Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Internet hell


Is this internet connectivity signal dead or alive? 
MTN in Nigeria sucks so bad. 
Past week paid for, with not one minute of usable signal (including overnight), and not only is my money gone, additional money has vamoosed from the SIM card as well.  MTN steals "credit" for fun.

What's strange is that it sustained rates over 1000kb/s on a recent Sunday evening in Lagos Island - completely baffling pleasant surprise. 
On my usual location on Lagos Mainland, MTN internet is dead. 
In Ogun State, dead. 
So I migrated to the island, still dead. 

I tried this arbitrage scam: use a blackberry internet plan on your modem, browse without a data limit - very funny.  I just found a more promising one here. 
I try to unsubscribe for the future: text NO to 21600 - no way. 
And they stole an additional N1000. 


Using a different product right now.  But Ah'll be back!
FOOD, WATER, and INTERNET, are (wo)man's three basic needs. 

4 comments:

t said...

Using visafone internet service on Lagos Mainland (Ikeja/Oregun) right now. Smile on my face, though the daily plan (N500 for 150MB) is quickly exhausted. At least it's there. And it's in the hundreds of Kb/s. Awesome.

t said...

If there's so much bandwidth available - from Glo-1, Main One, and other undersea cables, why is internet speed and penetration still so low in Nigeria?
According to this report, you may blame your slow internet on the muscle of the dominant phone companies.
"The Nation: MainOne flays influence of ‘dominant players’

MainOne flays influence of ‘dominant players’
================================================================================
Adline Atili on 21/06/2012 00:02:00


The overriding influence of ‘dominant market players’ is responsible for
inability to provide last mile connectivity to Nigerians, Chief Executive
Officer (CEO) of MainOne Cable Company, Ms Funke Opeke has said.
Despite availability of ample bandwidth from numerous submarine cables that have
landed the shores of the country, the “last mile” or “last kilometre,”
which is the final leg of delivering connectivity from a communications provider
to a customer, is lacking, especially in rural areas.
Opeke, while decrying inadequate backbone infrastructure to complement the
submarine cables operational in the country, said the infrastructure that exist
was proprietary and controlled by “very dominant market players.”
“The infrastructure to deliver last mile services is proprietary and
controlled by very dominant market players who would rather use it for their
profit than make it available. That is why the retail user price differential
continues to exist,” she said.
Opeke said despite the challenges, MainOne had continued to invest in delivery
of affordable broadband services in Nigeria and the West African region in two
years of operation. She said this was imperative if the nation hoped to be at
the top of indices of development.
“The biggest challenge was getting the capacity that we brought into Nigeria
and Ghana across the region to reach the people and businesses where they need
the service. But looking back two years now, we were totally unproven in the
market and the viability of our services was something yet to be experienced,
which was subject to speculation. But we can confidently say today that our
services have proven to be extremely reliable and highly available,” she said.
She said aside the initial investment of $240million, the company had invested
an additional $15million, making a total of $255million (N40.8billion).
She announced a major expansion programme and deployment of metro fibre to other
cities in the country and countries in West Africa, such as Togo,
interconnecting through Ghana and the Republic of Benin from Nigeria; adding
that the Republic of Burkina Faso and Niger, among others, were in the works.
Ms Opeke noted that the landing of the submarine cable, which is Africa’s
first premier submarine cable system, in July 2010, had so far reduced Internet
bandwidth costs and increased accessibility for Nigerians.
The Head of Sales Ms Bolanle Ogundogba disclosed that the company had signed a
major agreement with Tata Communications for content delivery network solutions,
to deliver live video streaming from across the world to its customers.
The solution, which would be launched next month, Ms Ogundogba said, would
enable the company stream the Olympics in real time, offering its over customers
a better platform to access information from anywhere."

t said...

Visafone is working FAST (peaking well over 1000kb/s at night and half that during work hours). Lovely.
But it seems to have a hyperactive counter...before you know it, the allotted bandwidth is gone. Some kind of bug...they wouldn't do this on purpose, would they?

t said...

How happy am I to have fast internet for a change?
Baybaybaybaybaybe I feeeel like I'm flyyying over the moooon!

Previously on UpNaira

 

Followers