What does the future hold for iBurst?

Gary Waterworth said:
For me there have been a few "kick him in the nuts" occasions with Iburst.

I was allready involved in the Beta days and signed up for the service back then.
I paid CASH for that modem , and then it was not a small amount, struggled with service and paid CASH again an external antennae.
Then the service went belly up in my area for a long time so I passed on my unit & antennae to a friend who has also had ups and downs.
I moved on to ADSl and suffered the ignomy of having all the lines in my area being stolen a few times and telskum saying bad luck we are not replacing.
During this time I had issues like most other people with the billing department.

When the lines were stolen Neotel was not arround so I had a relook at Iburst again and went and bought a 2nd modem cash with antennae. This was working well untill that fatefull day when the allday 64k uncapped was removed off the month to month accounts, that had been there since the company was started. This was a massive kick in the nuts. Some of us who paid CASH and UPFRONT for modems were being told to F... O.. and the people who rather signed contracts were being kept on. SO I cancelled again and AGAIN had issues with billing.
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So can I interest you in a service again?
 
r00igev@@r said:
Some notes from the Global Mobile Broadband Forum. Although the advertised peak rate on HSDPA is up to 28 Mb/s, the measured average is 3.4 Mb/s with an aggregate of 4.7 Mb/s.
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Still faster than Iburst. ;)

We also have to keep in mind, the max is 1mbps you can get on Iburst, but it depends on a couple of things.... Thus, not everyone is getting these speeds.

Doesn't the WiMax equipment cost the same as the Iburst modem? Why not offer this to us again?
 
Durandal said:
Lol, no, just trying to work out your past 'history'. There have been some interesting comments made by both of you in this thread.
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LoL, I think they used to work together, but if you look at the comments, I would say they are married. ;)
 
SharkBait said:
LoL, I think they used to work together, but if you look at the comments, I would say they are married. ;)
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Not "used to"..... ;)

It is interesting how the comments in this thread changes. It started by Durandal asking if there is a future for iBurst, I give my honest view and for that I get attacked by the man, to the point where I'm compared to parts of the female anatomy via PM.

Seems the observations I made about the future of iBurst were on the money.

Maybe Ronald can play the ball and not the man and answer the questions put to him in this thread?
 
ibb said:
Not "used to"..... ;)
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Eish, I hope you 2 don't share offices. :D

r00igev@@r said:
Maybe you'll get your wish?
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I hope you are not pulling my leg!!!

Durandal said:
Explain this WiMax? I tried looking for it on the iBurst website but couldn't find anything.
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I don't think you will find it under the "home user" part, as it is currently only offered to businesses.

WiMax is a last mile alternative. It's a wireless Line of sight connection which is pretty cool. I used telkoms' and screamers' WiMax solutions and love it. Would still be using screamers' if it wasn't for their "not always working" network. You also create PPPoE connections on your pc to connect and is the best Last mile alternative I have used to date.
 
So is it faster? More steady than what we use? I Googled the technology and it looks like one needs some sort of external dish, so I am assuming the hardware costs will be pretty high?
 
Durandal said:
So is it faster? More steady than what we use? I Googled the technology and it looks like one needs some sort of external dish, so I am assuming the hardware costs will be pretty high?
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I tried out telkoms wimax once, very consistent pings [about 50ms local]. It was limited to telkoms offerings of speed, so it was a 512 line. I was very surprised at how good it was, it only really suffered during storms.

Don't know why it's not as widely adopted here was I would think?
 
my 2c opinion

1. I still think iBurst have a market share in areas which are not covered by either Telkom or dont have proper Vodacom/MTN/CellC connection.
2. With regards to speeds, at these point South Africa still need that massive bandwidth, yes we have
seen the cables coming thick and fast over the last couple of years and the ADSL prices dropping,
but have the prices dropped to a point of everyone using bandwidth with ease without the fear of
paying extra?
2.1 IMHO it sounds stupid to have a 7.2 Mbps with a 3Gig cap, its like driving a Ferarri with with a 5L
petrol tank.
3. iBurst can be deployed in rural areas to develop telecommunication and access to the internet in
Multipurpose centre. We all know that the Universal Service Agency is useless in deploying those centres eventhough they are sitting on billions of rands
 
native said:
1. I still think iBurst have a market share in areas which are not covered by either Telkom or dont have proper Vodacom/MTN/CellC connection.
......
3. iBurst can be deployed in rural areas to develop telecommunication and access to the internet in
Multipurpose centre. We all know that the Universal Service Agency is useless in deploying those centres eventhough they are sitting on billions of rands
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It seems to be the only logical place for iBurst to play, until you think a bit about it. :)

