2004 ICASA complaint

Glad to see you are still with us and fighting the good fight Peapod [:)]

Telkom's reply is nothing more than a brush off. They either firmly believe that ICASA (and everyone) will buy it or they simply do not care and merely fulfilling the bare minimum of requirements for a response.

I have nothing else to add to what everyone else has said but just voicing my vote of disapproval. I truly hope that continued pressure will eventually yield results.
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">merely fulfilling the bare minimum of requirements for a response.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

I agree.

<b><hr noshade size="1"></b><font size="2"><font color="red"><b>You can take Telkom out of the Post Office but you can't take the Post Office out of Telkom.</b></font id="red"></font id="size2">
 
No comments so far?

<hr noshade size="1">
"Since light travels faster than sound, people appear bright until you hear them speak."

NetLink Research
 
Telkom's response is in line with what I expected. It would have been very irresponsible of their spokesman to acknowledge any form of guilt, since that would open them up to litigation from not only their clients but also their shareholders.

Realise that Telkom is a public company and its first responsibility is towards their shareholders, so if they can wring every last cent out of you and me then they're doing their job well. Realise also that a large chunk of Telkom is owned by offshore companies: Do you really think they care more about the average South-African than their return on investment?

I think the real villian in this fairytale is the SA government - they have let us down in a big way. They have allowed Telkom to abuse its position by (a) not acting fast enough by putting competition in place and (b) by not taking better charge of the tariffs Telkom is allowed to extort.

If you want to be angry you have to be angry at the government - Telkom is doing exactly what 99.99% of companies would do in a similar situation.

One claim we can make is that Telkom should be struck off the "Proudly SA" list. They have no right to be on it.
 
Good post PierreLeRiche. [:)]

<b><hr noshade size="1"></b><font size="2"><font color="red"><b>You can take Telkom out of the Post Office but you can't take the Post Office out of Telkom.</b></font id="red"></font id="size2">
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Andre</i>
First thing to find out is what make and model of DSLAM they use.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

AFAIK from the original press releases, they are running equipment from Marconi.
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by BTTB</i>
<br /><blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"> I belive Telkom have 1024 port DSLAMS <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Possibly that is correct. I'm not sure.
The reason I say 256 is, when the techie from telkom installed ADSL he clearly told me in August last year that I was user number 5 out of 256. What that meant Im not sure, but I assumed he must of meant the number of ports. [:)]
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

I have spoken to some of the Telkom techies in the past when my line was installed. They stated that the DSLAMs were rolled out based on various aspects - size of the exchange, market potential of the area, etc.

From this I'd say each exchange would be rolled out with a limited capacity so as to reduce the initial capital expenditure and that they would be later upgraded based on user-demand.
 
http://www.marconi.com/html/news/marconiandtelkombringbroadbandtothepresidentscup.htm

Of course the DSLAMs are modular. I was not reffering to the single card.

"Up to 20 universal card slots per node in single-shelf configuration, with up to 2 shelves per rack.
Up to 32 port capacity per slot"

Conviniently they feature traffic shaping and "Extensive traffic policing".

<hr noshade size="1">
"Since light travels faster than sound, people appear bright until you hear them speak."

NetLink Research
 
I recently told a german friend of mine what I pay for ADSL .. He could not believe the price or the lower than accepted speed.. Then I told him how much I pay for a 128K local - 64K international diginet link (R7000 to IS and R2800 to telkom), he was dumbstruck.. Says they had similar things there a long time ago, they even had the "not allowed to transmit across a road" law. But thats all gone now. At the end of the day all ISP's have to pay telkom for connectivity.. from us to them, and from them out.

Lets get this monopoly out into the light, and then maybe the right people will see how its killing innovation and growth in the IT sector.

To Telkom: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE consider the benifit to the economy and employment fates if the IT industry was able to create and iplement jobs based on new solutions that are at this stage just not viable given your current solutions and pricing schedules.

To our Election candidates: Where do you stand on these matters. Are you even aware of them? Do you know how much this is killing the country?

Its keeping us backwards. and Investors do see this.
 
I can accept Telkom's reasoning that the cost of international bandwidth to a small, out-of-the-way country like South Africa is higher than the norm and directly influences the cost of the ADSL service. However, it would be useful to see just how much international traffic is generated through ADSL. I would rather see a cheaper ADSL product where international bandwidth is choked, or paid for separately, since most of my internet interests are local. I may be the exception to the rule, but considering that since the advent of ADSL several large repositories have sprung up in South Africa, I think it is quite possible to still access international content without having to do it internationally.

