Read update post here:http://kenyanguru.blogspot.com/2010/06/how-to-choose-right-isp-for-you.html
This is a debate that has been going on for a long time and for some people it has been getting more and more confusing.So I decided to open a post about it on my forum so that people can discuss about it in detail and express there thoughts.
I have also added a poll so that people can vote and in the end we can truly determine which service is the best
Here is the link to the post on the forum.Here
You are also free to leave a comment here if you wish
Here are some speedtests of the local ISPs
1.Butterfly WiFi(KDN)
2.Zuku 256KBps(Wananchi Online)
I dont know where to start. lets start with orange. for me the orange guys are crooks, ur told you'll get download speed(512) upload speed(128/256)wat the fuck this speeds are just on paper.the first one month the speed is ok then there after it goes down. i tell downnloading 5MB takes you a cool 1hour plus. that suckks. Why can they give us the consumer wat we paid for. and the next thing why cant they just change to wireless coz in the estates their are many cut connection. Wat is the work of Kenya Bureau of Standards are they blind. dont they see we are being exploited here. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
ReplyDeletewat the fuck.
Is there really any good unlimited internet service provider these days.the only one I hear good things about is safcom 3G and that's bcoz its limited internet
ReplyDeletehi all
ReplyDeletei recently got connected to Kenya Data Networks where they come and fix a radio at your residence which uses WiMAX technology..i must say that speeds are not as good as promised..customer service is also quite poor in that you have to follow them up..in fact when you follow up and try to get anything sorted they get cheesed off..they do not deliver what they promised and they therefore say that their customers "complain." sometimes you have to follow up for days to get a small thing done.speeds are generally pathetic
i guess readers can judge for themselves whether this is worth it!!! n just a BTW, installation and cost of the radio are WAY TOO HIGH, approximately above ksh. 20,000
Most of our ISPs try to cut costs by pooling too many clients together. pooling is not that bad but the size of the pool is what matters.
ReplyDeleteKenya Bureau of Standards and CCK shuold make sure they do regular visits to check on the credibility of these companies
All I can say is that Safaricom 3G is as bad as the rest, especially in Westlands and Parklands. I have been using this service for 6 months now, speeds have just deteriorated significantly, they have oversubscribed there users. These days I am lucky to be able to load a webpage within 30-60 seconds, which is extremely long. I would advise against Safaricom, as they keep signing up too many users, and depending on your area, it may get clogged.
ReplyDeleteOriginally I weighed the speed vs unlimited usability (which Safaricom does not have) and I opted for speed, but now that's all out the window. The customer rep told me that it will take them 3 months to rectify the situation within Westlands and Parklands, what do I do in the mean time?
Yeah, same here for Safaricom. Am in Karen and the 3G is not good at all. And worse is there,s like no network in the house so you have to look for "hotspots". But I hope fibre will save us from this. Orange's CDMA modem (ZTE) isn't so bad, I get good speeds from around 11pmm and plus its 1bob per min. Alternatively you can unlock the Safaricom 3G modem and use your Orange or Yu line, it should get you better speeds. Cheers.
ReplyDeleteSafaricom... Thieves
ReplyDeletezain... Incompetent
yu... Hu?
Orange... Umm... Incompetent?
Any one who has tried the zuku packages? huawei e220 modem can easily be unlocked for use with any network ( fiezdude@gmail.com)
ReplyDeleteIm on zuku and for a 256kbs it isn't that fast.It is usually fast in the morning and evening only,the fastest internet I have encountered so far would be the butterfly wifi.downloads speeds of 300kbps compared to 30kbps on zuku.
ReplyDeleteHi all, Firstly this is a good job for posting information on any ISP but as can be seen after November 28,2009, no one has posted anything. I still believe that ISPs in Kenya are charging us alot for very poor and low speeds. Anyone up for contention from a technical perspective?. Please post so that others are aware of ISPs. Infact i have met so many people who unfortunately do not understand the difference between shared and dedicated or shared with low/high contention ratio. I seriously also think that there should be laws governing the authenticity of the advertisement of speeds by ISPs. I know CCK will not do it because a usual it likes to sleep over all its work and we know that if Zain, Orange, Safaricom and Yu were to pay 3 bn. shillings for 3G i mean do you think CCK will have the time to act as a regulatory body in the interest of the ordinary Kenyan or as a regulatory body for their bank accounts and pockets..oops!!!
