Horrible Business UFB experience

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robertjpayne

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#116051 16-Apr-2013 20:49

A couple weeks ago my shared office space upgraded to UFB. The building manager handled the entire process without consulting us directly on a detail based level. Most of us just believed that it would be better than our ADSL2+ connection.

So the provider was http://onefibre.co.nz they provide business only solutions and are not available to residential customers.

I got an email from our office manager stating the internet was switched over before I had headed into the office and quickly hurried on my way to internet of the future.

Upon arriving at the office I quickly fired up my computer and just tried to go to my website which is hosted on US servers and the page loaded excruciating slow. I then continued to do some speed tests and to my shocking discovery our international speeds were sub 1mbits both up and down. National speeds were great 100/50mbits.

The building manager directed me to talk with the UFB provider since they were right next door and they explained that we were on their "Sprint Starter" plan which has no committed international speed rates.

So to get good international speeds you have to increase your "Sprint Plan" and by doing so you get a higher international committed rate as well as a higher priority on international peak rates if nobody else is using the pipeline.

Their committed rates where shockingly bad. For $820 (gst exclusive) a month you get a 5mbit committed international transit. For 10mbit $1445.

In the end we upped to Sprint 1 which got us about 2mbit up and down during the day the upgrade alone was $89 a month and our internet speeds were complete crap compared to our shared ADSL2 line previously.

The poor building manager signed on a 2 year contract and unfortunately was stuck. The contract stated to terminate you had to pay the entire remainder of the contract anyways ( is this not illegal in NZ?? ).

In the end I bowed out of the office space -- I refuse to be extorted for internet to an ISP that is clearly taking advantage of confusing new tech and charging rates that are simply unacceptable. The charge was going to be $75 a month for 2bit up and down during most of the day.

So be careful when choosing a provider and if you can try to figure out what their contention ratio is so you know how much peak slow down you may be getting. Remember ISPs don't pay for GBs they pay for speed.

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Networkn
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#800501 16-Apr-2013 20:55

Something sounds very wrong here. No way on a 100Mbit download should you get 1Mbit unless something is misconfigured or the "sharing" is very shared.

I believe they would be in breach of contract and but I suspect mostly it would be a communication issue.

Obviously you are out of there now, however someone should assist your old building manager.

robertjpayne

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#800506 16-Apr-2013 21:00

Yea exactly... it was extortion even after talking with them this speed was "intentional".

The UFB plan had unlimited GBs. For international you shared a pool with every other one of their customers. You pay for a committed international rate ( they guarantee that speed just for you ) but $89 gets you 64kbs which is a total joke. Whatever they have leftover after they set aside all committed international rates they allow people to burst on. The higher your committed rate the higher priority they gave you on burst rates too.

I feel like they totally hide the fact their international rates are completely crap and cost extortionate amounts to bring it back up to ADSL2 speeds.

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#800510 16-Apr-2013 21:03

robertjpayne: Yea exactly... it was extortion even after talking with them this speed was "intentional".

The UFB plan had unlimited GBs. For international you shared a pool with every other one of their customers. You pay for a committed international rate ( they guarantee that speed just for you ) but $89 gets you 64kbs which is a total joke. Whatever they have leftover after they set aside all committed international rates they allow people to burst on. The higher your committed rate the higher priority they gave you on burst rates too.

I feel like they totally hide the fact their international rates are completely crap and cost extortionate amounts to bring it back up to ADSL2 speeds.

So they offered $89 for 100/50 unlimited ? I am not surprised their speeds are substandard.

Something doesn't seem right. Are you sure you have understood the whole situation properly (No offense).

robertjpayne

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#800514 16-Apr-2013 21:08

Yea I understood everything from them. ISPs don't pay for GBs they only pay for speed. GB caps are there so we self regulate.

Anyways this particular provider works something like this:

They provide 100% unlimited 100% full throttle for national traffic
They buy a certain amount of international speed and spread it across all their customers, the more you pay the higher your base speed is and the higher your priority is for speed not being utilised
Speeds off-hours when no other businesses are utilising their bandwidth is incredibly awesome.. but again off hours only.

It's actually a REALLY good plan for a large business in NZ that deals strictly with national traffic and doesn't care about international or very little international.

All ISPs do this.. they oversell the speed package they purchase. IE spread 1000mbits worth of connections across 200mbits of actual purchased international speed. If everyone is using it at once it slows down..

robertjpayne

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#800515 16-Apr-2013 21:09

networkn:
robertjpayne: Yea exactly... it was extortion even after talking with them this speed was "intentional".

The UFB plan had unlimited GBs. For international you shared a pool with every other one of their customers. You pay for a committed international rate ( they guarantee that speed just for you ) but $89 gets you 64kbs which is a total joke. Whatever they have leftover after they set aside all committed international rates they allow people to burst on. The higher your committed rate the higher priority they gave you on burst rates too.

