2004 ICASA complaint

Hi Myke,
Welcome to MyADSL.
Now you can see for yourself that you are not alone. [:D]
It’s just sad that everyone in this land must resort to typing out their gripes on a forum in cyberspace. And to see that all the years of paying your Telkom Account on time and your taxes to the Receiver which indirectly kept Telkom in business has been squandered by the state and is now controlled by money hungry management, adamant to keep its monopolistic control over the market. It’s a sorry tale.

Well in the short term, Sentech could be the saviour. I presume you don’t play online games so you don’t need a low latency. But I would just test it out, before I signed on the dotted line. Just mark your time for the moment and when you have an opportunity ask someone who has a MyWireless if you can’t test it at your home. Or if Sentech themselves cannot do a Signal Strength Test on site.

Keep posting Myke; let’s hear some more of your thoughts.


<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">
 
Sentech is not a very viable option if you :

- Intend to play games : There is a lot of lag and unstable pings when playing even local online games, lots of gamers found out the hard way and are trying to terminate thier contract.

- Intend to download heavily : Sentech have a 'acceptable useage' policy which is determined by thier sole discretion. This translates into Sentech monitoring your useage and at thier discretion either disconnecting you or putting you into a higher price bracket.

(note: I haven't actually heard of anyone being dissconnected or put into a higher price bracket so far, but it is in the Sentech policy - I assume if you were to download like crazy you would be contacted by Sentech )
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by ASnogarD</i>
<br />Sentech is not a very viable option if you :

- Intend to play games : There is a lot of lag and unstable pings when playing even local online games, lots of gamers found out the hard way and are trying to terminate thier contract.

- Intend to download heavily : Sentech have a 'acceptable useage' policy which is determined by thier sole discretion. This translates into Sentech monitoring your useage and at thier discretion either disconnecting you or putting you into a higher price bracket.

(note: I haven't actually heard of anyone being dissconnected or put into a higher price bracket so far, but it is in the Sentech policy - I assume if you were to download like crazy you would be contacted by Sentech )
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Some good points Antowan.

But what I think is Myke or anyone reading this thread should do their homework on Sentech first before they buy into the scheme. Unlike myself that hurtled head first into ADSL without reading the fine print properly. Well you learn by your mistakes.
On a positive note for ADSL. I am Capped, but Im still browsing overseas since Sunday at reasonable speeds. In actaul fact I just finished downloading Service Pack2 RC1 for XP (272Mb) and it downloaded in an hour and a half from Microsoft.

<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">
 
As long as they warn you or call you before moving you to the higher bracket then thats fair and as long as they are reasonable with their policy ie. 20-25 GB a month. None of this 3Gig BS
 
It was mentioned somewhere else on the forum that Sentech only has a problem if you consistently download in excess of 2 gigs per day (not even possible on 128k solution).
 
I still think that the "excessive usage" story is the stupidest thing ever. If you don't want to deal with cross-subsidizing in order to operate on a flat fee basis, then charge people a nominal connection fee, and then bill them per megabyte (at a *reasonable* rate, of course.) That way, you can't complain about "excessive usage", and people that write 30 e-mails a month and visit 2 websites a year won't be subsidising the people downloading 32423452 GB/month.

Of course, heaven forbid that anyone market a sensible idea like that... Sentech may not be any worse than other players in this regard, but that doesn't make it a good thing.

<hr noshade size="1">mithrandi, i Ainil en-Balandor, a faer Ambar
 
mithrandi, the problem is, this is exactly how ISP's DO cross-subsidise heavy bandwidth users with a flat-rate service, is it unfair, yes, I guess in a sense it is, but there is nothing that says you cannot use an unlimited amount at any time, and ultimately it means that all your customers are happy.

However, Telkom's current solution is to charge people a flat rate (and a high one at that), and then stop you from using it when they decide you've had enough, and THAT is unfair.
 
Hi everyone.
I'm not a disgruntled ADSL user because I don't use ADSL. To be honest I'm afraid to spend that much just to discover I reach my cap in ten days, or that someone has hijacked my account and my cap has been reached, only to discover that Telkom won't do anything about it, won't let me change passwords and basically won't give a damn about its customers.
 
