Looking for reliable internet in Nkomazi?

This should not be a difficult question to answer. If they won't show you, simply Google the company name and the results will pop right up. Look on sites like hellopeter.com too.

If they have no reviews, that's even worse. Look, no one's perfect and we all make mistakes. But no reviews? That's fishy as hell.

This is also very easy to produce — trust me, they should be monitoring it feverishly. In our industry, the single most important indicator we have control over is our uptime.

If they're not monitoring their uptime, they're unprofessional or incompetent. If they're not willing to show it to you, their uptime probably sucks.

Once again, I admit, things go down. Sometimes downtime is out of an ISP's control — like a train crash that ripped out our overhead fibre cables and caused hours of downtime. But it shouldn't last for days or weeks. Maintenance is scheduled out of peak times, and emergency maintenance shouldn't last more than a couple of hours.

An uptime above 97% should give you a fair indication of the ISP's network stability — it should be minutes per month, not hours and days. You can view our uptime right here: status.techshops.co.za

Also an easy one to answer — it should be right there on their website.

Here's a tip: test their support. See if anyone answers. Test if they answer after hours. Are you speaking to someone who can actually help, or a Level 1 agent who is simply going to ask a technician to look at it tomorrow?

You see, many times they say it is uncapped, unshaped, unthrottled and un-whatever. But that is a little white lie they tell you to make you feel better about signing up.

Well-known cellular providers that sell you an "uncapped" connection start implementing what they call a Fair Usage Policy once you hit a certain download limit. It's right there in your contract — but you didn't read it, did you now?

Yep, you read that right: they slow you right down to 2 Mbps after 400GB of data is used, and there's a hard lock on your account after 600GB. "But I'll never be able to use that much!" — in your dreams! Between myself, my wife and my 2 kids we use this in 5 days, no problem.

Streaming is data hungry, and I would love to see you explain to your family how your super-fast, brand-spanking-new data contract is now locked down because they were watching movies.

Of course they'll say "yes it does". Pinky promise? You definitely have backup batteries on all your towers? Pinky promise?

No they don't — and I know, because at this very moment the door to the server cabinet of a well-known cellular data provider is standing wide open, all the batteries stolen.

And they have another problem: their equipment is a power-hungry beast. They need enough batteries to power a large home. So if the batteries get stolen, they assess the client base in the area — and if that tower is not a cash cow for them, there's not a chance those batteries are getting replaced quickly.

Let me show you something interesting about the equipment we use:

For the technical guys out there: two batteries will keep my most power-hungry tower going for two days. A couple of good solar panels, some large batteries and some nice Komati sunshine, and we're good to go for months.

Funny question to ask? Not really. You see, 80% of all traffic consumed today is video and WhatsApp calls. It makes sense to prioritise the most-used traffic, doesn't it?

techCONNECT uses a system called Preseem, which basically acts as a traffic cop for data. Imagine your network as a busy highway and your router as a tollgate: Preseem regulates the flow so high-priority activities like video streaming get the speed they need, while less urgent tasks wait their turn.

With Preseem, your streaming on Netflix, YouTube and TikTok will never buffer again — and your WhatsApp and other voice calls stay clear.

You know that the speed of your internet package isn't the only thing that causes slow internet, right? Things like viruses on your PC can flood your line with traffic, slowing your connection to a crawl. Has your potential ISP implemented a system like Whalebone to keep you and your family safe online?

Whalebone is built right into your internet connection with techCONNECT. It contains a massive database of suspect websites, compiled by the top internet security companies in the world. Click a bad link by accident, and Whalebone blocks the site and tells you why.

"But it's too late! I've already been infected!"

A strange thing happens when we connect a new client to our Nkomazi network: Whalebone usually goes crazy! We get alerted of a device — sometimes multiple devices — infected by a virus or spammy software. Some smart TVs and home cameras even dial out to weird sites and try to save confidential information on a cloud server somewhere. Whalebone picks this up and blocks those devices from compromising your network.

Each month, we give you an hour of free help from our tech team. If your computer or other devices catch a virus or unwanted ads, we clean them up for you. (We have a hidden agenda too: removing these nasties means less bandwidth wasted, and everyone on the network enjoys a better connection.)

We could, but we prefer not to, for a variety of reasons. We're not a security company or a solar company. We're an internet company.

I like to compare it to a train track: we build the railway system, not the trains. A security company that also provides internet? In my opinion, a very bad idea — too much stuff going on. The perfect recipe for disaster.

Nope. We stick to what we're good at, and that's providing superior internet.

So — does your potential provider pass the litmus test?

If they could answer all these questions to your satisfaction, then it's a go! Sign on the dotted line and all of that. If not, you have an important decision to make: are you going to risk the time, money and frustration of choosing the wrong internet provider in Nkomazi?

Let's put it this way — no one has ever been fired, and no marriage has ever broken up, for choosing techCONNECT. It's the safe choice. Need proof? Read on.