# General Business Category > Technology Forum >  Fibre optic upgrade

## ians

Afrihost has offered one of my customers a fibre line with a modem and router....cool...now they have super fast internet...or do they...a 10 meg line? 

I have a 10 meg line from Telkom (phone line)...we wont go into details...all i am gona say is i have a rubber mallet and a 30 mm thick steel plate in my office for when i have to deal with telkom...one good thing is I only have to pay half the bill every month because the line is forever down...thanks to the private contractor (open serve) who look after the line  :Frown:  ...between the ads on youtube and most other social media platform and the buffer signal i get to watch the odd movie. 

Do i spend more money and upgrade to a fibre 10 meg line? 

Some of my concerns with regards to the afrihost fibre line...you only get about 8 m of cable onto your property ...then you pay R150 per metre for the additional cable to get it to your lounge(this is what i am told) The other issue is the line installations...man i thought alarm people do a crap job...they have nothing on fibre line installer...i am not familiar with fibre cables...but i would assume a monkey hanging between your house and the trees on your property would damage the cable...would you not need to enclose the fibre cable in some sort of protection...clipping the cable down a face brick wall then through the wall and up the inside.

Anyone familiar with data setups for home and small business...please educate me.

Why would i want a fibre 10 meg line...i would have thought a 1 gig line would be worth the fibre installation...i do realise it cost more the faster the line.

How much abuse can a fibre line endue?

Considering the special tools required for fibre terminations...repair costs to the customer?

Cost to relocate points?

Fibre to the moderm...then cat 5 or 6 to the rest of the house...or is wireless now fast enough to view movies etc without buffering?

How would you link 3 TV's in one house...if they are older models and are not smart TV's?

From my experience with the 10 meg telkom line...the modem/router is ok to view stuff on a tablet or phone.

There seems to be a trend of people cancelling DSTV and moving over to fibre for better value for money (there sports channels...with plenty ads available legal or not)...then there is netflix...i suppose if you into watching brain dead movies...it is cheaper than DSTV.

There are also so many pirate download sites for the people who like watching series.

Is it worth the cost to upgrade to fibre with unlimited data (normally capped or throttle at 999 gigs)?

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## ians

it seems when you start to ggogle ...it gets rather interesting with regards to "free setup" and "installation cost" 


"My complaint refers to their claim of "free installation" on the Vumatel website. They say this refers to a technician coming to my house and setting up the free WiFi router. Seriously? They gave me the router with the cellophane still sealed on the box. Nothing was set up, and the firmware was not upgraded. What I thought it meant was that they would cover the cost of the Vumatel installation, of R1710, like other ISPs do. There is no clarification on their web site either, but they do claim to pay the Vuma monthly line rental."

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## ians

it sounds like my free 10 meg line installation from telkom...2 open serve contractors arrive at my house to do the free installation...they glue a line along the wall and fit a plug socket...when i asked about the "setup" ...the reply..."sorry we dont have any stock of the modem/routers...i must go collect it from the Pavilion telkom store once i receive an sms...a week later...then 3 hours on the phone to 10210 to set it up myself  :Frown:  ...thank goodness the public are such suckers...it makes work easy for service providers.

a week later no internet...the monkeys jumped on the line from the pole to the house and pulled the cable out the junction box on the pole...after a week (just before Christmas) i found out that open serve was on Christmas shutdown until mid Jan...so i got my ladder climbed the pole and repaired it myself and secured the line properly...a couple weeks later i got a call from open serve to say they could attend to my problem...then the billing confusion began (still not sorted out...and its mid June)

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## IanF

Ian
I am with cool ideas on Vumatel at home. And it just works. We watch streaming TV all the time or have google music going. At work we got Iconnect with high speed and capped package, this bought out by Cellc and so far so good. I love getting the big 100MB file now, it is just so quick.

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## ians

My Telkom special was R799 per month for a normal telephone line with unlimited data (999gig) 

What i learnt from this experience...

The free installation...wasn't possible because they had no stock off the items offered on the special...so i had to drive to the store collect the product and waste hours setting it up myself.

You get what you pay for (free installation) a really crappy cable installation...at least open serve is now a private contractor to telkom...so you dont get the "we dont run cable on your property...you must get a contractor to install pipes with draw wires"...and no different to the private contractors who install fibre line onto your property...you get what you pay for...  free installation...not sure if they improve the installation if you pay the R150 per metre if the installation is further than 8-10 m...which i would assume is the case in most free standing properties.

