have decided to post a quick update to this.
this will most probably be my last post the negativity in this forum is just too depressing (yes albert123 im talking about you)
Anyway after spending 6 odd hours on the phone complaining and escalating my call by jumping through Telkom hoops.
I was contacted by a Telkom internet manager who I must say was far more helpful and friendly than this forum (and he is supposed to be the enemy)
Here is the just of the conversation and what I considered important
1. Telkom Internet are aware of the new regs and are in discussion with ICASA about them and their implications , things like the analysis to distinguish local from international traffic will slow things down, and the regs say local traffic not subject to the cap but it does not say it cannot be charged for.
2. They are working on (no time frames) leaving you with POP3 and SMTP as well as local banking sites once you are capped (that’s all I use local for anyway)
3. There are groups of what they call download marauders who share an account and use large amounts of bandwidth effectively not paying for it no amount was mentioned but I got the impression it was well over 30 Gb. These people were also responsible for the cap being dropped from 30 to 3 Gb and the nasty mails sent out once you have been capped.
4. They will introduce a limitation of what ports/exchanges an account can be used on in an effort to curb the above.
okay firstly, the usage of your account on whichever line should not matter, I visit family of mine and use my username/password since I dont want to use their cap, they use a 1GB WebAfrica Prepaid where I can use 400MB in a day as standard. The unlimited local, okay I understand the reason Telkom might want to limit others using unlimited local if they are not paying for it, but maybe only allow 1 concurrent connection when you on your local bandwidth?
Lastly, 30GB being droppped to 3GB... TelkomInternet never sold 30GB accounts, they always sold 2,3 and 4GB accounts. The reason the 30GB accounts were dropped was because SAIX changed the billing structure to per gig billing, ISP's bought alot of 3GB accounts to make those possible and Telkom thought this isnt good and rather want to keep the userbase using 3GB.
"Abusers" in Telkoms definition had nothing to do with the scrapping of 30GB accounts. Telkom did that all by itself.