It’s not really a surprise to see announcements from Telkom around this time of the year, so when we first heard of the announcement of Telkom’s new product offerings, we were ready... Or so we thought.
The South African broadband market was rocked last month by the announcement, by Mweb surprisingly enough, of affordable uncapped internet access. Naturally, to remain competitive, most other ISP’s rushed out the gates to announce similar offerings, and soon enough, the market was buzzing. However, not all ISP’s namely Telkom and Webafrica, have rushed to announce anything. Webafrica have claimed that these new offerings are unsustainable in the long run whilst Telkom have remained mum on the subject, until now.
We were all expecting the increases in line speed as Telkom have been testing line capabilities, laying fibre optic cables and upgrading DSLAM’s and exchanges to be ADSL2+ ready. Many internet users have claimed to hit remarkable speeds never before seen in South Africa with regards to ADSL which all pointed to this being the case. And indeed, it is now official.
In a press conference held at 8a.m. this morning, Telkom officially stated that the rollout of the line speed increases will commence on May 1st. However, because not all exchanges are 100% ready for the increase, it will be rolled out across the country over the next few months, only stalled because FIFA regulations state that no network maintenance can be held during the World cup. The line speeds will be bumped up as follows.
• 384 increased to 1024/103 Downstream/Upstream
• 512 increased to 2048/205 Downstream/Upstream
• 4096 increased to at least 8192 up to 10Mb/ps Downstream and 1.5Mb/ps upstream
However, we were told that these bumps in speed would be free of charge, but it seems this isn’t the case. These speeds actually come at a reduced price as Telkom have finally chosen to go ahead with the much awaited Local Loop Unbundling (LLU).
For those who don’t understand what LLU implies, it means that line rentals are charged for specific speeds. The loss of line rental has brought about a whole new game in the market, allowing consumers freedom in choosing their ISP’s, but you may want to decide on that carefully according to Telkom. Why you may ask? Well it comes with the pricing structure of these new packages.
• 1Mb/ps uncapped and semi-shaped at R199 per month
• 2Mb/ps uncapped and semi-shaped at R299 per month
• 8/10Mb/ps uncapped semi-shaped at R599 per month
• 1Mb/ps uncapped and unshaped at R299 per month
• 2Mb/ps uncapped and unshaped at R399 per month
• 8/10Mb/ps uncapped and unshaped at R799 per month
When asked the question over fair usage policies, the spokesperson had this to say, “We are well aware of the problems that uncapped brings, in particular, the abuse of the system at such high speeds users will be achieving. However, we also know that such abuse can’t be sustained over a lengthy period of time. Research shows that users who abuse the system usually only do so during their first 2 months and thereafter slow down due to the lack of storage capacity they own but also due to the fact that there’s only so much any user can wish to download in any given time. These packages will also only have 1 concurrent connection as is industry standard to prevent abuse.”
The spokesperson also went on to say that there will be more capacity than ever before due to the EASSY cable landing in a few weeks, as well as the share they now own on the Seacom cable to go along with the SAT3/SAFE cable Telkom owned all along.
When we approached CEO of Telkom Reuben September he had the following to say, “We’ve been working on a strategy for the past 2 years, it’s been a huge effort and many hours have gone into the planning of our new structure. We were hoping to have everything ready by the World cup and we nearly achieved it, however there were many obstacles standing in our way. We hope to remain the leader in ADSL in the future and we’re sure that our packages as they stand now will lead us in that direction. We will work hard to bring more exciting packages in future as technology moves forward, we will do our best to keep up.”
When asked about business packages, we were told that they’re still fine tuning the details, but rest assured, an announcement will come later in the month.