Your free telkom to telkom numbers are not "all" free...you will find the public are getting smart and porting away form telkom...using private companies to  "look after thier line" so you get billed for the call....i did complain...the response...I must contact the person to find out if they are ported away from telkom...it is not Telkoms responsibility to inform you that you are going to pay for the call because it is ported...as with cellphones ...however as i informed them...if a mobile number is ported you are made aware that it is ported by the 3 beeps before the line connects.

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## wernerdp

We had Open Serve to do an installation , they are not allowed to climb into the roof , so ended up doing it myself .
Secondly I dont think Open Serve is such a private company , look where there bakkies come from , and yes your new president have lots of shares in that company .

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## Dave A

Sounds like I got lucky with my Open Serve and Telkom ISP free installation. 

I had two Open Serve teams racing each other to execute delivery.
The install team had to run the line through the roof, which they did without a hitch.
The installation included delivery and setup of the lightbox and modem.
The overhead line has survived being used and abused by monkeys on a pretty regular basis.

My only complaint is connectivity is an occasional issue - where I have to reboot the modem to get things operational again. Seems pretty trivial relative to some of the reports above.

Kinda agree about the Open Serve observation - seems like another instance of SOE capture, although in this case at least the contractor is delivering.

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## ians

> Kinda agree about the Open Serve observation - seems like another instance of SOE capture, although in this case at least the contractor is delivering.


Light box?

Better hope the monkeys dont damage the line between the 16 December and 16 January...Open serve are on annual shutdown...or as in my case...lucky i have step ladders...a punch down tool...cable ties and a few other network tools and testers...they also normally leave the exchange in front of my house open ...and there is no bill for the time the line is down  :Wink: 

Now i just need to figue out how to fix the water pipes...no water in our area since this morning.

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## Leesajohnson

Fiber optic installation is good for high-speed internet connectivity. A technical person will guide about the Fiber optic installation process.

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## rawoke

Fibre 10mpbs is plenty ! NetFlix for HD streaming requires 5mbps.. Just stay away from Afrihost... I hear now good stories there ! (Including personal experience)

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## AndyD

I still run 4 meg copper ADSL and I have no problems streaming netflix etc.

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## ians

The ques are getting shorter at the telkom stores...no longer "we are experiencing high call volumes" ...they are moving over to fibre and offering free wireless phones...could it be a desperate attempt to try win back customers who are moving to other companies faster than they realise what is happening.

News article Telkom subscriber declines...the writing has been on the wall since the first lot of trenching for the new fibre network started...i dont think Telkom go  slice of the cake this time. 

Anyone else getting smart with the shared wireless internet... considering you can get speeds of over 100Mbps using wireless technology...sharing your 4 or 10 Mbps with your mates like most people are doing with their DSTV 5 users option...i person installs an uncapped *FUP free service and simply hooks up wireless transmitter on the roof and a receiver on the mates roof. 

IT is a no brainer for neighborhood watch groups which have cameras around the hood and want patrollers to have access to the cameras while on patrol or to transmit back to a control room...the bigger the more.

This crap of having to pay for a fixed line you the household to share ...sounds great until you leave home...then you back to buying data...start adding up all the bills every month...suckers are paying.

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Andromeda (24-Jul-19)

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## pedruid

> Ian
> I am with cool ideas on Vumatel at home. And it just works. We watch streaming TV all the time or have google music going. At work we got Iconnect with high speed and capped package, this bought out by Cellc and so far so good. I love getting the big 100MB file now, it is just so quick.



What do you use for your landline?

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## IanF

> What do you use for your landline?


At work we still have a landline, at home we just use cell phones.

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## pedruid

> At work we still have a landline, at home we just use cell phones.


Thanks, my cousin in Uk does the same.

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## pedruid

> Ian
> I am with cool ideas on Vumatel at home. And it just works. We watch streaming TV all the time or have google music going. At work we got Iconnect with high speed and capped package, this bought out by Cellc and so far so good. I love getting the big 100MB file now, it is just so quick.


IanF, mind sharing the site you use for streaming TV?

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## IanF

> IanF, mind sharing the site you use for streaming TV?


