Telkom ADSL 4Mbps – Please rate your connection

[dEaThXc0rE]

Is download speed not ISP dependant? Windows too?

No, not necessarily. Only on uncapped accounts. If you purchase a 4MB uncapped account from an ISP and you have a 10MB line, then yes the ISP can limit the traffic BUT if you purchase a normal capped account, the ISP does not limit the speed at which you can download.

[Tucano]

Unfortunately I'm paying for 4mbps but cannot get it to work above 3mbps due to bad copper line quality. Latency NEVER goes below 500ms when tested with speedtest.net. I raised the issue to telkom but they appear to have no idea of what I was talking about.

Atlasville, Boksburg, Gauteng.

[Menageryl]

My poll-vote was a "2" - i.e. "bad" - with the justifications and details as follows:

Broken down as per the OP info request:
Speed: 1 (atrocious)
Stability: 3 (expected)
Reliability: 3 (expected)

Here are some more details than the little bit above:
Just put in a 4Mb line (with telkomsa as ISP) in Hermanus the first week of February this year. There was an unexpected hurdle or two - but honestly the situation at the time was a little out-of-the-ordinary... Despite the initial problems, I was generally actually surprisingly impressed by the efficiency and friendliness as well as the response-time of all the agents involved with the process in Hermanus itself. It is due to these positives that the overall rating was a two instead of my initial knee-jerk response of a one.

The negative, ultimately, comes down to the disastrous speed of the line itself - and considering that this is what is going to be with me day-to-day for the forseeable future, this is an overriding negative!
I've run speed tests several times, spread over several weeks, using several testing services as well as covering all days of the week and hours of the day. What I can say is that things are pretty consistent. Which would be a good thing if the speed was acceptable. I'm sure most would agree though that the following stats are pretty terrible for a 4Mbps line:

Local Service
Ping average of between 60 and 80 ms.
Downlink rate of approx. 3.5 Mbps
Uplink rate of approx 0.40 to 0.50 Mbps

International Service
Ping average of between 400 and 600 ms.
Downlink rate of approx. 0.30 Mbps
Uplink rate of approx. 0.30 Mbps

Now considering that this is classed a business line instead of purely residential, and considering that the majority of the traffic ends up being international, this SUCKS!

What can Telkom do to improve their rating, in my opinion? Improve the international service speed. I'd be happy with as-advertised 1Mbps or 2Mbps service right now the way things are.

I find it a tremendous waste that all the incredibly positive impressions I took out of my interraction with Telkom has been so negatively painted by this one single issue - but from a day-to-day perspective this is an issue with real impact.
Enough said.

[amigaber]

Hi there

Can you please rate your Telkom ADSL connection on speed, stability and reliability? Do you get what you expected, or is your experience better or worse than what you expected.

Important: Please only rate your connection, NOT your ISP (that will come later)

It will be great if you can also tell us:

• What can Telkom do to improve the service and make you a happier customer?

Please post your comments in this thread (by posting your views you will stand a chance to win an iPad 2).

"speed & stability OK. Service & response time to fix line problems is not good"

[amigaber]

"speed & stability OK. Service & response time to fix line problems is not good"

[Danie_V]

Voted 2 Bad - I'm throttled to about 3MB to keep my line stable.

[mountain_lion]

Had the line for 2+ years. Used to always get between 3 & 4Mbps download speed until very recently. Now the line is intermittent, sometimes less than 384kbps!
Telkom responded promptly when the problem was reported, but could not find anything wrong and say the exchange is not congested at all.
Of course the line performed 100% during their tests, but a few hours later speed was down to less than 1Mbps again (to my ISP).

Wish Telkom will upgrade us to 10Mbps, but apparently this is not going to happen soon...

[CptNukeEm]

Happy with my 4meg line Sometimes it goes down to around 3meg on speed tests, but all in all good for gaming/downloads!

[hermansteyn]

Can't get my 4meg line to download above 220kb/s so not performing as expected (6 months ago it was okay, logging calls every month but to date no tech has come out to look at the issue, they only keep closing the calls)!

[uchoose]

Speed test download is pretty consistent at around 3.47Mbps a bit disappointed with upload of 0.4Mbps, I think Telkom restrict the upload to 512KB/s, well it always syncs at that, I am sure they could increase it. I have a property video business and need to upload videos of around 35MB and it can take 20 mins during the day while my editor has 8ta which uploads the same size video in 5 mins.

[bullzeye.za]

A little more maintenance on the network would be great, pre-emptive fixing would be nice too - Connection likes to drop when there's heavy rain. Every year they relay the cable right as the rainy season is coming to an end..

[Sting-Ray_ZA_]

Not happy. (Used to be very happy though)
I voted 2.

Speed: 3 (expected)
Stability: 3 (expected)
Reliability: 2 (bad)
Service: 1 (shocking)


Biggest reason - My exchange is 10MB capable, they only want to give me 4.
Also, for the last year or so, I've had regular noise issues on my line. Last time I had an issue Telkom had to replace the cable from my house to the box in my complex. To do this, they made me run conduit across my garden (the old cable wouldn't budge in it's conduit). Then the tech simply dropped off the cable for me to fish through the conduit (a 40m length). Only then did the tech come through to terminate both ends. That whole process took a month! That bettered things, but I used to have ideal conditions on my link - nowadays the noise sits just above tolerable levels.
What I did do is move to Afrihost's wholesale - so now I pay afrihost R399 instead of paying telkom +-R420 for the DSL portion of my line - this also allows me to call Afrihost who don't argue with me and accuse my equipment every time I call them...

[mchammer]

This is the second time I am using 4MB. Telkom seems to have upgraded our lines in the area, which has allways affected our speed. Since the upgrade, 4MB seams actually worth having.

[ijacobs3]

we been using it at our offices for some time, and it never fails

[wavesailor]

I have a 4 Meg line but can only download around 100kb/s so not performing as expect and for what I'm paying. I log calls continuously with Telkom and ISP. They say there is a network issue in my area (Tableview, Cape Town) but my ticket with Telkom was opened on 16-Jan-2012 but no one comes back to me or resolves the issue.
Telkom's service just sucks - no care attitude towards their customers

Anyone know or have a suggestion as to how do we report / protest Telkom's inability to fix and resolve this issues?