Let's say iBurst goes to great expense to roll out in areas not serviced by the others only to see them enter at some point:

- First question is; Why are the mobile guys not yet in this area? You can bet that if they deemed there to be a profitable market, they would've made some effort to get a tower up. Why did this not happen? Is it actually profitable in the first place? How many subscribers do you need to recover half-a-million of investment?

- Second question would relate to iBurst's ability to fund this. Where would they get funding to build new towers or move underutilised towers around? Can they come up with a business case?

- Thirdly, how do you package this? The modem is very expensive and selling contracts into this market a non-starter. You need a dirt cheap modem on pre-paid, R299 would be the upper limit for such a starter-pack. (Funnily enough, iBurst do have a pre-paid product but don't market it or make it easily available in these market segments). And then you still need a PC. And power. I would venture the bulk of these users would want to use a mobile phone to do data. Not a PC/laptop/desktop modem.

- And most importantly; What happens when one of the other networks do arrive? Do they pack up the tower and move it again?

MTN already announced plans to roll out 3G on 900MHz in the rural areas. They can justify this by doing voice at the same time which is still the money maker. Cell-C is burning a few billion to do the same.

How can iBurst compete? (A rhetorical question. ;))
 
eltherza said:
I tried out telkoms wimax once, very consistent pings [about 50ms local]. It was limited to telkoms offerings of speed, so it was a 512 line. I was very surprised at how good it was, it only really suffered during storms.

Don't know why it's not as widely adopted here was I would think?
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Agreed, I loved it.

I think cost wise, it costs the same as the Iburst desktop modem does. With telkom, you paid R240/month and that was that, you could use any ISP. Screamer's costs is almost the same, but you have to use them as an ISP.

Iburst and VC also offers it, but it is aimed as bussinesses and the prices are pretty high. Neotel started offering it as well...
 
Although he has made claims to the contrary ibb is an anonymous poster with no relationship to iBurst or WBS. He is not employed, and neither is he contracted by either companies, past or present. Any views expressed are not those of iBurst or WBS.
 
iBurst said:
Although he has made claims to the contrary ibb is an anonymous poster with no relationship to iBurst or WBS. He is not employed, and neither is he contracted by either companies, past or present. Any views expressed are not those of iBurst or WBS.
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if ibb is anonymous, so you know nothing about him/her... how do you know they are not an employee of iburst? ... ... ...
 
eltherza said:
if ibb is anonymous, so you know nothing about him/her... how do you know they are not an employee of iburst? ... ... ...
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I also smiled when I saw the contradiction in her statement. :)

They're on a mission here trying to ID me, to the point where they are trying to log into my myBB account. Had numerous failed login attempts from iBurst office IP addresses over the last 2 days.

Not sure why they're on a witch hunt. Everything I posted are either in the public domain or are my own views or opinions. I've not divulged any company confidential information.

But let's not take it out on Gcebile. She's a great girl and is passionate about providing support. She was clearly told to post the company line.
 
ibb said:
I also smiled when I saw the contradiction in her statement. :)

They're on a mission here trying to ID me, to the point where they are trying to log into my myBB account. Had numerous failed login attempts from iBurst office IP addresses over the last 2 days.

Not sure why they're on a witch hunt. Everything I posted are either in the public domain or are my own views or opinions. I've not divulged any company confidential information.

But let's not take it out on Gcebile. She's a great girl and is passionate about providing support. She was clearly told to post the company line.
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I know who you are


ibb =IBurst's Bubbles - it's so obvious. Last I heard you were kidnapped by mweb to flip the switch their uncapped offering. Howz it going?


ps. You forgot to switch mweb's uncapped offering off ;)
 
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