***I know this is a bit of a read, but if you're having problems with Woosh it might be worth it***
I was hoping i could state my case on here regarding problems I have had with woosh recently to see if anyone else is experiencing the same problems as Woosh themselves are no longer willing to comment. I know there have been articles in the paper and all over the internet regarding their poor service, however they claim that these are only on the outskirts of their coverage area. Can I get some comments please?
I currently use the standard 256k package from woosh which I use from work and home in Grafton.
First problem I noticed was the fact that nearly no one at woosh really has any answers! I was having problems having the modem work on my original notebook (Compaq N1000C). After bringing my laptop and modem in to have the software 'repaired' and reinstalled, they gave me the explanation that "The woosh modems don't work on this model notebook". How completely crazy! Anyway, after recovering the OS, i managed to get it working later that week.
Next problem i noticed was how touchy the modems are. I move it 2cm to the right turn the modem off and on, and i manage to connect to a completely different cell site! Not only that, about 3 weeks after getting Woosh they "upgraded" the Symonds street cell site - at which point i now receive speeds of 2-5K a sec! I may aswell be on dialup, even my latency would probably be higher.
I was supplied with a nice large booster antenna, however these things are larger in length than my laptop, and the cable supplied is almost at thick as fibre cable. My 'mobile solution' is starting to lose its effect. Even if I do bother to carry this door stop with me, when it’s plugged in, the RSCP will be much higher than the ISCP, yet my speeds still sit around 10 to 16k.
Their accounts department (run by one person apparently) managed to charge me 3x the amount I should have been charged for the first month.
I have had my modem replaced 2x already. First modems antenna fell apart, the plastic broke away due to attaching and detaching the booster antenna. The next replacements lights didn't work properly, sometimes the amber lights just wouldn't come on.
I've given up talking to the help desk, their support consists of telling me to turn my modem off and on and "see what happens". After which explaining my problems, they will quickly transfer me to someone else, who then will take my contact details so he can call the 'technical guys' then 'call me back'.
I've been with a number of ISPs, Xtra, Paradise, Orcon where i have used ADSL and dialup. They have all had little things that have let them down, but NOTHING compares to the service i have (or haven't) been provided from Woosh.
What i want to know is if this is an isolated incident or are other people experiencing the same problems with Woosh?
Im not too surprised, Woosh or walker wireless as it was once called has always been shocking. I cant believe that they havent gone bankrupt!
Though im surprised that they havent pulled the ' the house with the corrogated roof 2 kms to the left of you at a 90 degree angle is interfering with the signal' excuse.
I know 6 people including me who were denied woosh accounts for inane reasons like the one above, but I do know 1 person who did get it and he never had any trouble what so ever, and his aerial had a huge tree blocking it too! Hes never had any problems, yours seems like a new one.
So when it works it works REAL good and if it doesnt its terrible like in your case.
Unfortunately Woosh has been consistently shocking.
Id say try and go for something else, where are you located? Im sure that if youre in Auckland or Wellington you'd be able to get something better?
I use Woosh 256k - 1GB limit - $40 - and have severe latency problems. Nobody at Woosh can give me any idea what is going on or a real estimated fix time.
Woosh is ok for what I currently use if for.... web surfing, email and the odd download. Surfing is less painful than dialup and download speeds are significantly better than dialup. I am in a marginal coverage are and use a booster antena. It is currently useless for streaming, voice over internet or gaming.
I'm also in Grafton and have had woosh for about a week. I use the booster antenna and I'm able to get all four lights on the modem, however, I'm getting a lot of random disconnects and download speed is varying greatly between 20K and 0.1K with an average of around 4K. I also have problems powering the modem up i.e. it usually takes at least 5 attempts of pushing the power button before the modem stays on. I have not contacted woosh as yet but will be in the next few days. If the problems are not resolved I'll be taking the modem back before 30 days are up.
My problem is bad location. I am in Massey and can 'see' their transmiter on the Wakumite? cemetery water tank, 12ks away. Perfect signal but too far, they have set the limit at about 8ks. There is a closer transmitter but it's behind a hill. Unfortunatly I can't see the sky tower or else i'd be on wired country in a flash.
While I have some sympathy for your obvious low opinion, I think you are putting 2+2 together in an unfair way. Woosh losing the PROBE contracts may or may not be related to the causes of these problems ... it certainly won't be related to Linux incompatibility as you imply in another message.
Woosh have enough challenges without blanket 'everything they do is bad' criticisms.
