Internet Solutions bring broadband to gated villages

Mmm...

I have this - the concept is brilliant BUT I must warn you guys:

When you move into a gated community, they WILL NOT allow you to get Telkom for ADSL. You can ONLY make use of their ADSL installation. When it works, it's awesome - I took the 348Kbps line option with a 3GB cap - all in all it costs me R450.00 - not bad. But I find that too often it's not working. And when you phone the Cape Town company to ask them what's wrong, they blame Internet Solutions, and when you phone Internet Solutions, well, then they pretty much tell you to be patient, they're working on it. Very frustrating.

I don't know if they're still in pilot phase - but they make it sound as if they're 100% sure of what they're doing. I would've appreciated it if they said "look, sorry it's not working, we're still testing this thing, just bear with us" - but they don't, they're just arrogant and very very lazy.

I hate the fact then, when I go home, I'm never sure if I'll be able to finish my work at home 'cause the internet might be down. It's almost like playing a game - let's see if we can work tonight!

Hopefully they can sort it out, 'cause like I said, I'm pretty amazed at the speed - it's about the same speed (the 384 options) as I had when I had telkom adsl 512 at my previous residence - but, if I had a choice, I would've installed a 512K line from telkom and use them as my service provider. At least then, I'm soft capped - I used to be able to get around 8GB out of my 3GB account and second of all, it's pretty damn fast and - I know some of you will disagree, but you're normally sure that it'll work when you get home.

My 2c worth - I feel bad for badmouthing this company - geez at least they're trying and it's cheaper than telkom - but I'm just warning any potential customers to have a 3G data card ready for when it's not working!:rolleyes:
 
Superhero said:
I took the 348Kbps line option with a 3GB cap - all in all it costs me R450.00 - not bad.

it's cheaper than telkom :
Click to expand...

How is that cheaper? Webafrica has a 348Kbps line option with a 3GB cap for R415. Ok granted you still have to add Telkom line rental on to that R415 but I presume your R450 doesnt include it either.
 
All this just because Telkom didn't come to the party. And this is a way that my choice is limited. And decisions are governed by the complex and not by me. No thank you. From one choice with Telkom to one choice with the complex's decision.

I'd like to rather just do my own thing. And I really, just look at the price. And lock-in. Should Neotel or whoever, bring a magic solution, like R200 for uncapped at 8mbps, what then. No thank you.
 
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Hey telkomhater - the R450 for 3GB gates services includes everything (as well as the line rental - the line belongs to the complex so there is no rental charge) - my bill is R451.00 incl every month. But yeah, I hear what you're saying and WebAfrica will probably do a better job of the whole thing than IS.
 
What are they using to link all the houses together? BPL would be a good option. Just like GTS plan to do if they ever get off the ground.
 
My old company Building Intelligence does just this , we did it from 2001 and just did'nt have the budget to do it anymore without massive shareholder investment and the right people at management level , I was involved on the network side.

Its nothing new , works on an intelligent building concept , due to no real money coming in I quit and now work indepedantly , best of luck to IS though , the costs per complex are rather high.

We used lucent cajun p333r and p333t switches (managed of course , no wireless offerings at the time) as well as lucent accesspoint 450 and 1000 edge routers with Class Based Queing (they go for R100k a pop)

Network is still running and provides ISP based services , before I left I setup radius for final authentication for adsl

Nice for IS to say its a new thing and what not when they knew just exactly how its done since we bought 1/2 the bandwidth from them and the other 1/2 from UUnet / Verizon.

best of luck to them though , its not an easy concept to manage (I talk from experience)
 
what size package is that tho? and to which package are you comparing to?

250mb? 1gb? 2gb? or 3gb?
 
That's for 1GB currently, but after price reductions due in August a 3Gb option will be around R450 or less.
 
Superhero said:
Hey telkomhater - the R450 for 3GB gates services includes everything (as well as the line rental - the line belongs to the complex so there is no rental charge) - my bill is R451.00 incl every month. .
Click to expand...

The confusion seems to be in the semantics of "line rental". The line rental I was referring to is not the "internet connectivity line" but rather the "voice line rental".

If Superhero has a Telkom line in his house then the cost would be R451 (for the complexes internet) plus R100 (for his personal telephone).
 
Superhero said:
I have this - the concept is brilliant BUT I must warn you guys:

When you move into a gated community, they WILL NOT allow you to get Telkom for ADSL. You can ONLY make use of their ADSL installation. When it works, it's awesome - I took the 348Kbps line option with a 3GB cap - all in all it costs me R450.00 - not bad. But I find that too often it's not working. And when you phone the Cape Town company to ask them what's wrong, they blame Internet Solutions, and when you phone Internet Solutions, well, then they pretty much tell you to be patient, they're working on it. Very frustrating.

I don't know if they're still in pilot phase - but they make it sound as if they're 100% sure of what they're doing. I would've appreciated it if they said "look, sorry it's not working, we're still testing this thing, just bear with us" - but they don't, they're just arrogant and very very lazy.

I hate the fact then, when I go home, I'm never sure if I'll be able to finish my work at home 'cause the internet might be down. It's almost like playing a game - let's see if we can work tonight!

Hopefully they can sort it out, 'cause like I said, I'm pretty amazed at the speed - it's about the same speed (the 384 options) as I had when I had telkom adsl 512 at my previous residence - but, if I had a choice, I would've installed a 512K line from telkom and use them as my service provider. At least then, I'm soft capped - I used to be able to get around 8GB out of my 3GB account and second of all, it's pretty damn fast and - I know some of you will disagree, but you're normally sure that it'll work when you get home.

My 2c worth - I feel bad for badmouthing this company - geez at least they're trying and it's cheaper than telkom - but I'm just warning any potential customers to have a 3G data card ready for when it's not working!:rolleyes:
Click to expand...
I have heard of a brilliant solution for gated communities where you get much more than normal internet. VoIP, sms, fax, etc. All uncapped and with guarnateed bandwidth. Works extremely well in gated communities where Telkom is not available. The benefit also is you don't have to wait for Telkom to give you ADSL. Sorry, not a huge Telkom fan!
 
Miquette said:
I have heard of a brilliant solution for gated communities where you get much more than normal internet. VoIP, sms, fax, etc. All uncapped and with guarnateed bandwidth. Works extremely well in gated communities where Telkom is not available. The benefit also is you don't have to wait for Telkom to give you ADSL. Sorry, not a huge Telkom fan!
Click to expand...

GTS????

NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!
 
Brilliant idea! Not new, but if you can build it, they will come. Nice one!
 
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