I feel like they totally hide the fact their international rates are completely crap and cost extortionate amounts to bring it back up to ADSL2 speeds.

So they offered $89 for 100/50 unlimited ? I am not surprised their speeds are substandard.

Something doesn't seem right. Are you sure you have understood the whole situation properly (No offense).

No the $89 was for a committed rate of 64kbs on international transit. The base cost I believe was something like $200 a month just for national traffic.

networkn

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#800519 16-Apr-2013 21:12

robertjpayne:
networkn:
robertjpayne: Yea exactly... it was extortion even after talking with them this speed was "intentional".

The UFB plan had unlimited GBs. For international you shared a pool with every other one of their customers. You pay for a committed international rate ( they guarantee that speed just for you ) but $89 gets you 64kbs which is a total joke. Whatever they have leftover after they set aside all committed international rates they allow people to burst on. The higher your committed rate the higher priority they gave you on burst rates too.

I feel like they totally hide the fact their international rates are completely crap and cost extortionate amounts to bring it back up to ADSL2 speeds.

So they offered $89 for 100/50 unlimited ? I am not surprised their speeds are substandard.

Something doesn't seem right. Are you sure you have understood the whole situation properly (No offense).

No the $89 was for a committed rate of 64kbs on international transit. The base cost I believe was something like $200 a month just for national traffic.

So you tested it out of peak times and could get much higher than the 1mbit you were getting during the day? Did anything in your contract state the speeds you would get?

robertjpayne

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#800521 16-Apr-2013 21:17

I'm just sharing my experience with this provider so people know to read full details of contracts before signing on. The building manager took care of the contracts so I didn't see it specifically but I had several talks with the owner of the ISP.

National traffic was always amazing... because well ISPs don't pay for it ( this is from the ISP owner himself )
International traffic they bought a certain pipeline and crammed everyone into it. Basically on international you start at your committed rate (64kbs for $89) and then if there is leftover you will get some "peak rate". So after hours if you're the only person utilising the network you can gain pretty much full speeds internationally.

With the committed rates the more you pay the higher the priority you have for "peak rate" leftovers.

Again the entire thing was GB unlimited which for businesses makes sense you don't want bill shock of massive overages if you have lots of employees.

The key thing for me was that other providers would provide the same service and same speeds for significantly cheaper.

I had it completely tested by the ISP and it was all confirmed as "working as intended" based on their contention ratios and plans etc...

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#800522 16-Apr-2013 21:21

robertjpayne: I'm just sharing my experience with this provider so people know to read full details of contracts before signing on. The building manager took care of the contracts so I didn't see it specifically but I had several talks with the owner of the ISP.

National traffic was always amazing... because well ISPs don't pay for it ( this is from the ISP owner himself )
International traffic they bought a certain pipeline and crammed everyone into it. Basically on international you start at your committed rate (64kbs for $89) and then if there is leftover you will get some "peak rate". So after hours if you're the only person utilising the network you can gain pretty much full speeds internationally.

With the committed rates the more you pay the higher the priority you have for "peak rate" leftovers.

Again the entire thing was GB unlimited which for businesses makes sense you don't want bill shock of massive overages if you have lots of employees.

The key thing for me was that other providers would provide the same service and same speeds for significantly cheaper.

I had it completely tested by the ISP and it was all confirmed as "working as intended" based on their contention ratios and plans etc...

I'd be interested to know where you would find significantly cheaper than unlimited GB for $200 ish a month on a 100/50Mb plan honestly.

Sounds like they are over committed and to be avoided right now.

robertjpayne

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#800524 16-Apr-2013 21:25

Yea in general 100/50 on international with unlimited GBs is going to be expensive. Again this is assuming that you're paying for committed international rates and nobody is sharing that with you.

For $200 a month hd.net.nz will give you 2mbits committed international speeds -- again that is committed speed which is not shared with another single customer on any network. The same 2mbits of committed speed on this provider at the office would cost $445 NZD.

For most residential customers your biggest concern should be your ISPs contention ratio. IE they bought 200mbits of speed and put 10 customers on it even though each customer is on a 100/50 plan. They're just assuming that nobody is going to utilise the entire thing at any given time.

coffeebaron

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#800528 16-Apr-2013 21:29

A quick read on their site and they way the operate is very clear. I see no problem with they way they work and in fact I think is quite sound and certainly will suite many businesses that want a guaranteed service.
Your issue is clearly with your building manager not communicating and getting the "right" product for your needs.

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robertjpayne

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#800530 16-Apr-2013 21:31

coffeebaron: A quick read on their site and they way the operate is very clear. I see no problem with they way they work and in fact I think is quite sound and certainly will suite many businesses that want a guaranteed service.
Your issue is clearly with your building manager not communicating and getting the "right" product for your needs.

