Official internet discussion thread

[Griff3n]

Telkom’s planned upgrades have been set back a bit

Telkom are a bunch of tool bags. I have been phoning them one and off for like 5 months to get my line speed sorted only to have done everything under the sun and then be told that I must stop phoning now. On the 20th of Aug they are starting to move the accounts from the DSLAMs to the IMAX and as it is now my DSLAM is 150% subscribed.

Then I switch over to Web Africa and it is as if I never even had anything to do with Telkom, the line speed was amazing. But hopefully I can get switched over first on the 20th of Aug.

[Toxxyc]

^ Expect to pay more for the faster service. WA has disappointed me on this front, they won't be doing it any cheaper than expected. Their "new speed" packages will be the most expensive in the competition, being more than double the price for the 2Mbps compared to the 1Mbps package (uncapped). I'm slightly disgusted, actually.

[Wesley]

^ Expect to pay more for the faster service. WA has disappointed me on this front, they won't be doing it any cheaper than expected. Their "new speed" packages will be the most expensive in the competition, being more than double the price for the 2Mbps compared to the 1Mbps package (uncapped). I'm slightly disgusted, actually.

Yeah I'm noticing all the ISPs are raising their data prices to account for the new speeds, with a few exceptions (Afrihost being one of them). The only one who hasn't said anything about raising their prices for data, funny enough, is Telkom.

[Griff3n]

^ Expect to pay more for the faster service. WA has disappointed me on this front, they won't be doing it any cheaper than expected. Their "new speed" packages will be the most expensive in the competition, being more than double the price for the 2Mbps compared to the 1Mbps package (uncapped). I'm slightly disgusted, actually.

I am still shocked that a gig at Web Africa costs R69 which is a tad much. But they do have the Freezone which is a Godsend to people that enjoy steam but don't have much in the way of cap...

Yeah I'm noticing all the ISPs are raising their data prices to account for the new speeds, with a few exceptions (Afrihost being one of them). The only one who hasn't said anything about raising their prices for data, funny enough, is Telkom.

That is probably due to Telkom renting the lines out to them, I think Telkom can keep it's prices competitive because it has an income from the little ISPs around the country. I am probably never going to switch from Telkom because:

A) I dont pay for the line, parents do [I have a pre-paid Web Africa account for Freezone]
B) When Telkom is not oversubscribing exchanges and I am not on the phone with them constantly, their service is a dream. I have to admit, I have noticed a significant speed change this weekend. [Telkom on during the week could not load steam or even webpages] but now I have no buffer on youtube videos and no disconnects during online gaming. Not to mention speedtests are consistently where they should be. So I am just going to have to wait and see have is going to happen in and around the 20th

[Wesley]

That is probably due to Telkom renting the lines out to them, I think Telkom can keep it's prices competitive because it has an income from the little ISPs around the country.

Well I was specifically talking about the data prices, because the line rentals are being sucked up by the ISPs if you have your line managed by them. But the price drops for uncapped accounts have come down thanks to Telkom charging less for IPC bandwidth. Since the ISPs wanted to bring those savings to customers, they dropped their prices accordingly.

Telkom and MWEB's prices for the 2MB uncapped accounts will be around R369 per month and Telkom didn't drop or raise their price this month so at least if you were on the 1MB account you won't be paying significantly more than the R100+ it costs to move to that package from other companies.

[Toxxyc]

Yeah it's the accounts I'm ****ed about. Lines are fine. WA is currently pricing at R189pm for their 1Mbps uncapped accounts, and I'm not expecting that to become any better any time soon. WA got a little negative mark next to it's name in my books, specially since they won't answer my questions regarding their increase in prices. They keep avoiding and dodging.

[greed9am2e]

So Telkom just got fined R449 million by the Competition Tribunal for abusing its dominance in the telecommunications market. A small step if you ask me, but I guess it's a step forward. Even though it seems to be a lot of money, I think it could have been worse. It will probably not even make a dent in their budget as they will most likely just get some kind of bail-out.

Check it out.

http://www.timeslive.co.za/scitech/2...n-for-bullying

[Wesley]

I think its less progress for the consumer and more just a slap on the wrist for the parastatal. The original fine that the Tribunal wanted was R3.15 billion, which would have seriously dented the coffers of the fat cats relying on Telkom's dominance to fund their expensive lifestyles. For once, I wish people like Pinky (who probably wouldn't be able to tell me what a subnet is or how to make it classless) would just ****ing leave the technology sector alone and allow geeks who actually want to provide a better service to internet users run the company.

