Wireless instead of adsl

Hi, I'd like to start a discussion about wireless vs adsl, I work for a WISP, and we're one of the best WISP's in SA with national coverage, & completely independant from Telkom and all the rest. however I get alot of slack from clients that don't understand the technology, or that have had bad experiences with other companies in years gone by.

Now wireless certainly has come of age, & the guys I work for are really the top wireless guys in SA our packages are better quality & service with lower latency, & higher uptimes than adsl and wi-max etc, but still IT technicians are afraid to go wireless. How can i change this bad stereo-typed perception that is soo inacurate?

Our Diginet type VPN links are half the cost of Telkom, our wireless point to point links are faster & more stable than Neotel & 3G, our friendly service & support beats their call centres hand down, but still I struggle to find people that are willing to change over to a better service, it's almost as iff the monopoly has crippled peoples abilities to think outside of the box!

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Permalink Reply by jonathancrossland on August 23, 2011 at 11:46

I might be a minority in the sense of not knowing much about it. but

I have not heard of wisp as an option for me. Where is it advertised as an alternative?
I have no whitepaper or comparison chart regarding speed, performance
I do not know about coverage

Its firstly about awareness (I have just been made aware)

Then its about knowledge - how quickly can I get up to speed regarding providers etc ?

I searched for a fair bit on google, finding wiki's and news, broadband news, articles, eventually a company.

They had a coverage map - good
They listed prices - good

Then its about cost and what you get for it. Speed, performance, cost, reliability etc

The website could not convince me about reliability - I have no idea.

The website could not convince me that speeds would get any faster over the next year.

So I compared my CellC stick, when I'm out and about or on my couch

My speed was quite low today (for some reason),

but I got

3.5 Mbps for R125 p/m

For the wireles option advertised at

4Mbps for R2 500 p/m

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Permalink Reply by Ziggy Heuer on August 23, 2011 at 14:33

you make some good points, try WAPA or: http://www.wapa.org.za/

they're an industry body for wireless companies, and list WISPS that are members across SA

unfortunately WISPS don't really have advertising budgets for tv etc. but I agree, we need to find ways of geting our names out there. as for costs, 3G's not for everyone, and not everywhere has 3g coverage, it's also something that can fluctuate in speed, whereas our wireless Broadband speeds are consistent & it's a really good service, especially for corporate's & SME's etc.

the capacity of your avearage wireless antennae's is 25megs per second, so what ever speed connection you need, you can get. Wireless definitly has it's applications, just wish more people knew about wireless.

Thanks for your input

ziggy...

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Permalink Reply by jonathancrossland on August 23, 2011 at 16:00

The current offerings from 3G is still too slow and costly per GB, but WISPS seems to be even more expensive.

The little research I have done, makes me feel "scared" for wireless in the coming 24 months alone.

There is the 21mbps offerings from Vodacom and MTN and CellC fighting hard to boost their coverage.

Also the WACS cable has landed and will come online next year.

Whats your view on the upcoming pressure?

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Permalink Reply by Ziggy Heuer on August 23, 2011 at 21:57

we don't sell internet access for ridicoulous amounts, cellular operators just have more muscle to buy more bandwidth, proportionally we all still pay the same cost for access, + wireless is a specialised service, where there's copper theft (huge in Joburg) and growing in cape town there are business' that have no telephone or broadband access, nor 3g --> so i think 3g's fine for a home user who's iffy about 50 or a hundred bucks, but for bigger business it makes perfect sense, we offer a guaranteed reliable high end service, & we're not ripping anyone off, it would be different if we sold cheap crappy adsl, but we don't

inevitably no matter what industry you're in, better stuff costs more. You can't run VoIP or MPLS over 3g well reliably at least, we can host servers, do live IP's all the kind of stuff that business needs & wants, also you talk about the future 21mbps but give me a call when someone can actually get that speed through 3g and they're not bang in the centre of a metro. we currently have clients running full gigabit networks over our wireless (Fibre speeds) big hospitals that are connected via wireless, because their local telkom exchange is so oversubscribed that even the maximum speed 4megs that they can get through adsl is a dreary 1 meg, so you kinow there are applications for wireless.

