Hey everyone.

I am in the market for new Broadband Internet.

Who do you use? And what do you get for what you pay?

Currently looking at 'openweb' and 'webafrica'. Anyone have any dealings with these ISP's?

Fanx.

Telkom all the way.
Yes they are evil, yes they suck, but they own the backbone, so every other ISP goes through them anyway, so its better to go direct.

But before you look at adsl, see if Telkom has any slots in your area for Unlimited Broadband LTE. 800 bucks a month for uncapped LTE. Cost to speed it's far better. I'm in a great reception area, and my downloads are on average 7 meg per second. My meter is on 857gb for august alone.

Lu22 wrote: Telkom all the way.
Yes they are evil, yes they suck, but they own the backbone, so every other ISP goes through them anyway, so its better to go direct.

But before you look at adsl, see if Telkom has any slots in your area for Unlimited Broadband LTE. 800 bucks a month for uncapped LTE. Cost to speed it's far better. I'm in a great reception area, and my downloads are on average 7 meg per second. My meter is on 857gb for august alone.

Thanks Lu. Thing is these other providers can gimme uncapped for cheaper than telkom can....which is kinda weird.

We are outside of town and don't really have telkom wireless reception. I walked that road in the past and not again. i do have a fixed line at the moment with Telkom and it works, but i need proper uncapped.

wern101 wrote:

Lu22 wrote: Telkom all the way.
Yes they are evil, yes they suck, but they own the backbone, so every other ISP goes through them anyway, so its better to go direct.

But before you look at adsl, see if Telkom has any slots in your area for Unlimited Broadband LTE. 800 bucks a month for uncapped LTE. Cost to speed it's far better. I'm in a great reception area, and my downloads are on average 7 meg per second. My meter is on 857gb for august alone.

Thanks Lu. Thing is these other providers can gimme uncapped for cheaper than telkom can....which is kinda weird.

We are outside of town and don't really have telkom wireless reception. I walked that road in the past and not again. i do have a fixed line at the moment with Telkom and it works, but i need proper uncapped.

Im with mweb, adsl line and "uncapped" data. Its ok I suppose.
It works and mweb have good customer service, much better than telkom who im very familiar with as ive had their uncapped as well for about a year.

Keep in mind that there are no uncapped in South Africa, you WILL get throttled to hell and back if you go over the acceptable user limit, its usually 70 - 75GB withing a 30 day window. If you plan on using more than that a month rather get a capped account.

Im on the uncapped because I never use more than say 60GB in a month ever, usually way less than that and WAS cheaper for me to have this uncapped account than to pay for a capped account with a data cap of 75GB
Mweb do have a 75GB day time data plus 75GB midnight data capped account for R299, thats with adsl line rental included.

nazarene wrote: It works and mweb have good customer service, much better than telkom who im very familiar with as ive had their uncapped as well for about a year.

Also w/mweb uncapped - it's been up and down - it's ok now. But their customer service can actually be called service when compared to Telkom - I have a super dodgy exchange/cabling and they have been pretty good about chasing telkom for a fix.

You can check the AUP's on mweb per uncapped package, AFAIK the 2mb uncapped = 80GB before throttling...although P2P file sharing is heavily throttled 8am-midnite regardless. If you do a lot of downloading P2P, other ISP's would be a better bet (I heard Afrihost & Openweb was pretty good for P2P, this may well be old info).

Mybroadband has ISP comparisons on a regular basis - best place to get current info on ISP's

I suppose for regular adsl Mweb is ok. I was with them since adsl came to my burb and their service was always pretty good.
But I have several domains with several email addresses etc and the combined package of domain hosting, several email addresses, and the adsl was crazy expensive. I blissfully stayed with Mweb till one day I actually looked at it and realised I was being charged for so many individual hidden costs kinda like your bank does ? . Like each individual email address was charged premium extra for example.
Moved to Afrihost and massively saving money ever since with no tech issues to speak of. At the time of the change-over my new Afrihost bill was about 10% - 15% of what I had been paying at Mweb!

So if you have your own domain or six, or any other extra options other than just a connection, then I reckon look a bit beyond Mweb. I jumped ship about four years ago though so maybe they have become more competitive since then, but thought it worth a mention.

ADSL is considered a best effort service, so while its all good while it works, when it breaks is where the rubber hits the road.

Telkom ultimately owns most if not all of the ADSL infrastructure. So while you go through a provider the underlying infrastructure is probably on Telkom's network. Now the question is, which of the service providers have the best relationship with Telkom to ensure fastest resolution times. My opinion is that as Internet Solutions should be able to offer the best service in this regard, better than Telkoms own service.

Lu earlier mentioned the LTE offering. I have a mate who lives in a scarcely populated area and he is raving about it, so an option. The problem with all mass offerings is generally the more ppl in an area the more the towers/DSLAMS etc labour and everyone suffers. The beauty with LTE is that the cable is unlikely to be stolen ..hehe and the underlying infrastructure is supported by fibre.

I would stick to providers that actually are 1st tier suppliers and actually own bandwidth on WACS or SEACOM.

I currently use VOX telecom, not uncapped but 75gig per month at 290 ronts plus ADSL line rent from Telkom affordable. No hiccups except when Telkom do not reset data switches.

I expect if you are where you are and don't get wireless, you don't have fibre either? Because that is seriously the way to go.

But in terms of ISPs, I've been with WebAfrica - on fibre, on the Telkom backbone admittedly (Lu is quite correct in this) - and I've had no problems with Telkom being up as a service. In terms of WebAfrica, I can't say enough about them. Of course, everyone will have a different experience of their own.

I'd say go where the price is right - maybe start of prepaid, and migrate. Then move once you have an understanding of the levels of service
dh|

I'm currently with Afrihost ?

Thanks Everyone.

Al the advice has helped A LOT!.

I finally decided to go with Webafrica as they also manage my hosting. It kinda makes sense to go with the same company... for me. Man!! What a pleasure working with these people. I was up and running in less than 10 minutes.

So I picked up uncapped for R185-00 and with my telkom line rental, 4MBPS at R 315-00 puts me at 500 bucs for internet at decent speed. (yes fair use and all that apply)

Used to pay R400 a month for a 2mbps line with 10GB cap... I am a happy bunny today.

Stoffeltoo wrote: No hiccups except when Telkom do not reset data switches.

What? Data switches? What are you talking about?