PCFormat Forum Archive

Best ADSL ISP in South Africa

Does it strike anyone else as somewhat sad that our "best" ISP can only average 5 Mbps on a 10 Mbps line? Yes, IU get the part that Telkom plays in this whole thing, but that's still pretty sad advertising.

From what I've heard, very few 10 Mbps lines are able to sync at that speed - based on anecdotal evidence, 6 Mbps appears to be par for the course. (My line is rock solid stable at 10 Mbps, but it helps that all that separates me from the exchange is the M4, a shopping centre and the railway line). That's probably your explanation right there - as the quality of the local loop improves (and I believe that Telkom is performing work to shorten it), one would expect to see those speeds rise.

Of course, this is a bit of a moot point - 10 Mbps uncapped is not really affordable, and the capped solutions are still a bit on the stingy side (but slowly getting better). IPC costs are the bottleneck here.

Well, in my neck of the woods I don't really expect a boost past 4mbps any time soon, so it's even more of a moot point to me.

They actually upgraded Alberton to speeds in excess of 56K?

Yeah, as lacking as our ADSL might be, there are still some poor folks on dial-up modems. For me the major issue is not so much speed, as affordability. I am only on 384kbps uncapped, because I can't afford faster speeds.

Didn't they bump 384kbps subscribers up to 512?

Dunno, I always thought they did, but then it turns out it was my mom who upgraded to 512 when I was in Belgium to get decent video for skype.

What I do know is our 512 was upped to 1mbps, that was definitely telkom who did the upgrade, not us.

Stuart wrote:Didn't they bump 384kbps subscribers up to 512?

Wish they had.

KALSTER wrote:

Stuart wrote:Didn't they bump 384kbps subscribers up to 512?

Wish they had.

Oh, lol, I thought they had. A quick perusal of MyBB articles reveals that they have "no plans" to do so. My goodness, Telkom is really raking it in with 384kbps customers!

Well, I'll be moving my line rental to MWeb as well in the near future and maybe upgrade from there with their combo packages. I pay R371 for a Telkom line and MWeb 384 uncapped ATM. If I upgrade to MWeb line rental with 1Mbps, I'll only pay R228 more per month. Not bad.

Not a fan of Telkom. Who is?

I went from 384K uncapped (R371 a month) to 1M uncapped (R599 a month) and it is TOTALLY worth the small difference.

Good to know!

Yes excellent news. i think i will use my increase to up the adsl speed.....

WiK1d wrote:I went from 384K uncapped (R371 a month) to 1M uncapped (R599 a month) and it is TOTALLY worth the small difference.

How long did the MWEB side take to migrate your line rental? In the queue now to upgrade my line speed with Telkom first.

6 working days. I wasn't aware that it took that long, but I was still lucky. It could take up to 15 working days. As soon as it was migrated I my data package was upgraded immediately. I got an SMS, logged into my router, bam, 1024.

Wik1ed what ISP are u with? im on telkom 384k 5gb account and cant handle the speed or the cap... and is that 1M line shapped? i think we pay R269pm without the line rental.... there are so many cheaper routes to go now but waiting for my 2 year contract to expire and ill consider a change in Isp...

Edit: Cheaper routes as in rand per gig.... value for money, i dont mean lines for under R269....

WiK1d is with Mweb and yes it is shaped. I'm also with Mweb but I've put in a cancellation request because for the last month it's been shaped to death for me. Rather going capped with Afrihost or something where I know I can trust the line speed.

Thanks stuart.... And that's exactly what I don't want happening! U pay for a line speed that just gets bottlenecked... My girlfriend has mweb uncapped 384k and its terrible.... So what ISP is the best and offers competitive prices and packages? Sounds to me that u regard afrihost quite highly... Problem is that all the cheaper options will be shaped aswell but how badly shaped?

I have a 384kbps Telkom ADSL but my ISP is Cybersmart (capped line) and I download a fair number of large images, youtube and stream music... And when Ruad was here both the Kitten, myself and him (playing WOW) used my line.. and it was not too bad. However, I use no Steam...

And how big is ur cap? And steam is a straight killer...

The_Jelly wrote:Thanks stuart.... And that's exactly what I don't want happening! U pay for a line speed that just gets bottlenecked... My girlfriend has mweb uncapped 384k and its terrible.... So what ISP is the best and offers competitive prices and packages? Sounds to me that u regard afrihost quite highly... Problem is that all the cheaper options will be shaped aswell but how badly shaped?

Afrihost's shaped accounts are decent, and they often have incredible topup specials. Webafrica also offers good service, but Afrihost is generally cheaper. There are others as well, but since I've been generally happy with Afrihost in the past I'm happy to stick with them. Also, their accounts are month-to-month, so no cancellation waiting periods if you need to cancel. Their uncapped accounts aren't great, but then none of the cheap uncapped options are really ideal for big downloaders.

my cap is 3 GB and I can top-up if i need to

What I have been looking for for our libs is 512 ADSL unshaped and uncapped.... Currently paying a fortune via the current ISP... need reliable ISP tho that can cover the whole province

You WILL pay a fortune for uncapped unshaped. Live with it.

Ja, but there is a difference between a small fortune and a large fortune... 3 mil for the year is too high... it must come down

Problem is, you only get pretty much two uncapped options in SA atm. Large fortune and budget-shaped-to-hell-and-back.