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Thread: Your Neotel experience

  1. #1
    Site Caretaker Dave A's Avatar
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    Your Neotel experience

    Apparently Neotel is now available in my area. I know this because I've got a flood of jumped-up sales people calling on me with hard sell sales tactics.

    Frustratingly, not one of them seems to carry a rates card so that I can just sit down and crunch some numbers. And not one of them has followed through with their promise to email me pricing information either.

    But it's not just cost that concerns me. It's the wireless technology and what the line quality is like. What would be really useful is to hear from anyone that is already using Neotel.

    So if you're using Neotel I'd love to hear about it.

    (And please, I've had enough sales people's versions - I'm looking for real user comments that don't have a vested interest).

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    have alook at the neotel section of the mybroadband forum:
    http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=169

    This thread would be a good one to start with:
    http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=177414

    Next time you get a call or visit from a neotel sales person, perhaps ask them to respond to some of the issues raised on that tech forum

    While we still waiting to see what price-effect the new undersea cable with have, it might be a good idea not to commit to any longterm contract.

    Then again...we might wait forever for telecom and internet prices so come anywhere close to any comparible country.

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    Platinum Member Marq's Avatar
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    This does not look like a good start.

    I was hoping they would make an impressive start at impresive rates and start weanin us all off hellkom. If this is the general story then its going to be a sad state of affairs.
    The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity.
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    Site Caretaker Dave A's Avatar
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    Does anyone know if "via-telkom" internet access will be tapping into the new Seacom cable capacity too?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dave A View Post
    Does anyone know if "via-telkom" internet access will be tapping into the new Seacom cable capacity too?
    First, the SAIX (telkom) prices should in theory come down once there is real competition. Unfortunately their latest pricing that was submitted to ICASA (effective 1 August) in fact raises a lot of the prices.

    Currently most ISPs resell SAIX (telkom) Internet access, or sometimes IS (Internet Sollutions) access that usually have a bit more latency. (more importent concern for gamers)

    As far as I'm aware the bigger ISPs like WebAfrica and MWeb would in future be able to build their own infrastructure, and link directly into the SEACOM cable.

    Since local-loop-unbundling is not yet a reality, I guess that most of the services based on SEACOM might be wireless and not over the copper line to your house.

    Neotel have of course been very active with digging up pavements all over to lay fibre-optics lines in major cities.

    Neotel and MTN (a fovorite of some on the forum! ) also embarked on a project to link the various major centra via fibre-optic cable.

    There is of course iBurst to consider... but some of the posts about them on that forum may again discourage you a bit. A ray of hope is that the former Vodacom representative on the mybroadband forum was recenlty appointed the new head of iBurst, so he should have a good idea of what customers complain about.

    News update on Neotel:
    http://mybroadband.co.za/news/Broadband/8513.html

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    Gold Member irneb's Avatar
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    For a please explain article, that one's a bit lame: "Yes, we know about the problem, we're going to address it." and "It's going to get worse before it gets better". Sounds like a politician!

    One thing where I could tell them to simply stop where they're heading: Bandwidth monitor via email ??????? So you may receive the thing a few days after the fact? You can also be certain it's not going to be real-time. Sounds a lot like Vodacom's contracts don't it?

    BTW, I'm still trying to figure out the best solution at present. Disregarding any form of portability (so HSDPA / WIMax is not a must), I've simply compared the following: 1. Speed 2. Price 3. Capping ... as far as I can tell, ADSL from hellkom (or re-supplier like MWeb) is the worst possible choice (price & speed wise). NeoPrime 2.5 is not much different from Vodacom MyGig 2 (price within R10 / month) - speed's supposed to be similar at 3.1MB/s and 3.6MB/s respectively.

    Now I've got a Vodacom Prepaid Data bundle. Not going with iBurst as there's no price difference and from friends experience (and my own) the Vodacom data gives the same (if not better) connectivity through the same network. From experiance the HSDPA 3.6 gives be on average about 90kbytes/sec, with some peaks running up to 200. From the comments on the MyBB forum (as per link) this sounds better than the NeoTel experience.

    Even if you go for the 4MB/s ADSL, this is not giving any wonderful speed. Our office has a wireless connection to the ISP, with a double 4MB ADSL backup. When the wireless goes down, we cannot get more than about 150kbytes/s ... averaging at about 50 (more often than not it feels like a dial-up).

    The ADSL from MWeb (bundled with line rental) for R560/month at 1GB cap. And then from my work experience ... I'd rather go with Vodacom then. That is "if" the NeoTel press release can't be believed (as they a press release usualy does) ... if they give us a pleasant surprise and actually fix the problems, then they're ever so slightly better than Vodacom IMHO.

    Maybe my research ain't that great, but I did try to compare apples with apples. What I'd really want to see is an independent comparison with a user rating as well.

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    Site Caretaker Dave A's Avatar
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    Well, for my business lines this isn't going to work.

    The obvious problem is incoming calls. What has been suggested is I keep the header line and use a call-forward to push them to the Neotel lines.

    Now I've got some old numbers which have a call-forward set to our our current numbers. These old numbers haven't been marketed or appeared on any stationery for over 5 years - and they still get between 30 and 60 calls a month. Then there is the cost of the call-forward leg which will surely wipe out any financial savings.

    So the next option was to keep the Telkom lines and add the Neotel lines for outgoing calls. This will need a new card and some major reprogramming of our PABX. And break-even by my estimate will be at about 18 months.

    Basically it just isn't viable until we get fixed line number portability like there is with cellphone services.

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    Gold Member irneb's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dave A View Post
    Basically it just isn't viable until we get fixed line number portability like there is with cellphone services.
    Yep, but how long's that going to take? It took them how many years to allow someone to play in hellkom's sandpit? And how long were MTN / Vodacom's numbers non-exchangeable?

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