The thing that has always annoyed me is that Telkom is unable to distinguish between local and international traffic. They cap you on 3Gb of TOTAL traffic with a complete disregard for the composition of that traffic in the name of saving international bandwidth. If I get capped because 10% of my traffic is international, then that's hardly fair. The technology exists to differentiate between local and international traffic. It is used in other countries with similar international bandwidth concerns as South Africa.

Juice
 
Taking my Usage this month for example. Its the 14th of the month and I have used a total of 2116.599 MB. I won’t make the end of the month at all. But in my case for example the kids and my 2 nephews were all playing CS yesterday and my usage peaked to 377.892 MB for one day. A high percentage of that is directly attributed to playing games on a local server. Hardly fair as later this month I wont be able to browse overseas as we know capped speeds are unusable.
I find Telkoms attitude and lack of response about the 3 gig situation extremely annoying. It so obvious that the majority of users never abuse their connection. But the rest must suffer. Its like a classroom situation, where little Johnny made a noise in class and teacher couldn’t see who made the noise, so the whole class must stay after school for detention.


<b><hr noshade size="1"></b><font size="2"><font color="red"><b>You can take Telkom out of the Post Office but you can't take the Post Office out of Telkom.</b></font id="red"></font id="size2">
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">To Telkom: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE consider the benifit to the economy and employment fates if the IT industry was able to create and iplement jobs based on new solutions that are at this stage just not viable given your current solutions and pricing schedules.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

It's really up to ICASA to get us closer to deregulation.

Just a quote from a URL Telkom provided, they are clients of this website, "We endorse deregulation and competition"

<hr noshade size="1">
"Since light travels faster than sound, people appear bright until you hear them speak."

NetLink Research
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">We are certain that you will agree that Telkom does not dictate the technology of the product, we simply sell the product as designed.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

This point could also trip them up if the technical people on the list can get hold of the ADSL specification documents from IEEE or whoever set the standards.

To the best of my knowledge ADSL is a "Last Mile" product and specifies the use of existing copper wire from the consumer to the exchange. It has no bearing on international bandwidth at all, nor does it include port shaping or capping. Obviously the technology allows for this, but it is an ISP not a Telkom function.

In short, Telkom does indeed dictate the technology of the product supplied to South African users.

Cheers
Chris
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by BTTB</i>
<br />Its like a classroom situation, where little Johnny made a noise in class and teacher couldn’t see who made the noise, so the whole class must stay after school for detention.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Excellent analogy, Telkom are basically treating everyone like school children. They believe that given free reign EVERYONE will abuse the service. In reality this is complete nonsense and it is nothing more than a tactic to prevent corporate users migrating from Diginet.
 
There are various issues in regards with Telkom's reply that is a cause of concern to me and Cubehre ( Another MyADSL member )

This is our reply and concerns in regards with Telkom's official reply:

1. Cost of the ADSL service:

1.1. Cost of modems:
The Telkom ADSL POTS ROUTER seems to be of an inferior quality to other products with a lower price tag currently available in South Africa. We experienced endless problems with the Telkom ADSL Pots Router purchased for our small business before the price decrease. Daily reboots and constant network problems were experienced:
a) Daily Reboots:
It seemed that the Telkom ADSL Router generated errors which resulted in no internet access until the router was rebooted, sometimes several times a day!
b) Network Problems:
Inexplicably the Telkom ADSL Router was not happy when more than four workstations were connected to it, and even adding an intelligent switch to the network only seemed to solve the problem of communication between workstations, but not the fact that only four workstations were allowed access to the internet through the Telkom ADSL Router.

In contrast to the above experiences we also purchased a Duxbury Netgear ADSL Modem ( DM602 ), with much lower price tag than the Telkom ADSL Router at that stage. We are currently using the Netgear Router on a home network, and all we can say is: What a pleasure! This router is of high quality and quite stylish in silver, and we've experienced none of the hassles we've had with the Telkom ADSL Router. We then decided to switch the modems on the two premises, using the Telkom Router at home, and the Netgear Router at the office. The same problems were experienced with the Telkom Router on the home network, and none with the Netgear Router on the office network. Thus we've concluded that it was not a network fault, but most definitely the Telkom ADSL Router that was at fault.

Since, we've gotten rid of the Telkom ADSL Router, it's just not worth the price tag and the hassles. This also poses the question: How could these inferior Telkom ADSL Routers be approved by ICASA?


1.2 Cost of Line Rentals
We have to point out that line rentals should in no way be connected to the cost of international bandwidth as this is a telecommunications infrastructure issue and not an internet service provider issue. The fact that Telkom refers to bandwidth issues in the "Cost of Line Rentals" section is a clear indication of the misrepresentation of service issues by Telkom as seen so many times before.