$0.0178 +GST
Get out an antenna and net stumbler and see what you can see.. you should be able to pickup an AP that goes by the name of NZWIRELESS-xx where xx is a number, for example I connect to NZWIRELESS-14
On the other side of the coin, it's unfortunate for Woosh to get all this bad press as they are generally seen as the flagship for wireless technology in NZ. People pigeon-hole other wireless providers who use totally different technology into the whole "wireless is unreliable, look at Woosh" idea.
Hopefully Wired Country can save wireless's image in this country...
I think the Probe decision probably has more to do with their somewhat slow roll out pace. Have you heard anything at all about them rolling out in Southland? I haven't...
The main trouble with Woosh, especially with regard to latency is probably the tech they use... I personally don't think portable wireless internet is really ready for the masses unless you're willing to have a lot of nodes, which is only economical in CBDs and stuff...
The latency on woosh is absolutely horrible. The word on the "inside" is that they've got it down to 80ms. Yeah right! Why am I still getting 400-500 and spikings of over 1000ms?
mmmm... sorry i'm a n00b - you'll forgive my naivety...
Anyway - has everyone forgotten what it was like when DSL first came out? Or were you still in nappys??? (haha). basically it was cr@p - it got much the same comments that you are giving woosh now. I use woosh and find it sweet - in fact I have both dsl and woosh at home. Much, much better DL on woosh than DSL... (of course, I can see the tower from my window)...
As far as latency goes, I think its important to remember this is 'wireless' so woosh has all sorts of shite to deal with involved with latency. Things like timeslots, code space, resource allocation, time division duplex etc etc - oh wait - is this to 'technical' for all you experts out there who have already rated woosh as no good???
sheesh - everybody is going on about 5.8, 2.4, Wired Country, wifi, blah blah blah - well heres news for you... its PUBLIC SPECTRUM which means eventually you'll all be interfering with each other and it will turn to sh!t!! Its already happening with 2.4 - just try to find a free channel in the CBD.
Woosh owns its own spectrum which means, it can only get better....
mmmm... sorry i'm a n00b - you'll forgive my naivety...
As far as latency goes, I think its important to remember this is 'wireless' so woosh has all sorts of shite to deal with involved with latency. Things like timeslots, code space, resource allocation, time division duplex etc etc - oh wait - is this to 'technical' for all you experts out there who have already rated woosh as no good???
sheesh - everybody is going on about 5.8, 2.4, Wired Country, wifi, blah blah blah - well heres news for you... its PUBLIC SPECTRUM which means eventually you'll all be interfering with each other and it will turn to sh!t!! Its already happening with 2.4 - just try to find a free channel in the CBD.
Woosh owns its own spectrum which means, it can only get better....
AFU - which University did you learn all this techie stuff at?
Timeslots are important if you use TDD ... what about if you use FDD like BCL and Wired Country?
Poor latency isn't inherent in all wireless - look at NZWireless and WC customer experiences.
Which part of Wired Country uses licensed 3.5 GHz spectrum was too hard for me to understand?
Owning your own spectrum gives the opportunity to get better - it doesn't automatically make it a fact. Can you share with us how it is going to get better?
Any more high quality contributions to make?
NeilS
mmmm... sorry i'm a n00b - you'll forgive my naivety...
Anyway - has everyone forgotten what it was like when DSL first came out? Or were you still in nappys??? (haha). basically it was cr@p - it got much the same comments that you are giving woosh now. I use woosh and find it sweet - in fact I have both dsl and woosh at home. Much, much better DL on woosh than DSL... (of course, I can see the tower from my window)...
Having used a woosh to try to SSH to a server, I concluded that it is crap. - latency spikes all over the place, and packet loss is bad. Doesnt matter what the technology is promising, the current retail product is _bad_ - I would even call it useless. The SSH was better over dialup. This is with 4 lights on the modem and the helpdesk pleb describing the signal numbers in the USB application as great, in a CBD fringe location with the radio sitting on a windowsill.
Quote:
sheesh - everybody is going on about 5.8, 2.4, Wired Country, wifi, blah blah blah - well heres news for you... its PUBLIC SPECTRUM which means eventually you'll all be interfering with each other and it will turn to sh!t!! Its already happening with 2.4 - just try to find a free channel in the CBD.
Wired country have bought rights to use 3.5, as have BCL from what I understand (that may not be the case) - this spectrum is legally protected against intentional _and non intentional_ interference - 2.4, 5.1, 5.3 and 5.8 are only protected against intentional, and then you have to prove it etc.
Quote:
Woosh owns its own spectrum which means, it can only get better....
Well the only way it could get worse is by not working at all, and even then, I dont think that would be worse.
AFU - which University did you learn all this techie stuff at?
Timeslots are important if you use TDD ... what about if you use FDD like BCL and Wired Country?
Poor latency isn't inherent in all wireless - look at NZWireless and WC customer experiences.
