Advice needed - Telkom 4MB only 0.5MB!! Don't know what to do! I just want to cry!!

[Wolvyreen]

PLEASE bear with me and read the below so you can understand the entire problem. This is affecting my work at home severely!

i have had a 4MB line for over 2 years now. It has NEVER given me problems until now.

I opened my original ticket on the 7 July 2012 with Telkom.

I then followed-up on the 11 July 2012(5days later) because I had heard nothing and they told me the ticket was closed because apparently my wife called the call centre and told them everything was fine! This is absolutely nonsense because my wife doesn’t even know the ADSL call centre number and she is FAR from tech savvy and has no idea what it all entails! The truth is that they just closed it without investigating!

I then reopened the ticket on the 11 July 2012 and they told me they marked it as a repeat fault, urgent and escalated. They called my wife on Thursday 12 July (God only knows why they keep calling my wife) and asked if the problem was resolved and my wife said no but that they should rather call me so she gave the person my number and nobody called.

I only heard from the technician on Saturday morning the 14 July 2012. The guy never even went out to the exchange box and he never even came to my house. He just asked me what my modem was syncing at and what my noise and attenuation levels were and told me that the problem is on my exchange and that the ports are full and there is nothing he can do but this is a brand new developing area and houses are still going up in my area. If this was an old area I would understand. The speeds I am getting are HORRENDOUS and I already mentioned that I had a 4MB line for over 2 years now! See speed test results below.

Currently the line is so slow that I wait 20seconds for a site to open up. I get timeouts on websites and doing a speed test it shows that I only have less than 0.5MB line. See below:








Is there anything I can do??

Thanks
Wolvy

[FNfal]

I dont have the answers but a few things you can try .
post your line stats here so we can see them and advise if there is a problem, Signal to noise ratio SNR and your line attenuation,
these you get of your router.
Connect just your router with no other equipment at all (no phone no filter nothing on the line)then test.
When you phone Telkom next time ask them to test your line while you are on the line to see if there is a fault on the line (They should ask you to put down the phone so they can test the line, then phone you back.If they dont ask you to put the phone down they have not tested the telephone line they have tested the ADSL.

[Wolvyreen]

Well, there is no crackling on the line and they said they did reset the port and we waited for the modem to reconnect but that didn't help either. I'm currently sitting at work so I can't check my modem.

It's a good suggestion though to remove all equipment. I assume that only MY pc must be connected?

[Mr.Jax]

You local speedtest results tell me the following:
Latency = good
Upload speed = good, pretty much what you can expect from a 4Mbit ADSL like
Download speed = the problem, as you know of course.

The chance of something being wrong with your ADSL line itself is very slim because your latency and up-link is looking good.
- It's however still a possibility and worth posting your line stats.
ISP being the cause is a possibility.
Telkom exchange being oversubscribed is a real possibility.

If its your ISP, great news, you might be able to fix it, buy 1GB data from a different to test it out.
If its the exchange or anything further 'upstream'....good luck with that (see I battled 2 years with Telkom support where we had an 'oversubscribed' exchange)

The only thing that puzzles me a bit is the good local latency result. Usually on an oversubscribed exchange or poor performing ISP, you see erratic and elevated latencies. (try www.pingtext.net as well will ya?).

Either way, good luck OP.

[redcliff]

This happened to me a couple of years ago as well - line was syncing at 3Mbps (far from exchange) but was steady, no disconnects etc. Then suddenly one day it would not sync at all, several phone calls later Telkom dropped the speed to 1Mbps and once again connected fine, only not fine with me... turns out my neighbour also got ADSL and his speed was crap so they simply switched the copper (twisted pair) for mine and he had a great connection and I was saddled with the bad copper. Never was able to resolve it (probably because I was not willing to slip the technician a few bucks to switch the copper again) - I ended up cancelling the line.

[Jola]

Same thing happened to me, I had to cancel my ADSL line, using Cell C now !

In my case it was exchange congestion, so it is not going away.

[D3x]

Downgrade to 1Mbps & save some money!

[bobkot]

I have the same problem exactly, except it is intermittent, and ongoing for nearly a week ....

I do have an Afrihost account too, which I swop to at times like this and test - it is zooming along merrily as I type.

I suspect Telkom has a problem and isn't saying anything (surpriiiiiise)

B

[Wolvyreen]

Data Rate (kbps) 4096 | 512
Noise Margin (dB) 20.0 | 27.0
Attenuation (dB) 26.1 | 7.0
Output power(dbm) 3.9 | 12.5

I have tried Axxess and I get the same line speeds.

[Wolvyreen]

Guys, I can't believe this is oversubscription on the exchange. I am not even getting 384KB speeds!!

This test was done with a WebAfrica unshaped account.

[FNfal]

Your stats look ok,only thing i can suggest is report it again and ask for the specialist to attend to the fault or you will just get a line jockey again.
Try to get MWEB to report it as well they seem to have some clout with Telkom.

[Wolvyreen]

Well, I simply can't believe this is an oversubscribed exchange with download speeds like that.

I did what you suggested. I unplugged all other PC's and phones and TV's etc from the router and retried. Same result
I also tried axxess and webafrica unshaped and its the same thing. So its not the ISP or a device on the network aside from my own PC I will now try from a different machine on the network.

EDIT: I just tested from another machine on my network without anything else connected and get the same result.

[FNfal]

Just as a matter of interest can you see on your router if you are syncing Gdmt or ADSL2

[Wolvyreen]

where would I find that?

[undesign]

I feel your pain, went through the same. DSLAM "flat-lining" because of congestion. Uploads speeds generally better than download speeds on 4mb line.

After months of fighting I gave up and went the WISP route. Expensive, but on the upside my blood pressure has gone down to normal levels...