It is however true that South African USERS subsidise overseas connections, but this is in no way related to ADSL line costs in South Africa. The fact of the matter is that these "subsidies" are normally paid for by USERS who host their websites in South Africa. South African Hosting Companies covers the bandwidth costs of international users "connecting" to websites hosted here. Thus the USERS referred to here aren't even Internet Connection clients, but web hosting clients who has to spend a pretty penny for additional bandwidth if their website has exceeded the allocated amount of bandwidth ( Normally over R1.00 per Mb ). Furthermore this means that Telkom has no direct costs to cover for clients if the client hosts his/her website at any other company in South Africa.

2. The ADSL Service
Telkom states that complaints from ADSL users in regards with Telkom's ADSL service has been minimal and that disgruntled users are by far in the minority. We feel that this can mainly be attributed to the fact that the ADSL service can only be provided through Telkom ADSL lines, which means that "non-technical" ADSL users cannot compare the service to any other similar service. This is a clear indication that the minority of disgruntled users consists of two main groups: Technically savvy users and users that has experienced overseas ADSL services. These two groups are disgruntled because they recognize the inferior ADSL service offered by Telkom when compared to International ADSL Standards. The other, "main group", of users simply doesn't realise that they are using an inferior ADSL service, since they can only compare it to their previous ISDN or in most cases 56k Dial-up connections.

Telkom also states: "We are certain that you will agree that Telkom does not dictate the technology of the product, we simply sell the product as designed." Once again a misrepresentation of their service, since most users do not have the knowledge of what ADSL connections are capable of. The fact that most international websites time-out and national websites load times are extremely slow when we've reached our 3Gb cap, is also totally unacceptable, since this indicates that capped users connections are throttled to far below 56k standard.

The above reply concludes our response to Telkom's statement.


Furthermore we would like to request that ICASA order an independent audit of Telkom’s ADSL Line provider service to determine exactly what the expense to turnover ratio consists of. We have a "sneaky" suspicion that the profits from this division is astronomical. This would not have been an issue if there were other similar services from competing companies.
Herewith a simple calculation:
16000 users time R600.00 per month for the ADSL line, not even taking business rates into account, equates to R 9.6 million per month and R 115.2 million per year!
This, coupled with the fact that the Telkom ISP division's cost cannot be subtracted from the above amount for costs incurred, surely should be an indication that the infrastructure is either hellishly expensive or Telkom ADSL line provider has been reaping massive profits from consumers.

We urge ICASA to take the above reply into consideration.

Kind Regards
ZooKeeper
Web Specialist
 
There are various issues in regards with Telkom's reply that is a cause of concern to me and Cubehre ( Another MyADSL member )

This is our reply and concerns in regards with Telkom's official reply:

1. Cost of the ADSL service:

1.1. Cost of modems:
The Telkom ADSL POTS ROUTER seems to be of an inferior quality to other products with a lower price tag currently available in South Africa. We experienced endless problems with the Telkom ADSL Pots Router purchased for our small business before the price decrease. Daily reboots and constant network problems were experienced:
a) Daily Reboots:
It seemed that the Telkom ADSL Router generated errors which resulted in no internet access until the router was rebooted, sometimes several times a day!
b) Network Problems:
Inexplicably the Telkom ADSL Router was not happy when more than four workstations were connected to it, and even adding an intelligent switch to the network only seemed to solve the problem of communication between workstations, but not the fact that only four workstations were allowed access to the internet through the Telkom ADSL Router.

In contrast to the above experiences we also purchased a Duxbury Netgear ADSL Modem ( DM602 ), with much lower price tag than the Telkom ADSL Router at that stage. We are currently using the Netgear Router on a home network, and all we can say is: What a pleasure! This router is of high quality and quite stylish in silver, and we've experienced none of the hassles we've had with the Telkom ADSL Router. We then decided to switch the modems on the two premises, using the Telkom Router at home, and the Netgear Router at the office. The same problems were experienced with the Telkom Router on the home network, and none with the Netgear Router on the office network. Thus we've concluded that it was not a network fault, but most definitely the Telkom ADSL Router that was at fault.

Since, we've gotten rid of the Telkom ADSL Router, it's just not worth the price tag and the hassles. This also poses the question: How could these inferior Telkom ADSL Routers be approved by ICASA?


1.2 Cost of Line Rentals
We have to point out that line rentals should in no way be connected to the cost of international bandwidth as this is a telecommunications infrastructure issue and not an internet service provider issue. The fact that Telkom refers to bandwidth issues in the "Cost of Line Rentals" section is a clear indication of the misrepresentation of service issues by Telkom as seen so many times before.

