Sign up with GoogleAbout a year ago Telkom lines were stolen near Vleiland (near Laingsburg) and Telkom upped and left.
Some of us were quite pleased because believe it or not our only internet choices then were Telkom dialup (vintage copper cables) or Telkom Satellite @R600 per gig.
The farming community got two wisp providers in to quote - Breedenet and Wispernet - hoping to go with the
best of the two. Unfortunately things went haywire and we ended up with one half of the valley serviced by Breedenet, the other half by Wispernet. I unfortunately fell into the Wispernet half. Their equipment is more expensive as is their installation, their call rates are higher and to top it all they wanted R9k to hook me up because my house did not have line of sight to their tower. I resisted for a year but found it impossible to survive on 3G and Vodacom (also new in the valley) so parted with a whole R9k last month.
Firstly, Wispernet phones cannot take messages while Breedenet phones can. My internet access is truly weird - I have a little bandwidth graph - it runs @ 100% for a minute, drops to zero, finds the signal and goes back up a bit then back to zero for a bit - it is terribly frustrating and I spend much time watching the little Mac wheel spinning like back in the dial-up days. Admittedly, I am in a valley - but before parting with my cash told them not to install me if I was going to get crappy signal - so this is good enough by Wispernet standards.
I am now an excellent patience player.
Many Wispernet clients in the valley have terminated after only a few months while the Breedenet customers seem very happy with their service. Sometimes when I make a call the other party just disappears and I have to hang up.
Hallooo, halooooo.
When I need to top-up after receiving a mere 45 second warning - I have to e-mail a human being at Wispernet (during office hours) and he has to load some surf/call time. If you run out on a weekend or over a holiday - too bad there is no auto-reload/eft option. I took a 30gig-till-used-up package and was told I'd get a warning when 2/3rds was used up. It never happened - I just got cut off. I then wanted to try the un-capped option but my timing was off - too late for the next month I was told. I then bough 8 gigs until another Wispernet staffer phoned back to say no I can't do that - must buy another 30gigs apparently. Weird packaging - or uninformed/untrained staff.
When they came to install I asked them to bring a chordless phone for me to try out. If it worked I'd go with that option. 'No can do' I was told. You have to buy one - we don't carry a demo with us. Weird again. Customer friendly? No.
The cable from the phone to the computer died after three weeks so now I have to swap cables from phone to pc depending on which I want to use so their equipment is not robust.
It snowed here yesterday so there was no access again. Sundays seem to be down-time at Wispernet. It would again be very useful if they bothered to send out regular e-mails/SMS's with updates about down-time, or 'problem in your area will be fixed by tomorrow' but they're not that interested in what we feel having a seemingly take-it-or-leave-it attitude. The problem with that is that many of us have no other option to turn to, we're stuck with their service.
I have no idea whether they do any "port-shaping" or throttle certain services - I tried to access their website today but it was down. Yesterday I sent off a few group e-mails and none of the intended recipients received the message so perhaps they're having major server issues - more's the reason for them to keep their customers informed.
Some of us were quite pleased because believe it or not our only internet choices then were Telkom dialup (vintage copper cables) or Telkom Satellite @R600 per gig.
The farming community got two wisp providers in to quote - Breedenet and Wispernet - hoping to go with the
best of the two. Unfortunately things went haywire and we ended up with one half of the valley serviced by Breedenet, the other half by Wispernet. I unfortunately fell into the Wispernet half. Their equipment is more expensive as is their installation, their call rates are higher and to top it all they wanted R9k to hook me up because my house did not have line of sight to their tower. I resisted for a year but found it impossible to survive on 3G and Vodacom (also new in the valley) so parted with a whole R9k last month.
Firstly, Wispernet phones cannot take messages while Breedenet phones can. My internet access is truly weird - I have a little bandwidth graph - it runs @ 100% for a minute, drops to zero, finds the signal and goes back up a bit then back to zero for a bit - it is terribly frustrating and I spend much time watching the little Mac wheel spinning like back in the dial-up days. Admittedly, I am in a valley - but before parting with my cash told them not to install me if I was going to get crappy signal - so this is good enough by Wispernet standards.
I am now an excellent patience player.
Many Wispernet clients in the valley have terminated after only a few months while the Breedenet customers seem very happy with their service. Sometimes when I make a call the other party just disappears and I have to hang up.
Hallooo, halooooo.
When I need to top-up after receiving a mere 45 second warning - I have to e-mail a human being at Wispernet (during office hours) and he has to load some surf/call time. If you run out on a weekend or over a holiday - too bad there is no auto-reload/eft option. I took a 30gig-till-used-up package and was told I'd get a warning when 2/3rds was used up. It never happened - I just got cut off. I then wanted to try the un-capped option but my timing was off - too late for the next month I was told. I then bough 8 gigs until another Wispernet staffer phoned back to say no I can't do that - must buy another 30gigs apparently. Weird packaging - or uninformed/untrained staff.
When they came to install I asked them to bring a chordless phone for me to try out. If it worked I'd go with that option. 'No can do' I was told. You have to buy one - we don't carry a demo with us. Weird again. Customer friendly? No.
The cable from the phone to the computer died after three weeks so now I have to swap cables from phone to pc depending on which I want to use so their equipment is not robust.
It snowed here yesterday so there was no access again. Sundays seem to be down-time at Wispernet. It would again be very useful if they bothered to send out regular e-mails/SMS's with updates about down-time, or 'problem in your area will be fixed by tomorrow' but they're not that interested in what we feel having a seemingly take-it-or-leave-it attitude. The problem with that is that many of us have no other option to turn to, we're stuck with their service.
I have no idea whether they do any "port-shaping" or throttle certain services - I tried to access their website today but it was down. Yesterday I sent off a few group e-mails and none of the intended recipients received the message so perhaps they're having major server issues - more's the reason for them to keep their customers informed.