I half agree -- yes it will suite many businesses well -- the problem arises that they were not very clear with our building manager about international traffic. And quite so I reckon their pricing is a bit of extortion for their committed rates when you can easily get far above and beyond their speeds for the same provider elsewhere.

In general it just comes down to making sure you shop around like anyone should do.. and with UFB right now it's very important to look at different ISPs and weigh the pro's/con's and find reviews of them if you can. All ISPs pay nearly the same price for international speeds and so if one is insanely cheaper you can bet there is definitely a reason!

onefibre

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#801163 17-Apr-2013 19:16

Hi Robert & Geekzone members... I am the person from One Fibre that meet with Ron 'the poor building manager', discussed fibre and was completely across everything that unfolded. Robert, I think it is important that I correct a few of your statements:

I will leave Ron to add his own post about consulting yourself and the other tenants on his decision to take up the fibre offering but as you mentioned in your post you are part of a serviced office complex sharing a single UFB circuit with 10 other businesses (8 upstairs and 2 downstairs).

Ron asked for information on joining the UFB fibre network. We went through our standard Fibre Authorisation Form which breaks the 'internet experience' into 2 sections. First the circuit, in this case provided by Chorus, this being the fibre between the customers site (remember in the case of the Shared Office its the ONT on the wall not the end user) through to Mayoral Drive (Chorus SPP in Auckland City). The second part of the 'internet experience' is the international data which we call the Sprint Plan.

For those interested we do not provide data caps, we provide unlimited data -national & international. As an ISP we don’t buy it in Gb's so why charge the customer this way? Those wanting more information look here http://onefibre.co.nz/Services/International+Sprint.html During my discussion with Ron we talked through his international data requirements, explained and it mentions on the Authorisation Form that there is 0 Kbps CIR burst able to the maximum of the circuit but with the least priority of our overall pool. The cost of this is $29 per month. As the sprint plan can be upgraded/downgraded to any plan real-time throughout the month (charged on a daily basis) Ron agreed to go with Sprint Starter and 'see how we go'. Ron requested a 30/10Mbps service with Sprint Starter.

As you would imagine One Fibre cant be responsible for the requirements of our customer, Albany Serviced Offices' customers international speeds. So rightfully so you approached Ron, explained your international speeds were worse than previously however you didn’t mention that Ron's reason for the change to flat rate was his data cap had blown out resulting in a $300 additional traffic bill caused by the data cap fallacy. Ron called a meeting, I explained to those tenants interested of how the Sprint system works and Ron increased the Sprint plan (online himself via the web console) to Sprint 1 then 2 and again back to Sprint 1. It was then requested due to the requirements of another tenant to upgrade the circuit to 100/50 as they had a 100Mbps VPN link to Call Plus servers which we did, again all of these requirements shared across a single UFB circuit.

In the best interests of a happy customer I sent an engineer over multiple times (which other ISP does this? and free) to ensure the customer was happy and then to receive confirmation from yourself the speed problem was in fact at your end is pretty surprising:

From: Robert Payne
Sent: Tuesday, 26 March 2013 12:40 p.m.
To: Ian Tabada
Subject: Re: For Dwain ASO Tests

Hey Ian,

Just to give you an update, it turns out it was my router. I believe you guys are providing DHCP for us to each office and we can plug directly into the wall. My router was also providing it's own DHCP and NAT and thus was slowing down, unfortunately it didn't support a mode where it would bridge to the existing DHCP so I had to buy a new one.

Anyways, getting expected speeds now, thanks again for troubleshooting and apologise for the hassle.

-Robert

So in summary, data caps are a joke, we as an ISP don’t buy data this way so why do people continue to sell it this way? Our Sprint Plans are explained in detail on the Authorisation Form, on the website and via the representative discussing this with the customer. They can be upgraded/downgraded any time throughout the month. They have a CIR that we publish, the burstable is to the maximum of the circuit and its unlimited flat rate data, peace of mind and no risks of data cap blow out. Really not sure what we could have done more? I personally went to the Albany Serviced Offices this morning to speak to all customers who love their speed, the manager loves the flat rate peace of mind.

pjamieson

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Chorus

#803221 21-Apr-2013 19:29

The OP should really consider changing the title of this thread as it is a bit misleading, the RSP should be mentioned rather than the entire Business UFB experience.

networkn

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#803236 21-Apr-2013 19:36

I disgaree I think it acts as a good lesson in investigation and making sure you understand what your RSP is offering you, is going to meet your needs.

aspired

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2degrees

#803288 21-Apr-2013 21:18

I understand One Fibre's point, but I'm a little stunned they disclosed all this information, surely some of this should be confidential? Even posting an email? Wow.

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