I was using and Local ISP for around 4 years, the offered Wireless Internet and for quite some time they were the best service provider in town…
Last year they started pulling in a Fibre network and promised we would wait about 4 months before it will be available in my area, about the same time the wireless service started giving issues and it became worse and worse. No amount of calls or visits to their offices made a difference. My admin lady is struggling like hell completing and getting quotes out to customers and changing from one web page to another could in some cases take more than 5 minutes. This was last night after 6:
The previous night we could not work at all, so yesterday morning I lost it, while complaining on a local FB page someone mentioned the the OpenServe Fibre network in my area was completed in April already and with me always on the road, I have missed the installation of that one completely.
Around lunch time yesterday, I contacted Afrihost and applied for Fibre connection, this morning Openserve was at the gate for installation and at 10 am things have changed to this:
I am always trying to support local business people, but why should we if the local guy takes a year plus to get fibre to your door while people from 500km away can do it in less than 24Hours, ridiculous…
I take my hat off for for the Afrihost/Openserve team…
And the best part, I did not have to change anything on my internal network, I still rum my CAPsMan Microtic Network as is… just had to Change my PPPoE settings…
I remember the complex we used to stay in also had Openserve fibre. I also got pretty quick turnaround times via Afrihost to get up and running. The same with our current house with Vumatel.
I must say that Afrihost (in my opinion) tends to just work and keep working, but you may have a slight delay in getting immediate support when something does go wrong, but they really do have some knowledgeable people on their side, so if you provide as much information as possible (including some of the typical basic steps that were tried) they tend to have the correct person respond and then have things resolved pretty quickly.
OpenServe is probably the best thing Telkom did in the last couple of years. My OpenServe fibre has been down exactly 2 times, for no more than 2 days, over the last 3 - 4 years…
I agree. When I still had OpenService fibre, it really just worked. I had this Nokia termination box that occasionally required a power cycle, but the rest was just fine.
Then we moved and now we have Frogfoot fibre. Down almost daily… though usually only for a few minutes at most, and generally I have no complaints about the speed. But I do have an LTE modem as backup… some days you need it.
I concur. We had OpenServe for the last 4 years. Can’t remember whether it’s ever been down. I don’t even have to cycle my Nokia modem. OpenServe even moved my fibre point for free once and another time fixed it for free (when my electrician accidently let the pipe with the cable in it fall, snapping the glass).
Well, perhaps they billed Mweb, but Mweb never billed me for it, but either way I don’t know about it.
My biggest gripe with my network is unfortunately that my main Asus router lost the controller for four of its eight netwerk points… Not it is pretty useless, because I need at least 8. The AI mesh is also only that good. Had quite a bit of reliability issues.
Basically, the Mweb, OpenServe combination have served me exceptionally well. Was a little on the expensive side initially (not Mweb, but OpenServe), but their prices came down significantly and now I pay for a 200/100 link R50 more than I used to pay for a 40/20 link four years ago.
My Microtik has also blown one of its ports. Port 5, which is usually used for the PPPoE connection via the Fibre connection. I reconfigured the router so that Port 5 is disabled and Port 1 is now the PPPoE port. But if the pattern continues, I’ll probably look at another product in the future.
I campaigned quite a lot in our neighbourhood for Frogfoot fibre (even though we already had OpenServe). I figured that having two fibre providers couldn’t hurt?
Turns out it could hurt - they messed up driveways, cut off water supplies, messed up gardens, cut off water supplies, cut through cables, cut off water supplies… all of this happened more than a year ago and their fibre is still not lit.
I’ve been on Openserve fibre for 3 years now and it’s been brilliant. And then, for some reason, Vuma decided to install fibre as well, totally ruining driveways and grass in our street. Was a terrible inconvenience to be honest.
Anyway, still sticking to Openserve and Afrihost. It’s been rock solid and I can’t remember anything being down ever.
A quick wireless speed test on my phone; I really can’t complain. It’s actually a little faster on my PC
They often use subcontractors. My fibre connection was damaged on the street (turns out a flexible conduit length will be killed by the sun), but the line remained up. Apparently there’s like 4 strands in there and only 3 of the 4 was damaged. So I called up Vox… who called Frogfoot… who called the subcontractor… who could not get hold of me for 4 days, for reasons I still don’t understand. They finally pitched up on a Saturday afternoon. Nicest guys you can imagine. One of them is a musician, runs his own youtube channel. They pulled new Fibre… anyway while they are here they tell me the install is a bit of a shambles, I should tell Vox, I might get the repair for free…
For probably 3 years I was basically heading the campaigning to get fibre in our neighbourhood. Small guys came and went, lots of promises, nothing happening, but we kept at it with the big guys as well as the smaller ones.
Suddenly beginning of this year Openserve contractors started showing up, they used the existing Telkom poles to run the fibre, so installation was quite quick. I preordered from Afrihost and the day it went live they called me to make a installation appointment, the next day they were here and a hour later I was up and running. Pure internet joy since then.
Then 2 or so months ago other contractors pitch up and start digging up the street front and eventually we find out it’s Metro now also installing fibre. They trenched underground where Openserve did very little underground, so obviously a big mess.
They dug up some driveways but drilled under others, I made it clear that I won’t tolerate any damage to my driveway, that the pavers are loose so could be taken out and put back without breaking or damaging anything. Eventually they decided to drill under my driveway and apart from a trench in the lawn in front of my house where the grass hasn’t recovered fully yet, you won’t even say they were here. There was 3 different contractors involved and I must say the entire operation impressed me.
They also dug trenches all along the tar road right on the edge next to the sidewalk and crossed the street in some places, everything properly repaired, so we’ll see how that holds up in the long run.
Apparently the Metro is also live in our area now but I’m sticking with Openserve since I’m very happy with them, plus the same package on Metro also with Afrihost is R100 more expensive.
