DSL Garden Route style

[Grouter]

Was passing by our local telkom exchange today, and saw a whole fleet of telkom vehicles outside. Decided to try my luck, so went in and asked why so many people locally are waiting so long to have their dsl connected. Just so happened that one of the guys there was the eastern cape head of dept for such stuff, and he explained that although they'd laid fibre all over the garden route, they hadn't connected it. Therefore, no fibre, no bandwidth, so "we're looking after the existing subscribers (to dsl) and keeping new ones waiting until we can connect. I asked " so why hasn't it been connected?" ( At this point we were standing in front of a row of DSLAMS which were blinking away merrily - he pointing out that they were all waiting to be switched on when said fibre links get connected) He said he was embarrassed to admit he didn't know - as far as he was aware, the infrastructure was all in place, it was just a matter of switching it all on...
And to his credit, he gave me his cell number and said: "call me in the morning and I'll have an answer for you". It was only at this point that I noticed a few embarrassed looking faces in the group of techs standing around with us listening. All very interesting - glad I stopped off on my way back from the cafe...

 

[dionb]

Had a similar one here, with the call centre giving me 101 stories.
First - I cannot get, then no ports, then order and we install ports, then next month will be done (April), then moved on a month (May)....
Untill I bumped into a techie at the local cafe. He said there were ports, phoned the guy responsible for the exchange and confirmed ports existed, but backhaul had to be upgraded.
Received a phone call on the 5th to confirm that it is done.

 

[kayvee]

Looks like I am suffering similar woes. I have been spun the no ports tale, and looking for direct contact on the ADSL techie route in my area (PMB) to try and bump matters. Oh for a list of telephone numbers of the "right" people.....

 

[Grouter]

update

Another interesting chat with "The Telkom guy" today. He confirmed no more ports at our local exchange - so me and lots of others are going to have to wait "+/- 6 weeks" for the fibre backhaul to be connected. However, nice chap that he was, said he was going to try and "circumvent" the Telkom policy of waiting till X number of ports die on any given DSLAM card before they put another good working card in. He wouldn't tell me how many had to die before they normally replace the card. He did however promise to replace the dud card I'm apparently on with a good one with all working ports - thus giving me a (long-awaited) connection that actually works. This will happen monday. I'm hoping....

Getting to this point has actually involved twice daily calls to this guys personal cell number, but, hey - seems to have got results.

 

[kayvee]

I'd do (almost) anything to find the equivalent of your connection in my local area. A list of cell numbers must be worth something......

 

[Grouter]

Yeah - this guy is based in PE and seems to be the project manager for enabling 4 Mbps fibre-based dsl down these parts (Mossel Bay thru to PE). I doubt he could help much with your problem though - as you say, needs to be a local guy.

 

[Grouter]

ADSL now working - at last. Telkom tech came and sorted everything - involved cutting off the entire town for a few hours, but everyone's connected again. And, he tells me, there's ports to spare. Gotta love telkom...