ADSL is dying in South Africa

Hanno Labuschagne

Hanno Labuschagne

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ADSL is dying in South Africa

Telkom's financial results for the year ended 31 March 2021 show that its fixed broadband subscribers have declined by nearly 12% year-on-year.

Its fixed broadband subscriber numbers dropped from 686,525 in March 2020 to 605,807 in March 2021.

While Telkom has lost fixed line customers since 2001, its fixed broadband subscriber numbers only started declining from September 2016.
 
I wish it would die properly so we can move on.
I have a friend who has been billed for ADSL to the tune of R40k since he was switched to Telkom fibre (in addition to his fibre bill). The confusing bill led him to believe fibre was just an upgrade on top of ADSL. He is fighting with Telkom about the ADSL piece.
 
Everyones-a-Wally said:
I wish it would die properly so we can move on.
I have a friend who has been billed for ADSL to the tune of R40k since he was switched to Telkom fibre (in addition to his fibre bill). The confusing bill led him to believe fibre was just an upgrade on top of ADSL. He is fighting with Telkom about the ADSL piece.
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That is his own stupidity and has nothing to do with Telkom as a company!
My conversion from the one to the other went smoothly because I took responsibility to see that it went smoothly, and did not leave any thing to chance.
 
Geoff.D said:
That is his own stupidity and has nothing to do with Telkom as a company!
My conversion from the one to the other went smoothly because I took responsibility to see that it went smoothly, and did not leave any thing to chance.
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Sometimes you speak twaddle Geoff.
Not everyone understands tech the way you do. Are you with Telkom? What does your bill look like? Their bills are a dogs breakfast. When you phone your ISP and ask them to upgrade you to fibre, it's reasonable to assume they will cancel the copper service you no longer have access to, especially if that ISP is both the fixed line provider and ISP. This didn't happen with one property but two. He is even being billed for a service that Telkom no longer offer on one of those bills (2mbps ADSL).
 
Everyones-a-Wally said:
Sometimes you speak twaddle Geoff.
Not everyone understands tech the way you do. Are you with Telkom? What does your bill look like? Their bills are a dogs breakfast. When you phone your ISP and ask them to upgrade you to fibre, it's reasonable to assume they will cancel the copper service you no longer have access to, especially if that ISP is both the fixed line provider and ISP. This didn't happen with one property but two. He is even being billed for a service that Telkom no longer offer on one of those bills (2mbps ADSL).
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Again that is his problem! Why does he not monitor his bills monthly? It is his money and he should check and check again.
The bill is not confusing at all IF you bother to look at it.
There is NO valid excuse for those that dig holes for themselves
 
Geoff.D said:
Again that is his problem! Why does he not monitor his bills monthly? It is his money and he should check and check again.
The bill is not confusing at all IF you bother to look at it.
There is NO valid excuse for those that dig holes for themselves
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Now I've heard it all. Defending Telkom for billing the client for a service they don't provide. There is no excuse for that level of incompetence.
This is just another example of the hotel california that Telkom is.

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And some of those items were never ordered, they were added by Telkom ad-lib
 
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rambo919 said:
Death is too drastic, decline is more accurate.

Outside of cities ADSL is still king.
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In my small town Vuma has started long ago with fiber trenching and installation of cables, then all of a sudden everything was halted and we are waiting for it to become alive (who knows when). Then Herotel started planting poles everywhere and putting up aerial fiber - looks like they are going to be online before Vuma wakes up. I use PureDSL and it is still amazing with pure uncapped unshaped unthrottled internet with no fup - we use between 800GB to 1.8TB per month and we never had a problem - itis all going well and DSL is still very much alive! I am more than happy with the service I get.
 
Hanno Labuschagne said:
ADSL is dying in South Africa

Telkom's financial results for the year ended 31 March 2021 show that its fixed broadband subscribers have declined by nearly 12% year-on-year.

Its fixed broadband subscriber numbers dropped from 686,525 in March 2020 to 605,807 in March 2021.

While Telkom has lost fixed line customers since 2001, its fixed broadband subscriber numbers only started declining from September 2016.
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It'll be the same next month too. Like it was last month.
 
MEG101 said:
In my small town Vuma has started long ago with fiber trenching and installation of cables, then all of a sudden everything was halted and we are waiting for it to become alive (who knows when). Then Herotel started planting poles everywhere and putting up aerial fiber - looks like they are going to be online before Vuma wakes up. I use PureDSL and it is still amazing with pure uncapped unshaped unthrottled internet with no fup - we use between 800GB to 1.8TB per month and we never had a problem - itis all going well and DSL is still very much alive! I am more than happy with the service I get.
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Herotel is starting here too.... but unless they open up their network and let me use afrihost I'm not budging unless telscum folds and I am forced to.

Loyalty counts for something with me.
 
Brian_G said:
Telkom would love for DSL to die, but it won't, not for ages.
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I don' think they want that to happen but they saw that landline voice is dying and they need to try to keep ADSL going hence the launch of Pure Connect.

Openserve has thousands of DSLAMs and ISAMs out there that still needs to be maintained and some clearly are being run at a loss. I saw a few ISAMs running with 90% port availability. No way that ISAM is making money at all.
 
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cavedog said:
I don' think they want that to happen but they saw that landline voice is dying and they need to try to keep ADSL going hence the launch of Pure Connect.
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Their extreme anti-landline campaign said it all, threats and extreme offers, included a big push for LTE which is bad quality in at least some areas, were followed by what looked like a desperate about-turn when they presumably started losing related clients.

Whatever happened there, it seems history is repeating - lots of "hints" from them re the lack of public DSL interest.
But not everyone needs higher bandwidth or likes fibre, and in our case it means moving our landline itself to LTE which is an absolute no.
 
Brian_G said:
Their extreme anti-landline campaign said it all, threats and extreme offers, included a big push for LTE which is bad quality in at least some areas, were followed by what looked like a desperate about-turn when they presumably started losing related clients.

Whatever happened there, it seems history is repeating - lots of "hints" from them re the lack of public DSL interest.
But not everyone needs higher bandwidth or likes fibre, and in our case it means moving our landline itself to LTE which is an absolute no.
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My mum is one of those people. She needs affordable access just to do her few things on the net but it needs to be unlimited if you wants to do voice/video calling and computer updates and the odd downloads.

The 5Mbps down and 1Mbps upload Pure DSL for R297 is pretty affordable for a 24/7 uncapped. It's not fast but unlimited and well priced.
 
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