Which part of Wired Country uses licensed 3.5 GHz spectrum was too hard for me to understand?
Owning your own spectrum gives the opportunity to get better - it doesn't automatically make it a fact. Can you share with us how it is going to get better?
Any more high quality contributions to make?
NeilS
University? nope - i just pay attention..
Woosh is def using a UMTS TDD system - the vendor is IPWireless, a quick search on google brings heaps of info on how their network goes together:
As NeilS points out, latency isn't inherent in all wireless products. For example, both Woosh, Compass Communications, and Inspire.net all use 5.8 stuff - apparently its pretty good. Tests done by some uber-nerds showed they could get <20ms pings acorss the APE to different ISP's - check forums on this site (although, this was connecting to access points in Sky Tower) - even so, 20ms is pretty good for gaming no?? --
As far as inteference is concerned - NeilS is correct - public spectrum is protected against international interference - but what help is this?? - it seems everything interferes with 2.4 - ever looked at retry and CRC stats on your 2.4 AP when your microwave is running in the background??? Take a laptop into Auckland CBD with netstumbler on it and 'any' 2.4 antenna - i guarantee you will find upwards of 50+ 2.4 networks without even trying... 5.8 is going the same way - there is only so many channels that can be used in any geographical area at one time - eventually the resource is all used up.
Don't get me wrong, I do believe latency is an issue with woosh - talking with their helpdesk I get the impression that it is an issue for them as well. I keep getting emails from them saying they are 'upgrading' the network - i can only presume they are loading new software releases into their network... This post on a South African forum about Sentech (South African IPWireless vendor) talks about firmware / software releases...
Seems to me that its all still work-in-progress.... so as I said before - it can only get better.
(FYI - http://www.sentech.co.za/) - for laughs check out how much they charge for 256Kbps connection/month - it equates to about $210.00/mth!!!
So anyway - i can only make judgement on what I have experienced myself and make informed decisions as best as possible - richms - i do rdp/SSH/telnet/ftp across woosh - no problems at all....
Apparently lightning strike or something, and I refer to the ole saying you get what you pay for and good marketing does not carry packets
Whoosh are using what is rebranded UMTS NZ is only like the 3rd place to utilise it in the way Woosh have implemented it. And Woosh/Walker Wireless have always had a history with falling short of providing an adequate service
And you have to be out with the faries to compare the rollout of Jetstream to Woosh, one had upto 8Mbps connection with around 40Ms latency and it wasn;t Woosh!
Also Telecom has no s or u and maybe one day you will work for them
They are a little inconsistent in other areas, and it still smacks a little of a monopoly to me but with a populus as small as NZ's I guess it's going to take along time untill we get a truly "open" market place for connectivity.
Things are moving in the right direction though but we are a few years off yet.
IMHO Plain and simple that WOOSH is CRAP.
Latency is high and unreliable.
Latency even in a wireless networks should not be so high.
Woosh won't make money, and is not viable without people investing millions just to keep it going. Pouring money into a big black hole.
AFU...
I would recomend that the investor in Woosh cut their losses now.
Pull out while they have only invested 10s of millions. Each.
I'm told (by reputable sources) that back in their walker wireless days they were up to some dodgy stuff.. cutting corners on their rollout with a "HURRR IT'S KIWI INGENUITY!" attitude... this of course has led to problems and appears to have been a habit that's transitioned with their namechange to woosh. That and they appear to have too many consumers for their capacity
I had woosh for a few months back at the start of the year... i needed to use a booster antenna but i found the service to be great..... my speeds were always high but the reason why i cut it off was because of the latancy issues... and when i did stop my account, they kept charging me for two months after... they refunded it but i was angry after calling up several times!! Does anyone knwo when the latancy issues will be fixed and what is the difference between the new modem and the old one?
Ive had similar experience with WOOSH. Have had various experiences from two suburbs Epsom, and Sandringham.
Customer services replaced my modem, sent 3 technicians out, gave me a booster, still can't get anywhere near 256 kbps up or down. They gave me heaps of run around.
The 'Delta' difference apparently is the most important value along with the signal quality, and anything over 18% signal quality, and with a Delta of 5 or over is supposedly good. No fluctuating. Though i can't get anything faster that 160 kpbs, or upload faster than 24kbps!!! yes slightly slacked.
Reading between the lines it's their technology, hardware, software and it not being able to cope with the load of 5000 users it now has, which though, when you think about it, the revenue of $274,750 per month, you would think they might be able to do something more than 24kbps upload!!
Freaks.
Does anyone know what the best wireless connection is in Auckland?
Is it the WiredCountry option? And who is a good ISP for this?
Woosh problems anyone? 
Linear Mode
