When I saw full page advert posted on Daily Nation showing? Mr.Michael Joseph talking about the True Broadband, I got so excited . At long last I found the ISP to provide me with fast internet promised by the launch of Seacom. Earlier, I was frustrated with the refusal by SeacomLive? to tell me the ISPs who had bought the bandwidth from them (check separate story about it here.)??? So that evening I went to Safaricom customer care office and bought? Safaricom modem.
The marketers there tried to convince me to buy without knowing that I was already convinced? and I just needed the explanation on how to install it if there was any.? Willing to help they activated the modem for me on their computers,? plus the blah blah of winning something. ?Looking at the key features I nodded my head with approval. This one in particular? HSDPA Downlink up to 3.6mbps. caught my eyes
Believe me that marks the end of my happy time with Safaricom modem. You can guess my expectation of 3.6 mbps speed , having been used to a speed of 512 kbps provided with my former ISP.? True to the word the first thing which popup after connecting is Safaricom is now connected: Speed 3.6mbps.
- Connection
After that hype and promise I could not believe it when my connection started timing out immediately.? I mean with a speed of 3.6mbps even if it is fluctuating it should be coming down to 500kbps at least and that could still be good enough to keep me going.
The worst moments
Take a look at the true broadband at worst times. For someone dealing with internet based clients you can even cry when the only thing you can get from true broadband is this
Zero Connections
Happy times
It is true and a fact that sometimes it becomes really fast, and that is why I am very frustrated client, Mr. Michael Joseph if you are reading this. The reason why I bought this modem was to get fast constant or consistent internet and not one which is great one minute and the next minute my browsing is showing me Page Load Error
Not Loading
A glimpse of the best times with the modem gives you this
Happy Times
So why is the promise of 3.6mbps not a reality? The following came to mind:
May be Safaricom gadget or modem does not communicate well with their boasters. Normally when fully connected the symbol showing the network connection is followed with a number of bars just like the one for the phones. Now this one keeps on being on and off, an indication of the difficulty in communicating with the boaster. The funny thing with this explanation is the fact that I have Safaricom line for my phone and my phone does not show the same fluctuation in Network connection.? Plus being in Nairobi I expected the full benefits of closer proximity to Safaricom headquarter and possible availability of the best boaster than anywhere else.
Not so happy after all
Another explanation is may be, consumers were deceived completely and in that case Mr.Michael Joseph misrepresented the facts about Safaricom broadband. The word going round and confirmed by Safaricom itself is that its is connected or about to be connected to Seacom.? If you reading this and you use Safaricom modem tell me if you have the same problems?
Welcome to my world. My safcom's been that way for the past 2 months (yes, even THEN, it'd give me the "now connected to 3.6 mbps" prompt).
Bullcrap.
Zain ups its game and I'm going SafCom BYEBYE!
i share in your anger,,i feel so cheated by this Safaricom modem..it is now disgusting..officially quite disgusting..my lan 1024mbps is much faster and reliable than '3g' 3.6mbps ya safaricom..i am tired of this fraud.
Hey, its not all that bad, I have had my share of disappointment with safaricom but trust me, they are still the best we have. Now, I clearly note poor network coverage. You do not at all have a HSDPA signal. Where you have signal, notice it says EDGE, which still means a bad coverage. I guess what they should do is improve their signal everywhere and knowing where you live, its a shame that they dont have proper signal there, they claim to be covering all over. Wrong advertising, I guess you have a right to complain. Please note that where you have 3g coverage, NO ONE WILL BEAT SAFARICOM.
I am sorry to say, but this is exactly what i meant when i said in http://www.truekenyan.com that we have been duped. Many people thought we were pessimists but i clearly explained that we are realists. If the speeds will really help people in Kenya, its us who are IT savvy. But we have been used to Kenya conship and propaganda, the latest by Safaricon. How dare he put a full page ad on both papers to hoodwink Kenyans of speeds that never were. And he had the guts to say within the same period that the pricing issue had been overrated. Are the speeds they are offering the ones justifying non reduction of prices? Its high time we now bite the bullet and accept that unless we become proactive in this fight, we will forever llose. Say no to the cheaters. Name them and shame them.
http://www.truekenyan.com
and by the way the current cheaper 'flash-disk' looking modem (safaricom broadband) is worse than the earlier expensive 'taily' one (safaricom mobile office). I've got both and i prefer the older one.
also very frustrated with this 'tru broadband' stuff.' It may be a 'track it' case in larger scale
the older one has never had complaints whatsoever…..
I cant quite understand why you are experiencing such low speeds. I am experiencing much much faster download and upload speeds. My pages open up instantly, my youtube starts immediately and doesn’t stop(fine, the whole video might not have loaded in the time it’d take to idly scratch my back, recover and stare back at the screen again, dont expect incendiary incomprehensible speeds. Just know you’ll be able to surf the net without unnecessary delays. You can go to the computer to surf the web fullstop, without having something closeby, a newspaper or another open window, to distract you. I am enjoying it needless to say!
