Help STOP Illegal Infinitecall disconnections

[Debbie]

Aye!

But if we could all ignore the "dude" and any other trollish behaviour, and get back to the issue of Infinitecall. "Dude", my email is all over the internet, find it and email me and I will gladly discuss these issues with you via an email exchange. Here is not the place (And the word you're looking for is "Statutes"; and Act 103/96 is otherwise known as the Telecommunications Act of 1996.) Right, no more feeding you!

The things I want to know are,
1) Do you think Telkom is responsible for the disconnections on Infinitecall?
2) Do you think Telkom should be held responsible for the disconnections? After all, they are claiming to offer a service on which they do not fully deliver.
3) What are your experiences with Inifnitecall?
4) Do you think I have a right to take this to a higher authority? Is it a matter fr an arbitrator or a court to determine?

 

[MaD]

blaarie hell im so happy im not a telkom bigwig.. ummm Debbie2, *so* happy we on the same side.. lol

 

[ScrnScrm]

I guess its too much brandy AYE!

AYE!
I am halfway through a bottle of Chivas myself Nice gift from Telkom today
hehehehehehehehehe

 

[Darth Garth]

That is why I am happy that Debbie2 is doing this.

A baised sample from emails by myadsl members are rather meaningless.

She should approach all the non-SAIX ISP's and ask to check their modem rack logs from all their POP's see if there is any trace of disconnects of Infiniti call customers from Fri - Sun over a weekend as compared during the weekday.

Don't you think they would have raised HELL with Telkom at ICASA if they noticed this happening to their customers ???.

 

[nocilah]

1) definitly!
2) they should be responsible for ensuring that the service they offer works.
3) Back in the day I experienced these 'disconnects' on a US Robotic's Modem.. will be happy to send the exact make and model.(Various ISP's) And out of interest sake before I used Inifnitecall I NEVER used to get diconnected even if I was on for 4 hours. STRANGE?
4) I think you have the right... We are a free country... as for court or arbitrator I am unsure... If possible may I suggest Judge Dread

Goodluck!

 

[Darth Garth]

Here is not the place (And the word you're looking for is "Statutes"; and Act 103/96 is otherwise known as the Telecommunications Act of 1996.) Right, no more feeding you!

Just point out to me which part of the Act by quoting it directly (you do know how cut and paste works) where they are guaranteeing no disconnects or total uninterrupted service on modem dailups with Infiniti-call ???.

Well I guess you can't.

 

[ScrnScrm]

Aye!

The things I want to know are,
1) Do you think Telkom is responsible for the disconnections on Infinitecall?
2) Do you think Telkom should be held responsible for the disconnections? After all, they are claiming to offer a service on which they do not fully deliver.
3) What are your experiences with Inifnitecall?
4) Do you think I have a right to take this to a higher authority? Is it a matter fr an arbitrator or a court to determine?

Hi Debbie, i know you are most probably not going to want to hear this, but here is my opinion :

1. I dont think Telkom are directly or consciously responsible. To get this through arbitration, you are going to have to prove that they knowingly disconnect calls, and that this happens BEFORE the so called last mile. That means you are going to have to develop a pattern with a whole bunch of users and prove it via documentation. They will just argue that you all disconnect at the same intervals to discredit them. At the end of the day, the proof sits in their hands and you dont have access to this info. The other thing is that ratified modem standards (like V90) allow for a certain amount of disconnects, as they dont know how to negotiate speed downwards AFTER a connection is established. And things like lightening, electricity fluctuations and all sorts of other rubbish can effect line quality. You would have to prove that no external factors played a roll.

2. So, no. I dont think they should be held responsible. tibby dude was right - it is a best effort service. There is no Service Level Agreement guarantee with this service.

3. My experiences have generally been good - although I switched to broadband ages ago so havent used it recently.

4. i dont think you have a case. there are too many external factors that you will be unable to prove or disprove. it will boil down to hear say.

:-( sorry.
later -

 

[Debbie]

She should approach all the non-SAIX ISP's and ask to check their modem rack logs from all their POP's see if there is any trace of disconnects of Infiniti call customers from Fri - Sun over a weekend as compared during the weekday.

