What local broadband users want

What part of the broadband service is the most important to you?

  • Price

    Votes: 63 42.9%

  • Cap

    Votes: 60 40.8%

  • Download Speed

    Votes: 12 8.2%

  • Reliability

    Votes: 7 4.8%

  • Latency

    Votes: 4 2.7%

  • Support

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Upload Speed

    Votes: 1 0.7%
  • Total voters
    147
Kaufies said:
I think price should be removed from the poll. And perhaps reliability too. Then we would see what people want for their money assuming the service is reliable because, let's face it, who wants an unreliable service?
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Why?

For me personally none of the others matter.

For download speeds I don't have a problem with a 512k connection. Yes, faster would be great but not critical for me.

Latency means absolutely nothing to me as I do not play online games.

Upload speeds again mean very little as I very rarely upload to the net.

Support is not something I worry about. The internet provides me with the solutions to most of the problems I encounter. Again it would be great to have someone at your beck and call but not a selling point for me.

And then cap.... well if the price was cheap then cap would not really matter as if I needed more I could just log on and top up or buy more. As it is I now have a surplus of data as I bought a 5Gb Afrihost account with the intention of cancelling my one Telkom account which I have not done yet and it appears that I am going to be wasting about 3gbs this month....
 
You know, ISP's have already taken these stats into acount. They give us amazing (small) caps for an amazing (huge) price. It's all amazing for them.
 
The internet of even 5 years ago, have evolved to a beast that needs speed and capacity.

We in SA don't know true broadband and don't use it like the rest of the developed world

A 1 or 3gig cap using a 2 or 4 Megabit connection is utterly useless - you read your emails for the month super fast, and that is that.
It is like owning a Ferrari but you can only drive to the corner cafe once a month

I have a 512 wireless connection, uncapped, done 50 gig so far for the month - all for R450

This is the best solution I can find until SA catches up to real world telecoms
 
LancelotSA said:
For me personally none of the others matter.

For download speeds I don't have a problem with a 512k connection. Yes, faster would be great but not critical for me.
Click to expand...

...and I'm content with my 384k connection
LancelotSA said:
Latency means absolutely nothing to me as I do not play online games.
Click to expand...
Ditto

LancelotSA said:
Upload speeds again mean very little as I very rarely upload to the net.
Click to expand...
...and again, ditto

LancelotSA said:
Support is not something I worry about. The internet provides me with the solutions to most of the problems I encounter. Again it would be great to have someone at your beck and call but not a selling point for me.
Click to expand...
But if it's ISP (SP or Telkom) related, I like to call a number where I speak to a competent person, that can pinpoint the fault immediately, like WebAfrica does (although I switched to AfriHost).
LancelotSA said:
And then cap.... well if the price was cheap then cap would not really matter as if I needed more I could just log on and top up or buy more. As it is I now have a surplus of data as I bought a 5Gb Afrihost account with the intention of cancelling my one Telkom account which I have not done yet and it appears that I am going to be wasting about 3gbs this month....
Click to expand...

As you can see, I'm in the same boat as you. But I need the reliability as a first priority. If Afrihost gave me a good price, but unreliable service, I would switch to triple-the-price WA in a blink.

I seldom go over 2GB for the month, thus I took the Afrihost 3GB account, knowing that I'll have GB to spare at the end of the month. Like you said, one can always top-up.
 
davemc said:
You are witnessing the affect of a country that is being raped by high communications costs. They tend to forget about reliability because of the continuing pain.
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Maybe, but it also related to the fact that people are too scared to select "reliability" as a choice because ISP's can just turn around and say "hey, look we have awesome reliability and have thus listened to our customers and fulfilled their deepest desires WRT broadband".
 
LancelotSA said:
Why?
Click to expand...

I think it would make the poll more accurate. IE the poll should be taken from the point of view that you are (hypothetically) going to be paying this much a month. What do you want to get for your money: Cap, Latency, etc?

That is just my humble opinion
 
LancelotSA said:
It should be clear to anyone viewing the results of this survey that by "price" any sensible person would be meaning "value for money". So a 1Mb cap at R10 is not going to appease us.

Therefore price is directly linked to cap.

To put forward a similar argument as you have but regarding the choice of cap, the ISPs can just put out plenty "crappy" uncapped products at R1000 for a 384k service and say "there you go, that is what you wanted".

Price is the only way to go!
Click to expand...

I still don't disagree, I'm just referring to the crappy mentality that ISP's have. For example Neotel with their 35 GB Uncapped product or that other bloke who was boasting his R35 uncapped account a few months ago. So with that in mind, if I have to choose where I want them to focus, I'd rather they focus on increasing the cap. Which is the point I'm trying to make but obviously failing to do so :)

EDIT: The VERY sad reality in terms of telecoms in SA is that what should be clear to anyone usually isn't.
 
This poll is flawed.

All of the options are already available.
Cap? There are uncapped solutions
Price? There is cheap broadband (R29-00 per Gig)
Download Speed? There is a 4mb service,
etc.

We want a combination of the above options, like cap and price, uncapped at a reasonable price, affordable higher speed connections, etc.

For me, price and cap combined. Let's leave the cap business and make it affordable.
 
MyWorld said:
This poll is flawed.
Click to expand...

Agreed. They should be check-boxes, not radios.

Want:
- low price
- no cap
- fast download
- rock-solid reliability
- whatever the gamers say is best for latency
- awesome support
- fast upload

Why else would it be called BROADband? It's not SKEEFband or SLIGHTband or SLIMband or SKIPband
it's BROADband damnnitt !!!
 
Last edited:
I agree with apogeeza

Some days I feel that there isn't much difference between what I experience with ADSL and what I had with dial up -
s l o w s l o w e r s u p a s l u g s l o w

I vote for: speed

Of course, affordable priced packages with reliable service and support are important too. But doesn't that go without saying in any industry? Oh wait, clear the dream - this is SA ;)
 
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