FAQs about Paratus South Africa Services:

MaxUnlimited refers to the name of the product and has no reference to any product specifications. Our terms and conditions which is part of our Subscriber agreement, will contain the specific product’s terms and conditions.

MaxUnlimited Is seen as an Uncapped Internet access service, when measured against the definition below:

Uncapped refers to a product where predetermined Fair usage limits are applied, but connection to the internet is never severed due to caps being reached. It is common practice that Speeds will be reduced or throttled when the Fair Usage thresholds are reached, but you will always have access to uncapped data albeit at a lower throttled speed.

A Fair Usage Policy (FUP) is part of the terms and conditions in the MaxUnlimited contract,
which limits how the Uncapped broadband connection can be used. The FUP is a simple way of managing and protecting the integrity of the MaxUnlimited network.

A certain amount of, what is deemed fair data, is allocated, in this case 200GB for the first throttle and when 300 GB of usage is reached, the second throttle is implemented. When the first throttling step (FUP) is reached after 200 GB of data has been used, then your speed will be reduced to 25% of the initial headline speed. When you reach a total usage of 300 GB the second Throttling step will be implemented taking your speed to 10% of headline speed. The FUP is reset at the start of the new period. The FUP is also lifted afterhours during the free zone, data used during the free zone does not count to usage.

Certain entertainment applications are successfully supported by Satellite Broadband. You can stream Netflix and YouTube, within the limitations of latency and the correct quality settings on the streaming platform. You must ensure that you set the quality settings of your streaming application to the lowest possible setting. If this is not done you will consume your data rapidly and whatever Fair Usage Policy will be reached and activated sooner than you expect. Streaming applications use huge amounts of data. To access South African based streaming applications, you will need a South African facing IP and this will be supplied at an additional charge.

How much Data does online streaming use?

If you opt to stream videos in higher resolution at 60 frames per second, the data usage increases to 1.86GB per hour for 720p, 3.04GB per hour at 1080p, and 15.98GB per hour for videos in 4K

How many hours does it take to use 1gb of data?

1GB (or 1024MB) of data lets you send or receive about 1 000 emails and browse the Internet for about 20 hours every month.

So 200GB you can send 200 000 emails, browse 4 000 hours of Internet which is approximately 5 months of Internet searches.

200GB at 720p or 60 Frames per second is approximately 106 movies a month, this is 5 hours a day of watching movies – every day of the week.

Online Gaming has limitations, but turn-based games work effectively. These games are defined as casino games and strategy games, such as chess. However, the majority of real-time, multi-player, first person shooting games played on Xbox LIVE and PlayStation will not work over any satellite internet service, due to the latency or delay.

Real internet speeds come down to a combination of bandwidth and latency. Latency = delay or Lag as it is also known. It is the amount of delay (or time) it takes to send information from one point to the next. Latency is usually measured in milliseconds or ms. It is also referred to as a ping rate.

Satellite based internet solutions are a high latency solution with an average achieved delay time of around 650 milliseconds. The reason for this is that the dish on your building connect to a satellite that is in orbit at about 37 000 km above the surface of the earth. The time taken for the information to travel from your home terminal to the orbiting Satellite and back to earth is 650 ms.

A Wi-Fi network is created when we supply a Wi-Fi router to connect to your Satellite Modem via a cable. The Wi-Fi network enables connection between two or more devices wirelessly for data sharing purposes. It is simple and cost-effective way to connect with Wi-Fi router or with other Wi-Fi devices wirelessly without the need of wires. A Wi-Fi router in the office and home helps to share single internet connection among multiple users wirelessly without the need of ethernet cables.

Wi-Fi limitations

• The speed of the connection decreases (to individual computer or Device) when number of devices or computers connected with Wi-Fi network increases
• Depending on the structure of the building and the location of the Wi-Fi router, the Wi-Fi access is limited to about 5 – 15 meters
• Don’t place your Wi-Fi router behind obstacles such as in cabinets or cupboards since this act as blockers which prevent the Wi-Fi signal from passing through
• The more walls the Wi-Fi signal must travel through, the weaker your signal will become. This is because construction material such as plaster, bricks, reinforcing and electrical cables can act as a “blocker” since the radio waves have issues passing through these types of materials. It’s much like when you are passing through a tunnel while driving and lose your radio signal. Same thing happens with your Wi-Fi signal when it must pass through walls.
• Cordless phones, microwaves, baby monitors, wireless security cameras, remote controls and wireless speakers all operate on same frequencies and can lower your Wi-Fi speeds. Even electronics such as fluorescent lights, wireless controllers, older Bluetooth devices and plasma TV’s can interfere.

• Interactive online gaming • Generally, any application that requires client software to be loaded at the remote site, are latency sensitive, unless adjustments are made at both the client and the server end
• UDP – The eUDP protocol cannot be accelerated because it is not a connection-based protocol
• NetBIOS – This is a LAN technology that cannot be accelerated as it is not designed to function in a WAN environment
• Drive-mapping – is not supported over satellite except through a VPN tunnel
• RDP (Citrix) and RCP (Exchange) can be slow over a satellite connection
• Citrix – it is also latency sensitive and will generally function poorly over Satellite

Satellite communication is known for its reliability advantages over any terrestrial connections, as it runs totally independent of any local last mile terrestrial infrastructure.

Terrestrial infrastructure is prone to theft, vandalism, natural disasters and long-term network outages.

• It offers ubiquitous coverage across the whole of South Africa. You get the same service anywhere in South Africa
• It offers new high throughput, high speed bandwidth profiles ranging from 5Mbps; 10Mbps; 20Mbps; 30Mbps; 50Mbps and possible 100Mbps coming soon. Faster than what most local wireless services in underserviced areas can provide.
• It is extremely cost effective – Costs ranging from R 3.50 per GB to R 4.50 per GB, subject to profile and term selected
• It is quick to deploy anywhere in South Africa
• High bandwidth availability
• High Reliability – it is the most reliable network you can have. Less single points of failure, less connection points in the network that can result in outages