ReplyDeleteWell no one here has answered the question, only made the problem worse. The question is which is the best. Here I was finding this post thinking I found a solution only to see the same things I hear from everyone.
ReplyDeleteTo note, Safaricom's charges are ridiculous. 1k for 300MB is so messed up! I'd clear that in an hour! Though compared to the other networks Safaricom has the fastest. Orange is next, theirs is not bad but the software is very unstable esp on Win7 (gives blue screen every now and then). As for Zain and the other guys, nothing.
As for wired, apparently Net@home and AccessKenya are the best. I get 300kB/s on it.
Oh and when they tell you 128kbps, note the small b, not B. As in it's bits, so if you want the real speed you have to divide by 8 to get it in Bytes. So for a 128kbps connection, you only get 16KBps, 32kbps for 256kbps connection and so on, which is crappy!! So a good 1MBps download speed requires something like HSDPA for 7Mbps, which is what Safaricom had until they started getting a million people on it, and there's no way that's coming to any other company any time soon.
These guys REALLY need to style up! And the way they said that the introduction of fibre optics would make net faster and cheaper. Bastards taking advantage of corruption and the fact that not many kenyans keep track of technology, they can just claim that faster=more money!
*sigh*
Hi guys. As all internet users in Kenya, even you in this blog seem quite frustrated. I tell you, I am since I moved here from europe. But just to encourage some of you and just to open up the mind of those telling that ZUKU gave 30 Kb (instead of 256) and with butterfly he was able to get 300, I'd like to explain something, since they seems not ITC people and don't know exactly the difference between Kb. and KB.
ReplyDeleteMost probably what Jigsawman got is NOT 30 kb but 30 KB. so, a ZUKU 256 kbps. connection is made by 256 kilobit per second. 1 Byte is made of 8 bit, so the reading of 30 KB. (makes sense being 300 with KDN) reading means 30*8= 240 kbps. (which is almost the promised SHARED band to the full). Remember also that being not DEDICATED, to get 240 kbps. on a 256 kbps. line is quite good.
For what concern Butterfly, I also got also sometimes even up to 500 KB. So the 300 KB. that Jigsawman got means actually that he was anjoying a 300*8= 2400/1024= 2,34 Mb. connection. That's impressive in Kenya right now, but it would be considered a SLOW connection in Europe (for instance average speed in Italy was measured on the first week of June 2010 giving a AVERAGE speed of all ADSL connections to 8,9 MB.) and even slower in Japan, where people have enjoyed 100 MB. connection over fibre optic for over a year now.
Looking forward to see when KPLC will finish to renew their cables. as some may know, they added the fibre optic on the electricity line (so that would be quite dangerous to try to steal it). Once they will by ready (I guess in about 3 months to 1 year depending where you are) even in Kenya (THEORETICALLY) we could enjoy 100 MB. connections.
I guess that realistically, to get to that point it will take still several years, but by 2015 all the speeds that we use today (from 256 kbps to 1Mbps) will make us laughing and I guess that by then the average connection will be 10 Mbps for a price that should be around 1500 shillings per month (that in 5 years from now of course, being realistic). so, mark your calender and check again in June 2015 (if we still ,live in this old system of things) and you'll see that by then you'll be enjoying in KENYA the speed that your are now dreaming for a reasonable price.
Good thoughts.First of all you have not read the update post where the bit/byte issue has been addressed.Please read the update post before you make any comments.Secondly speeds are slower in Kenya than in Europe because of the lack of local content therefore very little is hosted on local servers.Ever asked yourself why the government websites are super fast.Its because the servers are local.If you are browsing youtube you have to be directed to a foreign server before you can start streaming.So until there is an increase in local content the speeds here will never be as fast as those in Europe or Japan.KPLC optic fibres will help set up a local fibre optic cable but as long as international content is in demand e.g facebook,email,google(bulk of its services) strain will still be on the undersea cables even if we link every house in the country via fibre optic.About the bandwidth don't expect to have come from dial up and jump to 10mbps speeds in less than a decade.You have to start walking b4 you run
ReplyDelete