Internet service

[kavesh]

Sorry a long read

We run a home office and require a stable internet service. I have been struggling to find a network operator that had good coverage in my area but it seems I live in a black hole

Anyways last year September I engaged with Vodacom and discussed my needs. The salesman advised me that I should select a business LTE solution rather than the mobile solution. The reasons were sound, i.e. the contention ratio on a business package is much lower than a mobile package. So I took out a business LTE solution at great cost for a 225gb package at R1 199/m.
The service has been far from expected, and I have had many communications with Vodacom. Even had their technical guys on site and during a discussion with the technician it turns out that there is no such thing as a lower contention ratio for a business line. So is Vodacom telling lies to sell at a premium?

I challenged the salesman and he stated that this is how they are taught to sell the product

They tried to see whether I had coverage for a microwave line of site link and when their contractor did a site survey they determined that there was no line of site.

In desperation I told them that I wanted out of the contract and wanted a refund as they sold me a service that did not work. I am not anywhere close to using my data allocation as the service has constantly been poor. What are my legal rights here?

Anyways a second Vodacom contractor contacted me to do another survey for the Microwave line of site. This time I was advised that I do indeed have line of site and it was possible to move me to this solution with a guaranteed upload and download speed, based on what speed option I choose.
I was sent a quote to accept for R1 429 for a 20mbps uncapped line. When I googled the rates their advertised rate was R1 199. When I queried this I was told that it was a system error and will be fixed.

I further queried how it was possible to have coverage when initially there was no coverage, I am yet to receive feedback.

I looked up MTN at this point and see that they also seem to have coverage based on the address but I would image they would want to do a site survey to confirm. For a 20mbps line they charge R1 099.

My experience with Vodacom as you can see has not been a happy one.

Assuming MTN has coverage in my area, I am thinking of using them rather. Not too concerned about the R100 price difference. More concerned about the service levels.

Can you guys give me your experience with both service providers please.

Appreciate any advice
Thanks, Kavesh

[New Perspective studio]

I went through all of this in a similar fashion the only reliable thing i have found was going to cell c buying their 200gb package and hotspotting it it works out way cheaper and is super reliable my business runs online with web development ect ect and we don't really have any issue.

[kavesh]

I went through all of this in a similar fashion the only reliable thing i have found was going to cell c buying their 200gb package and hotspotting it it works out way cheaper and is super reliable my business runs online with web development ect ect and we don't really have any issue.

Thanks for the feedback. Sadly it would seem that I am in a black hole so coverage is a challenge.

[Faan]

I just hope that we are not in a black hole as well.

We have a LTE connection through Afrihost and many a time it does not work.
For the past number of weeks I attended a Zoom session on Tuesday evenings at 20h00. On more that one occasion it took about 20 minutes before I could hear anything that was going on.
Fibre is not available where we are yet. ADSL is in the process of discontinuing.

The question now is whether there is something better than Afrihost?

[ians]

I have been with MTN for as long as Cellphones have been around ... I did make the mistake of taking out a Virgin mobile contract (cheaper deal) ... I ened up loosing my origin phone number.

I went back to MTN for a couple years ... then found a deal I couldnt resist with Telkom ... even a bigger mistake ... by the time they finished screwing around with line porting and crap ... I once again lost my number.

Went back to MTN ... and still with MTN ... I use to travel a lot building water treatment and waste water plants around the country ... on most sites we worked my phone (MTN) had the best reception.

My wife is with Vodocom ... I see how many issues she has ... no thanks.

Something you also need to be aware of ... I have a customer who lives up the hill ... a company offered a better solution and fitted a booster (private) near Alverstone ... same problem ... power losses ...which result in lost cellphone connections ... no matter how good the signal ... no power ... apparently Ethekweni dont have any plan to upgrade "old Suburbs" anytime soon ... so as the infrastructure fails ... so the outages just become more and more frequent.

IT seems the internet in general is just becoming a huge problem in SA ... I have a fibre line to my house ... but to find a legit service provider which doesnt have a couple pages of clauses restricting all sorts of stuff (FUP ... peak time throttling ... limit throttling ...etc etc etc etc) and non contracts ... which bind you to them for 12 months otherwise you have to find R5000 to get out of the non contract ...

[Blurock]

My experience is that sales people can be the biggest liars and add on just to get the highest once-off sale. They know that they may never see you again, so they just don't care how much they screw you. Once you have signed, you are hooked and it is kak en betaal!
I have been with Telkom since 2008 and although I've had some issues, it is small compared to Vodacom and MTN.

[kavesh]

Well it seems the fibre guys are starting to dip to lay cables in my area. This may be my best option, however, i am still stuck into an LTE contract with Vodacom for another year. Lets wait for fibre to be set up then I will try to get out of the vodacom contract citing poor service. Time will tell

[kavesh]

One would think that once fibre is installed its happy days from there on. How wrong can one be.

I have had fibre for 2 months now and and the reality is that my LTE service is more reliable. Fibre is offline more than online, so frustrating.

I have a few months before my Vodacom LTE contracts ends and with Fibre (ZoomFibre installed the infrastructre) i'm on a month to month contract with Fibrestream who is one of the service providers.

I made my intentions clear to cancel my fibre MTM and had about 4 people from Fibrestream contact me. I told them that I would rather try another service provider, service could not get any worse I hoped. Not sure if the issue is with the service provider or with Zoomfibre.

Just cannot win with this

[Dave A]

Not sure if the issue is with the service provider or with Zoomfibre.

That is the challenge - trying to figure out where the problem actually is.

I was having trouble with my fibre at home. Changed the modem router from the cheap one supplied free with installation to a decent series 1200 modem router, and problem solved.

[kavesh]

That is the challenge - trying to figure out where the problem actually is.

I was having trouble with my fibre at home. Changed the modem router from the cheap one supplied free with installation to a decent series 1200 modem router, and problem solved.

Thanks Dave, trying to avoid spending more money at this stage, may just have to do that.

[wptech]

Telkom Mobile is very Cheap. You can look into that.

[adrianh]

That is the challenge - trying to figure out where the problem actually is.

I was having trouble with my fibre at home. Changed the modem router from the cheap one supplied free with installation to a decent series 1200 modem router, and problem solved.

I installed fibre with MWEB / Vumatel. The fibre seemed to drop out 100 times a day. We did a lot of testing and they said that I should swop the router out. I had my old ADSL router and I installed that instead of the new "little rubbish" MWEB router. (of course the ADSL wasn't used- the router was set up to bridge the fibre) The fibre problems went away immediately. The old ADSL router created a secondary problem - although the Ethernet is fast not all the cellphones would speak to the old router at full speed. It seemed as if the new phones are not backward compatible with the old router. I walked into Hi Fi Corp on Sunday and found a 5 year old 3G/4G router on sale for R199. I took a chance and purchased the router. I connected the "new" cheap router to the old ADSL router as a second bridged router. I now have 4 more Ethernet ports and full speed cellphone access to the fibre networks as well.

To cut to the chase - I solved my continual fibre problems using an old ADSL router and a R199 old 3G/4G router.

The way to determine whether the router is faulty is to connect your PC directly into the fibre box so as to bypass the router. If the PC stays up without issues then the router is faulty. That is how we figured out the the router was faulty. They didn't want to replace my router for free and I wasn't going to spend R2k on a new one.