Dude, thanks, that's helpful to me. How would I find out who the non-SAIX ISPs are? And how co-operative do you think they will be in turning over such information to me? That's a good idea.

 

[antowan]

Now that is constructive tibby.dude!

I like this post tibby! You have to understand that what Debbie is doing here is what makes consumer activism work. If she doesn’t have her facts straight when she takes this issue all the way to the top, she will not be taken seriously. In your previous posts you are judging that Telkom is playing fair when our experience shows that this is not the case in most instances. It would be fair to say that a deeper look into this phenomenon cannot be bad and logic dictates that if we are wrong nothing will happen to Telkom. We are all interested in one thing namely fair play.

Your post suggests something that we can do to check if there are problems on the ISP side of this issue. Nice one tibby.dude…


Cheers
Antowan

A baised sample from emails by myadsl members are rather meaningless.

She should approach all the non-SAIX ISP's and ask to check their modem rack logs from all their POP's see if there is any trace of disconnects of Infiniti call customers from Fri - Sun over a weekend as compared during the weekday.

Don't you think they would have raised HELL with Telkom at ICASA if they noticed this happening to their customers ???.

 

[Darth Garth]

Hi Debbie, i know you are most probably not going to want to hear this, but here is my opinion :

Finally a voice of reason ... you do know that stupidthorn and his motley crew are soon going to call you

a) must be a Hellkom employee.
b) a troll
c) pro Telscum
d) a communist
e) some lame Std10 sexual modification of your nick on the forum

Good luck .

 

[nocilah]

Hi Debbie, i know you are most probably not going to want to hear this, but here is my opinion :

1. I dont think Telkom are directly or consciously responsible. To get this through arbitration, you are going to have to prove that they knowingly disconnect calls, and that this happens BEFORE the so called last mile. That means you are going to have to develop a pattern with a whole bunch of users and prove it via documentation. They will just argue that you all disconnect at the same intervals to discredit them. At the end of the day, the proof sits in their hands and you dont have access to this info. The other thing is that ratified modem standards (like V90) allow for a certain amount of disconnects, as they dont know how to negotiate speed downwards AFTER a connection is established. And things like lightening, electricity fluctuations and all sorts of other rubbish can effect line quality. You would have to prove that no external factors played a roll.

later -

I must admit these are valid arguments... The only way is to gather itemised phonebills from people who use this service and compare s. This in itself would be a huge undertaking... but you might have some evidence if you get enough data ... I think ScrnScrm has put this down in an eloquent manner... but I still think you should try... what happens if you do WIN? If you dont win... so what atleast you tried...

 

[nocilah]

Finally a voice of reason ... you do know that stupidthorn and his motley crew are soon going to call you

a) must be a Hellkom employee.
b) a troll
c) pro Telscum
d) a communist
e) some lame Std10 sexual modification of your nick on the forum

Good luck .

ha ha ha ha! Your eloquence with words stupifies me

 

[Darth Garth]

Dude, thanks, that's helpful to me. How would I find out who the non-SAIX ISPs are? And how co-operative do you think they will be in turning over such information to me? That's a good idea.

MWeb and Internet Solutions are the biggest dialup players right now with their own infrastructure seperate from Telkom or SAIX.

Afaik they belong to the Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA) and they rather loath Telkom for various reasons.

See http://www.ispa.org.za/ for more details.

 

[Darth Garth]

Now that is constructive tibby.dude!

I have my moments Antowan .

 

[Debbie]

Hi Debbie, i know you are most probably not going to want to hear this, but here is my opinion :

1. I dont think Telkom are directly or consciously responsible.
3. My experiences have generally been good - although I switched to broadband ages ago so havent used it recently.
4. i dont think you have a case. there are too many external factors that you will be unable to prove or disprove. it will boil down to hear say.

:-( sorry.
later -

Hey,
Please, I welcome any opinions that are constructive, like this one! I appreciate any constructive contribution, because it gives me a good idea of other people's opinions, as well as helps me to prepare my argument.