Hi
I use Netflix currently and have used Amazon prime for a few months.

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## pedruid

> Hi
> I use Netflix currently and have used Amazon prime for a few months.


 :Mad: So nothing with Rugby?

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## ians

Telkom have contacted me to upgrade my current service to fibre....no thanks... so which service? with no FUP or ties to a cheap crappy router or installation cost. It time to make provision for the fibre line or is it not better to wait and go 5 G? 

This telephone/data thing starts adding up... you add the cost per month for the fix line...ADSL/fibre... then you start adding your phone contract...data purchases...add the wife and her phone and data purchases... then the kids phones and data...these companies must be printing money from all us stubborn suckers.

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## Jackt

I am very tired of "up to" speeds being quoted.
What is the minimum guaranteed speed is more appropriate.

We have fiber in our area suddenly. 
I have LTE which used to be great, (mostly above 50Mbps, now hardly 20Mbps, and never above 10Mbps upload) but speeds are often slow lately, and all I get when phoning to query is that it will be escalated.  :Frown:  

Now I ask the Fiber marketers and they can only guarantee "UP TO" 
I need a guarantee of "Above" and that they will upgrade there system when it gets below a certain level.

Is this possible with any provider?

What is the benefit of spending the money for super fast fiber when my LTE is faster than fiber at the same price?

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## adrianh

LTE is NOT faster. I run 100/100 fiber and it is really fast. 

Of course they can only quote "UP TO" - they have ZERO control over downstream service providers - If your Torrent site sits behind a 56K modem in Russia then there is nothing that your local service provider can do about it.

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## Jackt

> LTE is NOT faster. I run 100/100 fiber and it is really fast. 
> 
> Of course they can only quote "UP TO" - they have ZERO control over downstream service providers - If your Torrent site sits behind a 56K modem in Russia then there is nothing that your local service provider can do about it.


Yes, I'm very aware of that, but local speed tests should give good results.

And another question, what can we as customers do to get faster international internet?

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## adrianh

> Yes, I'm very aware of that, but local speed tests should give good results.
> 
> And another question, what can we as customers do to get faster international internet?


Speed testing is a bit of a misnomer. Each service provider provides their own test bench which is really a server sitting on their own fiber network. The problem is that the test is not really indicative of real world conditions. It is like using your driveway as benchmark to show the fuel consumption of your car.

Although the speed is really good you are still limited by various factors like local network loading and international bandwidth. The thing about fiber is that it gives you bandwidth rather than pure raw speed. What I mean is that although you can only get say a 2meg download speed you can get that on multiple channels. Peer to peer downloads are super fast because they use multiple ports and of course 5 people can watch 5 different movies simultaneously in your house. I can do a 3 x 1Gig downloads simultaneously in about 15 minutes.

Be careful of small companies offering fiber services - they may not have the backbone infrastructure to give you the best possible speeds.

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## adrianh

If you do a looooooooooot of downloading then high speed (or better put - high bandwidth) fiber is for you - if you download the odd movie then you can get away with lower speeds.

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## adrianh

Another thing to keep in mind is that they quote speeds in BITS per second. The true maximum download speed is more like that figure divided by 8 to 16 so lets settle on 10. The max bandwidth you can get on a 100 up 100 down line is no more that 10 Meg.

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## ians

So what is the big deal.

I have an ADSL line - A router - A lit box - and a TV... you watch the odd netfix movie and a bit of youtube and maybe do a little searching on google... you may even message while watching the box... no big deal.

It only starts becoming a big deal as your network grows... your kids get devices ...they start gaming ...you install a home automation system and add in a few 2 Meg cameras ...then see a special on 8 meg cameras because the crime is hit an all high in the hood (by the way cameras dont prevent crime) and you want to view while at work or away from home.... you start downloading series ...etc etc...now its time to start paying attention.

So its starts... 

Fibre - because you need faster speed.

Router - the router is suddenly is just not doing what is required.

Switches - you start looking at a network infrastucture with switches and POE.

Cabling - then you realise the cat 5e cca cable installed just doesnt cut it any longer.

Access points - high speed access points are installed to offer better coverage and bandwidth ...while all your mates a doing tequila shots on your neighbours wifes hooters on your pub counter ...while live on their favourite social media platform...just imagine being that guy who didnt have the speed and bandwidth  :Wink:

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