I think that the point is that ZA ADSL as it stands is practically useless for almost all online businesses, and is only good for ocassional websurfing and email retreival for a light (wealthy) home user.
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by reech</i>
<br />I think that the point is that ZA ADSL as it stands is practically useless for almost all online businesses, and is only good for ocassional websurfing and email retreival for a light (wealthy) home user.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

No quite,

ZA ADSL is technically the best internet connectivity option for most SOHO users, and even larger organisations.

Cost wise - Sentech MyWireless is better.

I won't discourage anybody to make the move to ADSL - it works! There is no need for costly analog/ISDN systems is you spend more per month on it than you spend on ADSL.


My business are running through 2 Prolog accounts - the ease of 1 payment for telephone, ADSL and ISP does not warrant a cheaper option.

But ADSL remains over priced, underperforming compared to what is available to SA's trading partners and our competitors int he market.



South Africa needs World Class Broadband at World Competitive Prices.
 
Look, no matter how ICASA justify all of this (and they sound like a Telkom spokesman - coincidental?) the fact remains: 20% of my gross monthly earnings go to Telkom as a professional working in South Africa. Now no matter how expensive bandwidth is for us due to geographic location, this percentage has to be amongst the highest in the world.

I remember in the UK when I lived there - before ADSL had appeared - I used to connect for about 3 hours a day. I thought the phone bill was fiendish at 5%! Now with ADSL there, the total must be around 2-3% of gross.

What we pay is blatantly not right. I have ADSL and use my landline for a maximum of 10 mins of calls daily! I'm surely a 'light' user of Telkom's services?! I'd hate to see what some sell their granny (or more realistically, go into debt) for.

=====================
Fusion.01 : Internet Design & Production
www.fusion01.com
=====================
 
The entire response misses many points:

ICASA has about as much credibility as the man in the moon, they have never done anything real that I can think of, they have less teeth than a chicken. Note that Telkom always quotes interactions with ICASA and never any other (dare I say independent) observers.

The entire issue of bandwidth and competition, and the reports that keep indicating that there is something seriously amiss with the line being taken by Telkom "We are poor chaps that are being ripped off by the rest of the world" and other drivel.

One burning question is; if Telkom is essentially making just about nothing on ADSL (nor any other service if we are to beleive them), where do the record profits come from? Efficiency? No seriously guys, where do they come from?


Essentially the response says nothing in a lot of words. Telkom will never listen to us, and has never listened to us, they are arrogant and incompetent.
 
*BUMP*

<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">
 
I couldn't remember when RPM first contacted ICASA - so I'm absolutely shocked to see that it was way back in February. Thats OVER 7 months ago and we're still nowhere near getting any answers. Totally unbelievable. So ICASA has proved themselves to be as useless as Telkom. I'll be happy to eat my words if they can prove me wrong and do what they were formed to do. Protect the people and not the monopoly.

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United we stand!
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Thanks RPM. I can understand it might take a month or two to investigate a complaint, but 7 + months?? Unbelievable.

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United we stand!
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VQuest, if I give you a brand new Jeep Cherokee V8, Limited Edition, all the whistles and bells, in recognition of your long service to MyADSL.co.za, do you promise to 'accidentally forget' about this post or say that you were 'too busy' to get round to rememebring to follow up?[;)][:p]
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by onionpeel</i>
<br />VQuest, if I give you a brand new Jeep Cherokee V8, Limited Edition, all the whistles and bells, in recognition of your long service to MyADSL.co.za, do you promise to 'accidentally forget' about this post or say that you were 'too busy' to get round to rememebring to follow up?[;)][:p]
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Very tempting indeed [:)]

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United we stand!
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Well - if VQuest doesnt want the Jeep - give it to me - i'll shove it up the Directors a**, in public and then make spans of money selling the film to reality TV shows. I HATE BRIBERY. It's screwing up Africa.
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by stoke</i>
<br />I HATE BRIBERY. It's screwing up Africa.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
That's part of the high cost of doing business in Africa.
"Money talks."[:o)]
 
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