flyingfishes
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2014
- Messages
- 5
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If there was a prize for the worst WISP in South Africa the winner by a substantial margin would surely be Wispernet which pretends to operate out of Oudtshoorn in the Cape. I am a client of theirs because I have no option out here in the sticks. It’s mostly-useless Wispernet or complete silence, so I hang in hoping that one day I’ll be able to make a call or download a whole file.
I’m writing this in Word hoping for a few minutes of access today so I can quickly post this on MyBroadband. I may have to wait till Monday or Tuesday for the glimmer of a few bytes.
Even the name Wispernet is a misnomer as even a whisper of connectivity, whether by telephone or internet is hard to come by from this lot. I’ve been with them for two years and have yet to have a week of uninterrupted internet service - any uninterrupted weekend connectivity is like winning the lotto - unexpected and a pleasant surprise. Their expensive voip telephones cannot even take messages (in 2014!!) but it does flash a lovely little red light when one has missed an incoming call. You then merely have to press three different buttons a few times to see who called - but the number that it shows dances from left to right making it totally unreadable. I suspect some Chinese firm went belly-up because no-one wanted these phones - but they did not count on the greed of this faux-wisp who obviously snapped up the lot for two quid. When I raised this issue with the CEO/owner he replied that it was a bit like buying a car - some people like an air conditioner, while some prefer a radio. I kid you not, that was his very considered reply. The word asylum comes to mind.
Wispernet is a member of WAFA and one wonders how they ever made the cut because I am fairly convinced they do not have the quality or quantity of bandwidth required by law to service their clients. In January this year the CEO/owner wrote that he was in negotiations with X re their new improved 2014 bandwidth/price packages. I wrote again in Feb, March, June, October …..he stopped lying around June and I now just get a perfunctory “noted” to my increasingly abusive emails. They clearly have no intention of offering faster speeds at a lower rate like all the other ISP’s out there. Most of their clients are people like me who are with them because they have no other choice - a captive client-base, unable to move to another WISP, so I guess we can be fleeced indefinitely.
The other thing I have now noticed with the new round of Eskom’s Load shedding, is that it does not mater where the power goes off - Wispernet will crash every time because they stupidly only have a linear tower network. Take out any one tower anywhere in the line, and the whole house comes tumbling down. So if there’s load shedding in Paarl, George will go down too. Marvelous planning!
Then there was the time the service was down for two days again - I called help-desk (I know the number off pat) who informed me that that their technician (singular) was considering going out the fix the problem the next day. “Considering” How these crooks are still in business I do not know. They also monitor one’s browsing. A couple of weeks back they sent me a page of all the websites that had been accessed on my account BUT they added, someone was clearly hacking into my account - and they proceeded to supply the IP address of the the people who were stealing my bandwidth - my own IP address!! The word moron comes to mind. Are they even allowed to monitor clients browsing - I’d have thought that was unconstitutional.
So, another Sunday night without internet. I cannot skype my daughters on the other side of the globe, cannot email the farmers next door about tomorrow's plans, or phone anyone - but, come end of the month, they're there with their begging bowl (debit order) regardless of the actual hours or days they provided me with internet and phone acess. Weirdly, I’m so accustomed to no phone service, the phone has become just a rather ugly and expensive ornament. 99% of attempts at making a call end in deadly silence with the device read-out simply instructing me to “HANGUP” I don’t even try anymore.
I’m writing this in Word hoping for a few minutes of access today so I can quickly post this on MyBroadband. I may have to wait till Monday or Tuesday for the glimmer of a few bytes.
Even the name Wispernet is a misnomer as even a whisper of connectivity, whether by telephone or internet is hard to come by from this lot. I’ve been with them for two years and have yet to have a week of uninterrupted internet service - any uninterrupted weekend connectivity is like winning the lotto - unexpected and a pleasant surprise. Their expensive voip telephones cannot even take messages (in 2014!!) but it does flash a lovely little red light when one has missed an incoming call. You then merely have to press three different buttons a few times to see who called - but the number that it shows dances from left to right making it totally unreadable. I suspect some Chinese firm went belly-up because no-one wanted these phones - but they did not count on the greed of this faux-wisp who obviously snapped up the lot for two quid. When I raised this issue with the CEO/owner he replied that it was a bit like buying a car - some people like an air conditioner, while some prefer a radio. I kid you not, that was his very considered reply. The word asylum comes to mind.
Wispernet is a member of WAFA and one wonders how they ever made the cut because I am fairly convinced they do not have the quality or quantity of bandwidth required by law to service their clients. In January this year the CEO/owner wrote that he was in negotiations with X re their new improved 2014 bandwidth/price packages. I wrote again in Feb, March, June, October …..he stopped lying around June and I now just get a perfunctory “noted” to my increasingly abusive emails. They clearly have no intention of offering faster speeds at a lower rate like all the other ISP’s out there. Most of their clients are people like me who are with them because they have no other choice - a captive client-base, unable to move to another WISP, so I guess we can be fleeced indefinitely.
The other thing I have now noticed with the new round of Eskom’s Load shedding, is that it does not mater where the power goes off - Wispernet will crash every time because they stupidly only have a linear tower network. Take out any one tower anywhere in the line, and the whole house comes tumbling down. So if there’s load shedding in Paarl, George will go down too. Marvelous planning!
Then there was the time the service was down for two days again - I called help-desk (I know the number off pat) who informed me that that their technician (singular) was considering going out the fix the problem the next day. “Considering” How these crooks are still in business I do not know. They also monitor one’s browsing. A couple of weeks back they sent me a page of all the websites that had been accessed on my account BUT they added, someone was clearly hacking into my account - and they proceeded to supply the IP address of the the people who were stealing my bandwidth - my own IP address!! The word moron comes to mind. Are they even allowed to monitor clients browsing - I’d have thought that was unconstitutional.
So, another Sunday night without internet. I cannot skype my daughters on the other side of the globe, cannot email the farmers next door about tomorrow's plans, or phone anyone - but, come end of the month, they're there with their begging bowl (debit order) regardless of the actual hours or days they provided me with internet and phone acess. Weirdly, I’m so accustomed to no phone service, the phone has become just a rather ugly and expensive ornament. 99% of attempts at making a call end in deadly silence with the device read-out simply instructing me to “HANGUP” I don’t even try anymore.
