Telkom’s 10 Mbps ADSL upgrades were widely welcomed when they started in August. The company seems committed to continue its network upgrades to support the higher ADSL speeds in more areas.
Telkom SA Managing Director Pinky Moholi said that they are well aware that higher broadband speeds will become increasingly important in the future, and that they will need to invest in their ADSL network to boost speeds of their current ADSL offerings.
Telkom also made it possible for subscribers to check whether their line supports speeds of up to 10 Mbps with the launch of its 10 Mbps ADSL availability checker in August. The accuracy of this tool has however now been questioned.
MyBroadband has received information from a source close to its technical operations which suggests that Telkom’s 10 Mbps ADSL availability checker “should not be trusted.”
According to this source many exchanges have multiple DSLAMs per exchange, and if a single DSLAM can’t handle 10 Mbps speeds then the whole exchange’s numbers are given the message “this service can not be converted to 10Mbps Fastest DSL at this stage.”
It is further alleged that Telkom’s records for bigger centres such as Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town and Durban are not kept up to date which causes further problems for all of Telkom’s systems. “Gauteng, Cape Town and Durban are all stuffed,” the source said.
Telkom denies allegations
Telkom has however denied these allegations, explaining that “all lines connected to non 10 Meg capable DSLAMs will indicate “no 10 Mbps” even if there are other DLSAMs in the exchange that are 10 Mbps capable.”
“In the future (around February 2011) a line connected to a non 10 Mbps capable DSLAM will indicate “10 Mbps available at exchange” if there is a 10 Mbps capable DLSAM in that exchange,” said Telkom.
“Currently all lines connected to 10 Mbps capable DLSAMs will indicate ‘10 Mbps available’ even if the are non 10 Mbps capable DSLAMs in the same exchange.”
When faced with the allegation that “all the network records in bigger metros are not up to date which in turn means the 10 Mbps checker tool provides inaccurate information,” Telkom would not confirm or deny this allegation.
Telkom merely said that the 10 Mbps ADSL checking tool is updated on a weekly basis, and that “around February next year, the enhanced checker will be able to handle real time queries with greater accuracy.”
Telkom 10 Mbps ADSL checker << Comments and views
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