It is not as bad as most are putting it. Safcom may have not been entirely truthful in their advertising (e.g. not really 100% 3G availability in Nairobi) but even before Seacom, Safcom had become the best Internet provider e.g. Youtube videos would stream without buffering. Come Seacom and latencies reduced to about 300-400ms and I've been able to download at 1Mbps. The high latency could partly be due to inefficiencies in the GSM architecture itself.
Note that the 3.6Mbps is only an indication of what the modem is capable of, like when you connect you computer LAN cable and it show 1Gbps – it does not mean that you get 1Gbps throughput.
yeah guys, with wireless modems, if you are on the Edge spectrum it doesnt matter whether you have 3 or 5 bars, the max will be 86kbps d/s. It has to be on 3G or whatever they call it on safcom for you to experience 300kbps and upwards
Hi Kachanywa mine works okay and the speeds are pretty okay. What I can request you is to send us either your number or email address or any form of contact so that we call you and help. please send your number via the following email address ([email protected])
@Boniface – Please post your trace route results here –
http://www.speedtest.net.
Lets expose this facade!!
@ Kebaya, see link below for my speedtest results
http://www.speedtest.net/result/532929631.png
We should not confuse performance expectation of a leased line with an on-demand link (if I may call it that) especially on a GSM network.
Also, Safcom's data charging regime (per Mb) dictates that they provide the highest speed as possible so that you are on to your next Mb before you know it – i.e. Safcom makes more money the more Mb are downloaded.
My speed has increased in the last two days. It sometime experience slow connection but it is now much much better. I think Safaricom is really doing something to improve their services.
Thanks, that was fast and to the point. Mr. Francis Maleva, continue with the good work
Many people have told me that, the people having the old modems are much better off
Sijatumia this modem for long. but the time I used it was great only for one hr mayb next time I should use it for long to know these
I have used the modem for a couple of months now. I notice the strength of the signal depends on location but it is still commendable. safaricom, Keep up the good work. However, you honestly should improve the connectivity ''signal''.
I did contact Safaricom after they promptly commented here and left their contact. I must say that the guy i talked with Mr. Francis Maleva was of a great help. The thing is the 3G network does not cover very place around and it seems that was the problem. The setup of my modem was permanent only EDGE preferred meaning only 3G network. So since then I started changing to GSM preferred only when there is no 3G network and now it is not that bad.
Hey guys, i see most of you are complaining about the speeds you are getting from your safcom's 3G modem.
Well let me break it down for you…safcom is not the one to blame on most of the occasions… i am a web designer and through study and analysis of the internet as well as how safcom's 3G network works i can say that most of your speed analysis (@ kachwanya) is incorrect.
If you want to realize the maximum throughput of your internet connection, dont open a webpage and check the speeds..if that is what u did then u got it all wrong.
Go to youtube.com and open up a video and let it start streaming, or best of all download a file over 5mb and check the speeds then…the way 3g internet operates is similar to how a car operates…when u start driving si utaanza from a slow speed and accelerate to high speeds over time?
Secondly…unasema u see allot of timeouts…has it occurred to you that the websites u visit have servers that might be overloaded with allot of traffic hence cannot respond to your requests in time hence u see tha timeouts.. If you see a timeout on one page…try loading a different website and see if it loads.
If you want to really know ur true speeds…go to http://www.speedtest.net and see for yourself….dnt trust what u see on ur pc.
And you might also want to check on your signal strength for 3g…poor signal can cause speed degradation…mine is full thru out….no flactuations.
As for me safcom just rox…i constantly realize speeds of over 2mbps when am streaming a video, downloading files or loading image intensive webpages.
Though i have to say that at times but on rare occasions i do experience complete outages…but i never get low speeds when i have access to the internet.
am getting alot of mixed reviews on safaricom 3g and orange 3g+ on users. Am now confused, i need a constant above 100kbps, a constant, so please tell me how are the speeds in 2011?
how about this new one with 21mbps (safaricom)
this is nothing compared to the service being offered by orange,i bought their modem with the hopes that i will atleast get a minimum speed of 250kpbs since the modem is apparently “3g+” which means a spped of 21 mbps,imagine my surprise when i hooked it up to my laptop and the speed dint go above 20kbps,yes thats right TWENTY kbps,i called cc and all they could say was “its coz u dont get proper signal where you live” i live in nairobi city not in a forest,well anyway i switched to safcom after they introduced the 3000 a month unlimited offer and i must say the speed is not that bad,minimum is about 40kbps which browsing and evendownloading afew files
@kachwanya: have you got a solution? i have the same problem. But it’s like, signal/browsing is ok (speed not that amazingly fast, but workable) – when i am working at X, Y, Z rooms in my house. But the same safaricom internet, does not give any signal in room C, on-and-off signal/browsing (download speed) when working from room D. Interestingly, for room D, the signal is better when it’s night time (may be indicating less users?). Any suggestion on how to have save signal/browsing (download speed) in all rooms of the house?