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Tanzanian here writing this from dar es salaam,Tanzania. I have never hear of this "smile" company so i looked them up and their prices[1] seem ridiculous. I

Tanzanian here writing this from dar es salaam,Tanzania. I have never hear of this "smile" company so i looked them up and their prices[1] seem ridiculous. I use vodacom and i pay 20,000 shillings a month for unlimited internet.This company charges 17,500 a month for 1GB. vodacom,like other companies also have more options[2]. Why do you use this company? ps: 1USD is equivalent to about 1500 shillings so 20000 shillings is about 13USD [1] http://smile.co.tz/products-services/ http://smile.co.tz/products-services/ [2] https://www.vodacom.co.tz/internetservices/prepaid_packages/cheka-internet https://www.vodacom.co.tz/internetservices/prepaid_packages/...

jordanthoms 12y ago
Looks like smile has 4G LTE, so is probably significantly faster.
craigds 12y ago
How fast is it? To my NZ ears these prices sound fantastic, as we usually pay about 5-6 times that for unlimited internet (if unlimited is even an option; it only is in certain urban areas). But presumably it's quite slow?
- mhogomchungu 12y ago
  i just updated by linux box using apt-get and it reported: "Fetched 47.0MB in 2m3s (381kB/s)". Thats 3Mbps. This kind of speeds happen from time to time but long downloads or streams are usually capped at around 300kbps( around 40kBps). The speed is decent enough during normal web surfing.
  - xai3luGi 12y ago
    You should come to the Debian conference in Cape Town next year :) https://jonathancarter.org/2015/02/13/debconf-2016-to-be-hosted-in-cape-town/ https://jonathancarter.org/2015/02/13/debconf-2016-to-be-hos...
thebenedict 12y ago
Hi! I use Smile because it's a little faster and significantly more reliable than the others. Most of my business and personal communication abroad happens via video Skype. Voda and Airtel are sometimes fast enough, but often aren't especially during peak times. I hate having to tell clients that my connection isn't good enough for a scheduled call. For an idea of what I'm talking about, here's 70 second pings to google.com from an especially frustrating morning in January on Vodacom TZ: http://i.imgur.com/5urJcd7.png http://i.imgur.com/5urJcd7.png. This isn't typical but happens often enough to be a problem. With Smile I'm paying rates comparable to 4G service in the US, e.g. TMobile[1]. The service isn't nearly as fast (peak I've seen is ~3.5 Megabytes/sec download) but the reliability makes it worth it. I suspect I'm paying as much for lower contention ratios on the towers as for "4G" infrastructure, but the end result is the same. [1] (http://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone-plans/mobile-internet.html http://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone-plans/mobile-internet.htm...)
- moe 12y ago
  here's 70 second pings to google.com Wow. I wonder where on the link a packet can get stuck for so long without being dropped. RFC 1149 comes to mind... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers)

jordanthoms 12y ago

Looks like smile has 4G LTE, so is probably significantly faster.

craigds 12y ago

How fast is it? To my NZ ears these prices sound fantastic, as we usually pay about 5-6 times that for unlimited internet (if unlimited is even an option; it only is in certain urban areas). But presumably it's quite slow?

mhogomchungu 12y ago
i just updated by linux box using apt-get and it reported: "Fetched 47.0MB in 2m3s (381kB/s)". Thats 3Mbps. This kind of speeds happen from time to time but long downloads or streams are usually capped at around 300kbps( around 40kBps). The speed is decent enough during normal web surfing.
- xai3luGi 12y ago
  You should come to the Debian conference in Cape Town next year :) https://jonathancarter.org/2015/02/13/debconf-2016-to-be-hosted-in-cape-town/ https://jonathancarter.org/2015/02/13/debconf-2016-to-be-hos...

thebenedict 12y ago

Hi! I use Smile because it's a little faster and significantly more reliable than the others. Most of my business and personal communication abroad happens via video Skype. Voda and Airtel are sometimes fast enough, but often aren't especially during peak times. I hate having to tell clients that my connection isn't good enough for a scheduled call. For an idea of what I'm talking about, here's 70 second pings to google.com from an especially frustrating morning in January on Vodacom TZ: http://i.imgur.com/5urJcd7.png http://i.imgur.com/5urJcd7.png. This isn't typical but happens often enough to be a problem. With Smile I'm paying rates comparable to 4G service in the US, e.g. TMobile[1]. The service isn't nearly as fast (peak I've seen is ~3.5 Megabytes/sec download) but the reliability makes it worth it. I suspect I'm paying as much for lower contention ratios on the towers as for "4G" infrastructure, but the end result is the same. [1] (http://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone-plans/mobile-internet.html http://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone-plans/mobile-internet.htm...)

moe 12y ago
here's 70 second pings to google.com Wow. I wonder where on the link a packet can get stuck for so long without being dropped. RFC 1149 comes to mind... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers)