Chaging ISP on Telkom Metroclear Fibre

[Eniigma]

A little under two years ago we had a 20mb Telkom MetroClear Fibre link installed. On some of the documentation its refered to as a Telkom Ethernet Express Access circuit.

We've been paying through our ring for this as the fibre was run over 2km from the closest nod to us and as far as I'm aware we are the only customers on this line. We certainly are the only one's from where the line comes above ground 500m down the road to us.

All of this was done through an ISP and we never dealt with Telkom/Openserve directly at all. There have been some benifits as when the cable was damaged on a weekend it was repaired by 10:30 on Monday. It is also a 20/20 link with 1:1 contention. The FUP is ok for our business needs at 1TB.

When our 2 year contract is up I want to move to a new ISP. And I don't mind if we drop to 40/20 or 100/50 service from CISP or similar as we'll be saving a shed load.

Service wise, performance wise extra I've been very happy with the current guys. The only issue is the price. And they will have first option at retaining our business but on condition the price is substancially lower and we're not locked into another 2 year or 1 year contract.

My question finally. Does Telkom have exclusivity contracts with certain ISP's when they run these lines in for a customer and would the ISP have any right to deny us access to that Telkom link at the end of the contract? I know when i've put in our address on various ISP sites, they all come back saying there is no fibre in the area.

 

[paul5186]

It is open access - in the ISP sense. But generally Metro connect is pricey. E.g costs me +- R10k to deliver a 100Mbps link - excluding bandwidth. However the benefit is that Openserve/Telkom fibre is in areas others are not.

More than likely no ISP will touch it without a contract.

 

[portcullis]

MetroClear is not cheap.

The first thing is to establish how long your contract with your ISP is. That is normally the same as the contract between the ISP and Openserve.

Penalties for early cancellation are severe.

These products of ours are offered over MetroClear:

https://www.cape-connect.com/ultimatefibre.html

 

[Eniigma]

Thanks guys. Somehow i missed these earlier.

Do you have a list of any ISP's that you know would use it? We are looking at 20 or 40MB line max.
We are in Durban.

Our current guys have come back saying the price has gone up, which is BS. Late last year I had a meeting with them and they said thier prices have come down and will look at increasing our speed, but never did.

@portcullis the current contract ends in October or Septmeber this year and in terms of the contract I have to give 90s notice to cancel or it will auto renew for 12 months.