Ruining the country's chances of actually improving service delivery and public opinion of those same services for your own benefit isn't something Madiba spent all those years in jail for. Government needs to sell its stake in Telkom and remove all the tax incentives it receives, and only then will we be left with a company that actually needs to perform better in order to stay afloat. As it is, its too big and too greedy for its own good, disallowing smaller players access to the local loop because it doesn't want that kind of competition or bustling economy to grow and flourish.

[Toxxyc]

Ruining the country's chances of actually improving service delivery and public opinion of those same services for your own benefit isn't something Madiba spent all those years in jail for.

No. He did that because he was a terrorist who bombed and killed quite a number of people. Anyway. Telkom is losing grip. Companies like DFA are growing, and their services are moving more and more from "private" to "everything". Entire estates with ~2,500 people living there all on FttH service? That's what's happening. Everywhere. Midrand Estates (Midrand), Glen Eagles Estates (Kempton Park), etc. etc. are all being installed that way. Not long and people will see that the FttH service is not only cheap, easy to maintain, a lot less prone to cable theft, longer lasting, faster with lower pings and a lot more energy efficient than copper, but also the way to go forward if they want to improve their service. It's compact and awesome. DFA already sports in excess of 5,000km's of fiber network (thus, not fiber length, but actual network length) around the country, and they're growing faster than contractors building the routes can keep up. They'll be making word, only reason Telkom is still "in charge" is because they house copper that everyone uses. Fiber is currently focused toward the larger market (Vodacom, MTN and CellC being 90% of the usage on installations), but it all boils down to better customer service. Hold on guys, relief is coming.

[Toxicnitr8]

guys i live in botswana and im getting around 200 KB/s its not bad but they have this really really stupid system where they after 20 mins of download , drop the speed to about 30 KB/s and will keep it there till i pause the dowload and then resume it 3 or 4 mins later :/any way to get around this ? ?

[Wesley]

Change your service provider? I'm not familiar with most of the ISPs there, but Telkom does have a presence AFAIK. Just the only issue is a shared pipeline, so your country struggles for bandwidth especially if its a Seacom line - all that goes through Telkom's infrastructure.

[.exe]

I seem to have a rather odd issue at the moment. For some reason known only to Telkom, ADSL is not supported in my area, so I had to go the 3G route for connectivety. (Vodacom 3gb+3gb night owl package)

Anyway, what's strange is that often I'm connected and can surf, but there is no data trafic coming to and from the modem. It can start happening right during a download, where one moment it's downloading like a champ, but then all of a sudden all activity stops. I'm still connected and can surf (albeit slowly) but the download just sits there doing nothing because no data is coming through.
I usually have to disconnect and reconnect a few times before it starts working again.
It happens on both my modems. (I have two packages.)

I supppose I can phone Vodacom and enquire, but has anyone else had a similar experience with their 3G modems?

[Wesley]

That's likely a tower issue being oversubscribed, because no throughput means that bandwidth has been strangled by too many people having too many multiple connections to the tower.

Make yourself an account on the Mybroadband.co.za forums and contact either jannievanzyl or even VodacomData, both of them can make a plan to figure out what your issues are.

[.exe]

Thanks very much Wesley. Much appreciated.

[Wesley]

Telkom’s speed upgrades commence tomorrow

Starting from tomorrow, the 24th of August, Telkom will begin selectively upgrading 1MB/s users to 2MB/s according to their areas. Most of the backhaul upgrades have been completed and the MSAN upgrade (for fiber-to-the-curb connections) have been right on schedule, with some users already reporting better speeds and less line issues with the new cabinets. 384KB/s users will only be upgraded from the beginning of October to 1MB/s speeds by default.

If you’re a 1MB/s user, reboot your ADSL modem tomorrow at roughly 12AM and post here if you’ve been upgraded.

[Toxxyc]

*wink wink* This will be applicable to capped users only. The uncapped users will have to pay more, so they don't have to reboot anything.

[Wesley]

*wink wink* This will be applicable to capped users only. The uncapped users will have to pay more, so they don't have to reboot anything.

If you're with Telkom for bandwidth, though, you'll be upgraded immediately.

[Toxxyc]

Surely not free of charge to 2Mbps on the uncapped packages? If so, I may very well give WA the shove now...

[Wesley]

Surely not free of charge to 2Mbps on the uncapped packages? If so, I may very well give WA the shove now...

My guess is that because their IPC costs are zero, 2MB Uncapped accounts will be at the regular 1MB/s level, which is around R800 all-inclusive. 1MB/s will drop to around R540 all-inclusice as well. That way they don't have to ask users if they want to upgrade, saving on workload for their service centre.

[Toxxyc]

Damn it. I'll have to sit through watching WA more than double their pricing for double the speed now. They're still cheaper than Hellkom. :/