3G is fine for one person, but try running a business with 50 or a 100 users on that, and it's a different story. also we've got point to point links running between 50 and 100k's at 10 to 15 megs full duplex

and Latency wise 27ms for local to joburg, and 190 to UK servers isn't half bad if you look at the latest Ookla results for SA

I think if anything the fact that WACS is coming onboard will help boost our ability to provide a service, and Africa being one of the darkest continets connectivity wise can only expect solid growth in the coming years, and alot of that growth is going to come from areas that currently have little or no infrastructre.

at the end of the day Wireless is a powerful medium and i guess the key lesson from this thread is getting it's name out there & educating people on how it works.

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Permalink Reply by jonathancrossland on August 24, 2011 at 11:56

I seem to be the only one commenting.
Are there any other people with thoughts on this?

Your last post is the first time you mentioned "business". After rereading the original post I can see what you meant, but it struck me first as a push to all types of users. too wide..?

Also when I looked at two wireless providers they seemed to be targeting individuals, with their wording etc.

I dont think the right audience and marketing has been used (definitely with a few of the company sites I visited). Maybe its just a matter of having a good marketing plan from an expert.

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Permalink Reply by Ziggy Heuer on August 25, 2011 at 12:36

I think you've made the a very acurate comment there, proper marketing is the key. But how can i do that without relying on an external expensive resource?

At the moment our company has grown to over a thousand clients nationwide just by word of mouth, but I'm so eager to boost our client base because of the quality of service we offer. Thanks again for your comments :)

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Permalink Reply by Quinton Carroll on August 25, 2011 at 7:37

My 2 cents worth...

I have been using iBurst for something like 7 years now.

At first the reason was that Telkom cables kept being stolen and a reliable service could never be provided, and the cellular ISP's just didn't have anything worth while.

As the years went on, the package prices constantly dropped, and the monthly bandwidth allocation constantly grew.

I'm currently on their 8Gig a month package that only costs R592, and they top me up half way through the month with an extra 8Gig for free. That's 16 Gig a month for R592.

If I have any big downloads that I want to do, I do them between midnight and 8am the following day because 80% of what I download between those hours is also free.

Is there another ISP that gives you 48Gig of bandwidth a month at pretty decent speeds for R592 a month?

I am using iBurst both for private and business use, and although the speed can occasionally be a little slower than I like, at least it's up 99.9% of the time, as opposed to Telkom that while I have a phone line, it was down about 70% of the time in my area.

Very often I achieve download speeds of around 75-120KBPS. I'm not sure how that compares to one of the cellular providers and their data services, and I am happy with that for now.

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Permalink Reply by Ziggy Heuer on August 25, 2011 at 12:33

Hi Quinton, iBurst still uses adsl to get to their wi-max tower, which is the same technology Neotel uses, where as our service is dedicated point to point High speed broadband links, so when comparing apples to apples, we don't re-sell adsl, we plug straight into the internet exchange in cape town and johannesburg, giving our clients a corporate class product. I don't however think you should change if you are happy, our goal is not to compete on price, but on quality of service. also our VoIP links don't go through the internet like Vox and all those guys, there again we use diginet quality links of empty bandwidth to route calls. We take our end user services very seriously in that if we can't offer a guaranteed service, we don't do it.

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Permalink Reply by George Gombay on August 25, 2011 at 11:29

Hello Ziggy,

I would think that a natural reaction of any prospective customer of your offerings who is running a business would be to ask him or herself it it would be a safe choice in the long run to go with your service. From the way you put it, I get the impression that you are a new entrant in the local market.

In other words, if I were running a business with 100 employees who rely on the internet, I would hate to find out after having cancelled my ADSL connections in order to switch over to you service that you were no longer around the following year.

One of your challenges is to convince your public that you have the commitment and all else that it takes to be in for the long-haul. If you have an overseas major, perhaps they have the longevity and resources which you are already emphasizing to your prospective customers in order to reassure them?

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Permalink Reply by Ziggy Heuer on August 25, 2011 at 12:27

we've been growing for about 10 years, are fully independant and have a national footprint

It seems to me that South Africans are scared of wireless as they're so used to Telkom & the c*** servicve they receive from them, it's all they know, so it's what they deem the standard to be.

Sorry, all i'm trying to sayt is that we're extremely professional, & very passionate about what we do. & I can asure you, you won't get a better service from anyone else, Telkom, Neotel, or 3g. but yet with their financial muscle in advertising, people just buy into their marketing. I suppose it's just one of those things we have to contend with as a business in this country