Two years of down, slow and out (but there's a bit of sunshine at least).

This is an honest, truthful review, so please take note that Neil has contacted me several times, and provided good, clear and honest feedback about several repeating problems over the last few months. Secondly, there are some very good, skilled and helpful guys in the field teams. There is no need to get nasty or personal, but since Wispernet is not paying attention to problem reports, clients and potential clients should be aware of what to expect.

It seems other reviews are good, and thus, they seem to favour some areas over others, possibly due to location/climate/comfort/convenience, etc. My experiences are also based on testing my own connection, routing and using my very long history of working skills in electronics, devops, unix, infosec and software engineering. I might be an idiot, but not a complete one.

It might behoove the reader of this review to know that I am not comparing Wispernet against city fibre or large fibre linked connections. My frame of reference would be to compare against Herotel (who did pretty great in the middle of nowhere/matjiesfontein ~1 year) and ViNet who we can not remember any significant downtime for in Tulbagh (~3 years).

With that said, this reflects our experience over two+ years, and relates to the same, repeating problem. Unstable, slow internet and plenty of downtimes. Let's exclude personal hardware and CPE, as everyone in this area and on this tower experiences the same issues. I welcome queries to put you into contact with any client in our area to corroborate this.

1. They seem to never reply to our support emails. Neil promised to look ito this, and we will hopefully see improvement. If I could not get hold of a senior member's personal number, I would have no response or communication with them. This is poor. 2. For two years, the same issues occur. Days of slowing down, reporting it, getting feedback along the lines of "restart your router". As one would expect from Eskom, warnings about service decline and interruption is ignored until something happen, then: 3. downtime could last from hours to days, and excuses like rain/access/etc is used. Wrong tower locations, wrong equipment? Or perhaps ifone pays attention to customer problems, the fault could be remedied prior to a massive failure? 4. Often, the support desk is completely unaware of the technical teams. During downtime, support would reply "there is no downtime currently, sir", while a whatsapp to tech staff would yield "yes, we're rlacing XYZ, the whole area is down". Complete divide between departments. 5. Technology improves logarithmically. It would be best for companies to be pro-active with maintenance (not just respond to problems) and plan ahead. Competition will increase, LEO Sat will eventually launch, and multiply. Playing monopoly is recognisable from the outside, and sets apoor playing field. Passionate teams do passionate work... 6. For pete's sake... STOP ONBOARDING new clients when you know your towers and lines are overutilised (admitted by yourselves). Just STOP.

Please consider this. Consider that the internet isn't just to play a bit of warcraft, but a life source for many. Downtime in rural areas can cost in excess of R1000 per day to travel to locations with reliable ISPs. There are countless folks in our vicinity who have suffered losses, warnings from employers etc. All of this, bitterness, can be avoided with communication and pro-active action, instead of reactive damage control.

Take from this what you will. It's written in a best effort to remain positive, but truthful. Again, thanks to Neil for reaching out, but enough now... communication is a bit better

This review will see an update once we have experienced 2 or 3 months of uninterupted, usable service. (my neighbours are 100% offline now, for some reason)

Yours truly, written with great lag at 5% of our line speed