It is however true that South African USERS subsidise overseas connections, but this is in no way related to ADSL line costs in South Africa. The fact of the matter is that these "subsidies" are normally paid for by USERS who host their websites in South Africa. South African Hosting Companies covers the bandwidth costs of international users "connecting" to websites hosted here. Thus the USERS referred to here aren't even Internet Connection clients, but web hosting clients who has to spend a pretty penny for additional bandwidth if their website has exceeded the allocated amount of bandwidth ( Normally over R1.00 per Mb ). Furthermore this means that Telkom has no direct costs to cover for clients if the client hosts his/her website at any other company in South Africa.

2. The ADSL Service
Telkom states that complaints from ADSL users in regards with Telkom's ADSL service has been minimal and that disgruntled users are by far in the minority. We feel that this can mainly be attributed to the fact that the ADSL service can only be provided through Telkom ADSL lines, which means that "non-technical" ADSL users cannot compare the service to any other similar service. This is a clear indication that the minority of disgruntled users consists of two main groups: Technically savvy users and users that has experienced overseas ADSL services. These two groups are disgruntled because they recognize the inferior ADSL service offered by Telkom when compared to International ADSL Standards. The other, "main group", of users simply doesn't realise that they are using an inferior ADSL service, since they can only compare it to their previous ISDN or in most cases 56k Dial-up connections.

Telkom also states: <font color="navy">"We are certain that you will agree that Telkom does not dictate the technology of the product, we simply sell the product as designed."</font id="navy"> Once again a misrepresentation of their service, since most users do not have the knowledge of what ADSL connections are capable of. The fact that most international websites time-out and national websites load times are extremely slow when we've reached our 3Gb cap, is also totally unacceptable, since this indicates that capped users connections are throttled to far below 56k standard.

The above reply concludes our response to Telkom's statement.


Furthermore we would like to request that ICASA order an independent audit of Telkom’s ADSL Line provider service to determine exactly what the expense to turnover ratio consists of. We have a "sneaky" suspicion that the profits from this division is astronomical. This would not have been an issue if there were other similar services from competing companies.
Herewith a simple calculation:
16000 users time R600.00 per month for the ADSL line, not even taking business rates into account, equates to R 9.6 million per month and R 115.2 million per year!
This, coupled with the fact that the Telkom ISP division's cost cannot be subtracted from the above amount for costs incurred, surely should be an indication that the infrastructure is either hellishly expensive or Telkom ADSL line provider has been reaping massive profits from consumers.

We urge ICASA to take the above reply into consideration.

Kind Regards
ZooKeeper
Web Specialist
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Excellent analogy, Telkom are basically treating everyone like school children. They believe that given free reign EVERYONE will abuse the service. In reality this is complete nonsense and it is nothing more than a tactic to prevent corporate users migrating from Diginet.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Thank you. I for one don’t bother with P2P stuff. I can’t say I never will, but that is my decision what I will or won’t do. Telkom refers to Napster and other P2P applications of which I have not the foggiest idea on how to use them. Besides Telkom has gone ahead and shaped these ports, so what is the problem then?? "Buy another account", I geuss.
Also when or if corporate users start using ADSL, if ever that happens considering that Sentech is becoming an alternative for them, I seriously doubt that they will want to download mp3's and movies day and night. Besides if they are shaped, at what speed would they download anyway. It's just a load of old crock. And I agree with you about Telkom scared that their diginet customers might migrate to ADSL. But its absurd to penalise the rest of SA with a sub standard service, so that you can continue making monopolistic profits.
I just hope ICASA can see through all the untruths and half told stories. And uses countries like South Korea as a benchmark of where we could of been had Telkom not tried to stick it to the consumers.
Telkom is a remnant of the past controlled by money hungry management bent on squeezing every last drop out of the SA Cash Cow.
It just amazes me that the ANC who a decade ago came into power with liberal intentions can sit back and watch the SA Public getting screwed. They certainly have made a mess out of the telecommunication industry. I just hope ICASA has the teeth to rectify the situation as the SNO isn’t happening. I hear the SNO operators cannot raise the Capital, which is probably one of many other problems.

From a earlier post:
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"> quote: Watch those votes on the article at ITWeb. So far 36 votes and Telkom still to get 1.



And if you do see a Yes, dont throw Mr White away who could be skulking around on these threads.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

I see 1 vote. Aaah caught out. So Mr White does visit this forum. Ok so we have established that, are you coming to the braai then Mr White? Pap and Sous and Brandy and Coke included. [:D][:D][:D]


<b><hr noshade size="1"></b><font size="2"><font color="red"><b>You can take Telkom out of the Post Office but you can't take the Post Office out of Telkom.</b></font id="red"></font id="size2">
 
Hey check it out, you can get a new Corsa for less per month than ADSL [8)]

The lite side of life, and all.

<hr noshade size="1">
"Since light travels faster than sound, people appear bright until you hear them speak."

NetLink Research
 
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