ADSL, Cape Town, Where!?

R

RazorSharp

Member
Joined
Dec 6, 2003
Messages
21
Reaction score
0
Location
South Africa.
Why is ADSL so difficult to implement in Cape Town [?]

This White guy from Telkom says that ADSL works well for the high-end residential market. How does he know? I live in a high-end residential area, and we can't even get the service.

We as a community had to petition to force Telkom to install new lines to our area. They thought they were smart and went and installed synthetic lines instead of copper. These synthetic lines are so poor that at normal dial-up I can only connect at 26.6 kbps, not nice.

I am sure that when they finally install our lines, our speeds aren’t even going to reach half the speeds that it is suppose to.
<center>[:(!] [:(] [:(!]</center>
 
Yes, I have been looking into Sentech's proposals. I hope that the service doesn't take to long to be unveiled in CT.
 
Rondebosch, Cape Town, here - and have to say service has actually been excellent. The techies are quite jacked up, and once visited my house on a Saturday morning (after logging a call Fri evening), to come and exchange an ADSL modem.

I would seriously check out Sentech's offering though - on paper seems like a superior offer, and those of us who invested in ADSL hardware will find it a bit harder to switch.
 
Kraaifontein in the northern suburbs here - adsl working fine this side since the exchange opened for adsl in July 2003
 
Here in Rondebosch, ADSL is "available"... it just costs an arm and a leg, for a whopping 83kbps download speed today [:(!]

I recommend everyone to use
http://www.tcpiq.com/

for a true speed test


Having said that, I don't blame them... as long as there are idiots like us prepared to pay for such a shocking service, why would they bother really?

bv
 
That's the whole point of pricing it like they do; they only need a handful of people to make money, so they really aren't interested in making it attractive, because it would eat into their Diginet and ISDN sales.

mithrandi
 
They sit there on their asses looking at their bank accounts overflowing.

Here’s an thought that I've been pondering about lately, Telkom showed a 80 or what so ever profit increase this last fiscal year. It now stands at, I think close to 21 million rand (i am not sure if this is before or after they paid their taxes).

What!? I ask you are they doing with that money. I mean that is quite an amount.
 
I know for a fact that general service has improved.

In 1997 it took them 3 weeks to install an ordinary plain old telephone line. In 2000 it took them only a day to process my request and install the line.
 
It only took them 3 weeks longer than the 2 weeks they said it would to install my ISDN line a few months ago.
 
No matter how jacked up a techie is in Newlands / Rondebosch / your corner of Cape Town / my corner, the fact is that you will still most likely get a crap service.

I have been performing speed tests tonight (http://us.mcafee.com/root/speedometer.asp), and 132kbps (less than a quarter) is my average. No wonder when Winamp5 tries to steam audio radio at 128kbps (should be easily within reach) ALL 10 tested just buffer every 10 seconds and it's unlistenable. So whether is copper / synthetic / dial-up / isdn / adsl - expect sheer bliss.

My sister asked for her money back, I said 'no guarantees'. My mother asked for her car back, I told her 'no guarantees'. My dad asked for my to pop in on his birthday, I said 'no guarantees'. Familiar?

=====================
Fusion.01 : Internet Design & Production
www.fusion01.com
=====================
 
To be fair, there are a small handful of competent people working for Telkom / SAIX; unfortunately, getting one of this small elite group rather than some clueless moron is not easy to accomplish.

mithrandi
 
The majority of Telkom techies are very good, it's the people sittin in their air-conditioned offices with fat internet connections who are supposed to be co-ordinating the services that stuff up.

Every techie i've met has moaned about Telkom. They sit with the same complaints as us and reckon Telkom is grossly mismanaged and of course overpriced.

I had an interesting chat about 4 months ago when one was installing a few lines at my new house, and he had many gripes. The main one being the Americans in Telkom who are trying to take SA for every single cent they can get their hands on. His estimates are that the yanks are deliberately trying to run Telkom into the ground so that the govt. has to eventually sell the infrastructure and then the Americans buy them out. Him and his wife both work for them and they're very unhappy, especially with their salaries. His wife works at one of the call centres and earns more than him. Poor guy.

It's amazing to hear what they have to say... like before the DSL rollout, if you asked one of them jokingly 'So, when u guys coming over to install my ADSL connection?" they were told by TK to respond with a dumb look on their face and say "What's ADSL???". Of course they knew what ADSL is, they've had educational seminars about this for a couple of years! [:)] And once a year a couple hundred kind-of-important people at TK get sent on a long weekend to Sun City... now you know where your 5 minute calls and minimum charges go to [B)]




<u>________________________________________________</u>
Just imagine where SA would be now if it weren't for Telkom
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X