Free Telkom ADSL speed upgrades planned: source

[rpm]

Telkom ADSL speed upgrades planned: source

Telkom is planning to boost ADSL speeds within the next two months, an industry source revealed

[Roadrunner]

If this turns out to be true, there will be a lot of happy people.

Yet nothing has been done for the majority of the country on 4Mb/s who has been promised higher speeds two years ago.

[Xzib1t]

If this turns out to be true, there will be a lot of happy people.

Except for us folks still stuck on 4Mb/s who has been promised higher speeds two years ago of course.

and who should have 10 Meg, by now.

[Mike Hoxbig]

Now all the 384 guys can stop complaining if this is true

[kilobits]

Fantastic !

Except...

One of the sticky points, the source revealed, is that these upgrades may be limited to ‘upgraded’ exchanges which are served by Metro Ethernet backhaul links. The potential backlash from ADSL subscribers served by other exchanges may however change this plan.

The possible ADSL network congestion which can be created by speed upgrades at exchanges without adequate capacity is a potential stumbling block which may delay the speed upgrades as planned.

Meh... counts me out... exchange here struggles with 512kbs.

[twicode]

This would be great news indeed. I so hope it's true.
Would really make me happy since I am becoming more and more dependent on the internet.

MyBroadband has received information that the tentative plan is to upgrade all current DSL384 users to 1Mbps in early June 2012. Three weeks later all current 1Mbps ADSL users will be upgraded to 2Mbps.

So 384 and 1Mbps customers will for a month get the same speeds but pay different amounts. That would be pretty stupid. I suppose there will be a downgrade fee to be paid.

The company also said that they will increase the entry level speed of its broadband services to 2Mbps by 2015

2015 is so far away.

[fragtion]

*rubs eyes*. *pinches self*. OK I'm not dreaming! Wow this is great news ! Good luck Telkom, let's hope the infrastructure can handle it, because it would really be awesome and a long-term boost to the economy, guaranteed =) As long as it doesn't compromise my 4Mbps speeds/latency. Some exchanges are over-congested already xD

[Chevron]

I don't think the 384 guys should get such a huge increase. They pay too little. 512k would be more reasonable. 2meg for the price of 1meg is great though.

[Klipdrif]

I thought April fools was only for the first day of the month.

[iceblue]

I fully support this (even though I just upgraded to 1meg because I got sick of waiting), but how about they start offering a really low cost 128 or 192kbps option as well for those people who can't afford ADSL. And make it available to prepaid users as well. It doesn't help to increase the minimum speeds but not facilitate broadband penetration to those communities who can't afford it.

[Mike Hoxbig]

I don't think the 384 guys should get such a huge increase. They pay too little. 512k would be more reasonable. 2meg for the price of 1meg is great though.

If it's true then it will be annoying that for 3 weeks, existing 1 meg subscribers will pay more for the same speed as the upgraded 384 subscribers get. That would just be ludicrous.

[twicode]

This will have an impact on uncapped ISP offering. If you are uncapped 1Mbps ISP account and your line gets upgraded to 2Mbps you won't notice a difference from before. You will first have to upgrade your ISP account as well.

[Mike Hoxbig]

This will have an impact on uncapped ISP offering. If you are uncapped 1Mbps ISP account and your line gets upgraded to 2Mbps you won't notice a difference from before. You will first have to upgrade your ISP account as well.

Not really, the TCP overheads will shift to that of a 2 Mbps line, so you'll get the full account speed i.e. 128 KBps, as opposed to ~102 KBps. Also I don't think that ISPs would increase their prices much, if at all, since they didn't do that for the 512 Kbps upgrade - and they did just receive an IPC price cut.

[bboy]

I don't think the 384 guys should get such a huge increase. They pay too little. 512k would be more reasonable. 2meg for the price of 1meg is great though.

0_o are you crazy man?

You have just said that 1MB line from telkom will be to cheap, if a 2Mb user now wants to save money he can drop his line to 1Mb.

[twicode]

Not really, the TCP overheads will shift to that of a 2 Mbps line, so you'll get the full account speed i.e. 128 KBps, as opposed to ~102 KBps. Also I don't think that ISPs would increase their prices much, if at all, since they didn't do that for the 512 Kbps upgrade - and they did just receive an IPC price cut.

I forgot the uncapped price increase for faster lines should be cancelled out by cheaper internet bandwidth as well as a new fat undersea cable called WACS goes live next month. So good news all around.