, throughput that is less than ISDN.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">
besides, every time I called to enquire about mywireless or vstar, their support staff answered my calls immediatly.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Yes, I have no problems with their support desk, and quite frankly it is one of the best support desks I have ever worked with. Unfortunately, there is little to nothing that they can do except log a ticket and wait for Sentech to come back to them with a bull story. I have actually attempted to push Sentech to give the call center more power in the sense that they can resolve smaller issues themselves - but once again this has fell on empty ears.
 
You're an intelligent oke, and from the looks, probably run your own business, don't expect ANY business to be "god" for just over a year of a service they provide.

You WILL get teething problems, and it may take anything from 1 - 3 years to get things running smoothly, hence, why, if you start any kind of business, you should expect to only show profit in 3-5 years, not only because of capital layout, but getting your service reliable, stable and effecient enough to generate sufficient clientele.

I'm not saying they couldn't do better, but from my experience, they're not doing too bad, and with the release of MyWireless, things can only get better for both of us, because as you know, they will be messing with end-users now, which will demand more and better things, and which they will provide.

I won't be suprised if their support desk will start resolving minor issues in a year or so themselves, like I said, they're still breaking into the market, and they're still working on it... give them time...

see, telkom can't use that as an excuse :) and I'm pretty sure Sentech will learn from Telkom's mistakes.

remember, the more effecient you are, the more stable and reliable, the more you can sell it to clients, and the more money you generate (even with a small client base, if your effeciency is running at optimum, you're more than likely to make more money because you're cutting down on unnessacary cost)

and again... my spelling may be lacking too... i'm not suppose to be online!! :)
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Another worrying thing about sentech is they are providing public ips to the mywireless clients. What is stopping adsl users tunneling through mywireless? This would kill the whole system. Users found doing this should be shot<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Users found doing that should be taking to a mental asylum. I'm certainly not letting any ADSL users tunnel through my connection, I'll be using the bandwidth myself; I can't imagine that the situation would be any different for anyone capable of setting up tunnels / proxies / whatever to achieve that.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">In all honestly, if I have to choose between Sentech and Telkom, I'll most definately choose Telkom. In my experiences and usage (This may be area specific I know), Telkom is far more superior than Sentech on availability of service.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Everything you described about your bad experiences with Sentech is incredibly tame compared to the bull**** I've had to put up with from Telkom. If those are the only problems you've been having, I'll take Sentech over Telkom any day of the week.

mithrandi
 
I really cannot believe why any normal person would ever think for one moment, that a government organisation would ever deliver a "<b>better than</b>" service. You don't get competition when you the only two players in the field, ie. Telkom and Sentech, both suffer from, "<u>tomorrow is another day</u>".
<b>ProAsm</b> claims that they are a commercial enterprise. I suggest he browse through his own <b>Annual Report </b>on Sentech's web page.
I quote " <i>As a State-owned enterprise, the shareholder of the company is the "State" as represented by the Minister Of Communications.</i>"
Their mindset was developed over many years of constructive disengagement. Why they cannot let somebody with the right drive, push "My Wireless" into the future, I just cannot understand. This system would be the ideal thing to setup in your suburb as a Small Business. Instead of having great big areas, cut them down to eg. 5 square Kms. A single techie could quite easily live of the profits of that area.
<b>NO</b>, lets give it too some state run enterprise whose best ability is to see how much money they can lose without all getting thrown out into the real world and actually have too work for a living.
 
What you are saying (if I am reading it right) sounds 100% nonsense. Are you saying that you would rather have millions of small companies setup R5km wireless networks than have 1 national operator ?

If that IS what you are saying, then you seriously need to learn the basics of good bussines practices. This isn't your local Spar we are talking about. Imagine the overheads you would need, it would be papper work upon paper work to get all this little cells connected together. I mean I can just picture some little punk go claim the area around where u live and then charge 10x the price that the guy 5km away is paying .... Certain benifits of wireless would also be cut out, such as the ability to roam and setup a connection in another area (i.e home/work).

I am sorry if I mis-interpreted what you said, but the way I see it now it just makes no sense what so ever.
 
I don't see Spars running at a loss, but I can see your thinking. Must have lots of paperwork, that will make people think I am working. Not from Telkom are you.
 
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