Letter from Switzerland

ADSL South Africa (Broadband South Africa), 6 March 2007

ADSL South Africa has received a letter from Switzerland that we would like to share with you…

I am a South African living in Switzerland. I have a number of customers in South Africa whom I still support remotely.

I have tested my ADSL connection in Switzerland locally and I permanently get transfer rate of in excess of 4000kbps.

I tried al 3 of your recommended speed tests and get results as follows:

After 10 minutes, I am still waiting for a result from the Telkom speed test, so I will assume that has just cone to sleep.

On the Gamco speed test I get 1.19Mbps

On the Sentech speed test I get 2Mbps

From http://speedcheck.ch I get 5.8Mbps

I would guess that there are international bandwidth limitations, so can accept that these SA speed tests are a bit slower than Swiss ones, but the fact that I am still waiting for the Telkom one is unbelievable.

Just to let you know, I have a 5500kbps ADSL package and this costs me 68 Swiss Francs per month (that is Rand 405.00 per month), and I get proper download speeds (in relation to my contracted speed), my typical download speed to local mirrors (Switch for example) is over 700k bytes per second and my connection is uncapped.

My suggestion is that if you want a reasonably priced ADSL connection with excellent bandwidth is that you emmigrate to Switzerland if you can!

I did notice a number of technical points on the web site which are not accurate – for example, there is mention in your ‘Introduction to ADSL’ section that ADSL is simply an upgrade to your telephone line – this is not correct, ADSL is a technology which utilises existing copper from your endpoint to the ADSL concentrator. In the same sentence you mention the dataflow could also be wireless. ADSL does not work on wireless connections at all, this is totally incorrect. There are certainly broadband capabilities for wireless devices, but they do NOT use ADSL technology.

I would modify the following sentence (copied from your web-site):

ADSL (Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line) is the term used to describe the “line” through which your Internet data flows. It is simply an upgrade of your existing telephone line, so that the line can handle more data at once. When I mention “line”, the data flow could also be wireless, and some companies provide this service as opposed to fixed line options.

to:

ADSL (Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line) is a technology which provides broadband Internet connections on existing copper telephone subscriber lines. This is a new technology aimed to enhance the data transfer capacity of existing subscriber telephone lines within their own limitations. (ADSL utilises spread-spectrum technology on copper lines in order to achieve these higher bandwidths).

Also available are broadband connections utilising wireless technologies. These technologies also adopt spread-spectrum technology in order to achieve broadband connections, but these technologies are not ADSL technologies at all. These technologies are highly sophisticated spread spectrum radio frequency technologies, and these MUST not be confused with ADSL as they are not the same thing.

They should, however provide the same result in theory.

Hamish Guthrie

ADSL South Africa(Broadband South Africa) welcomes suggestions or constructive criticism that will help to improve our service to you. Hamish’s letter is an excellent example of just that.