Atomic Access: A Game-Changer in Fiber Internet

Switching to Atomic Access is, so far, one of the best decisions I’ve made in 2024.

For context, I’ve been with Vox for the past 3 years. Unfortunately, they’ve forgotten what it means to be a well-rounded consumer ISP. I cannot fault them on the basic internet. It worked. Why wouldn’t it? But – everything else was seriously lacking. Support was slow and my I felt that their team was either inexperienced or poorly trained. CGNAT was a problem. Multiple support calls later, I get sold an “add on” (billed monthly) to get a public IP assigned. Static IP? A few calls from their support team ends in the ticket being closed with no resolution. IPv6? Forget it. They don’t know what that is.

Atomic Access is the perfect size, where they have the scale to invest in technology to their customer’s benefit, while not being so big that you lose that personal touch. For example, Vumatel messed up my migration. Their operations manager personally updated me daily on progress, offered insight into the root cause of the problem and persisted until I was connected. A frustrating experience made so much more bearable through good customer service.

Static IP? I host my own small personal web server, and some small game servers for my friends. It was actioned in a matter of hours, and I only had to ask once. They knew what I wanted, and had the systems to action it.

IPv6? They’re one of the few local ISPs that prioritise being ready for switchover. And the support experience? I logged a ticket at 6pm. It was actioned at 7pm, and I was able to configure my router that same night.

Gaming? It’s like night and day. I didn’t expect a huge improvement, but somehow my “cross continent” latency dropped measurably for games. Stability is also significantly better, with almost no packet loss during long sessions. Also, because Atomic doesn’t implement CGNAT, my “NAT type” in P2P games like Destiny 2 is now “open” and I get matches much faster.

Overall stability? I have fai***** configured, so log when my internet drops. I got used to my logs showing many sporadic outages every month. In the past month, I can see only one brief outage for less than 30 seconds in the early hours of the morning. That, with my personal experience, tells me all I need to know about network stability with Atomic.

Price? I’m paying about R200 p/m less than I did with Vox for the “same” line. Quotes are because it’s definitely not the same line anymore. Considerably more value, for less.

I strongly recommend switching to Atomic if you value an ISP that cares about providing a personalised service and a network that is robust and effective for gaming, as well as some more technical pursuits. From your website, “friends don't let friends use average internet”. Expect quite a few referrals. 😊