You are right - proving it will be very difficult. But I still believe that Telkom does this DELIBERATELY. Let me provide you with a very good example of why I think this is so:

On Sunday night I was disconnected from infinitecall. I immediately pulled my line out of my computer and plugged it into my telephone. Guess What? My telephone was dead. Dead dead dead as a dodo. It came back on after a minute or two. Why was it dead in the first place?

I think that there are too many people that have had these experiences with Telkom. I am trying to ascertain whether or not this is Telkom's fault.

Although it may be a best effort kinda service, I do not belive this is good enough. Telkom wants to be compared to teleco's companies in other developing countries. Yet they are making profits in excess of those telecos in the develped world. In light of their enormous profits, surely the South African consumer deserves a reliable internet connection, dialup or otherwise, that does not burn a hole in one's pocket and which gives the customer the ability to control his/her bill. Inifinitecall's unreliability takes away that option from the consumer. And I don't think that is right.

Thanks again for your comments.

 

[ScrnScrm]

I totally agree with you Debbie that we need a service for the masses. I just dont think your case holds. This would be my action plan if i were to try prove what you suspect :

1. Speak to the ISPs - ask if you can see the logs. Get a statistician to anaylse for you and see if you can pick up a pattern.
2. Make sure that users that are being effected dont have Telkom basic Voicemail active - this can disconnect your active session.
3. SPEAK TO LARGE CORPORATES. They have no vested interests in the industry - they are merely trying to offer their end users a service, and generally have far more advanced infrastructure with much better reporting facilities. Start with the corporates that dig big holes in the ground - they are a couple of netadmins from these corporates on this forum. Ask them if you can go through their logs, and what their experiences are.
4. Try tie this all back to itemised billing. It wont help your case if a call is dropped, a call to another number is made, then the ISP call re-initiated.
5. Check with Weathersa.co.za what was happening environmentally during the disconnect.
6. check with Eskom for power interupts during the time period when disconnects happen.

Hope this helps!

 

[Debbie]

Yes it does help, and again, good advice. I need to sit down and write up all these things that have been suggested to me. I might need a little support - I don't claim to have the technological background and so a lot of this stuff I don't entirely understand what you are saying, but I get the general picture. I do have a good understanding of the law and the general regulatory environment. What I need now is to combine my knowledge with the knowledge of people who know more about the technical issues involved.

Might I just add that I am very impressed by the overall quality of the comments, suggestions, and responses that the Myadsl community has provided me with. I hope this continues. Even if you think I have a tough case to prove, I still think that Telkom needs to be challenged by Joe Soap on the street. And at least I know that, despite th dissenting opinions on the more intracate issues, we (almost) all agree on one thing - Telkom takes advantage of their position as a monopoly at the expense of the (almost) helpless consumer.

 

[doekvoet]

Part of the gathering of information should include the expriences of those dial-up users not using infinicall. Are they also disconnecting as frequently?

Making this comparison could also provide interesting infomation.

It also appears that the 0860 xxxxxx number used by Telkom to connect the dial-up way is more unstable than dialing a local number to connect to. This should also be investigated - the rate of disconnections using 0860- numbers vs using local numbers.

 

[Myrrdin]

Hmmm

Hey,

On Sunday night I was disconnected from infinitecall. I immediately pulled my line out of my computer and plugged it into my telephone. Guess What? My telephone was dead. Dead dead dead as a dodo. It came back on after a minute or two. Why was it dead in the first place?

Hi Debbie2.

This comment of yours made me think. Let's assume for a moment that Telkom is deliberately disconnecting infinitecalls to enhance profits. One would assume they are doing this by software as I dont see some person sitting somewhere and monitoring calls. Now software being what it is would only do what it is told, no artificial intelligence. Although most people get infinite call for data reasons there must be people out there who got infinitecall for reasons of making long voice calls although not many. There will however be many people who got infinitecall for data but use it for voice as well. If Telkom's "stupid" software only uses infinitecall registration as selection criteria for the "supposed" deliberate drop you need to find people who fall into the both data and voice category. Then you need to get these people to monitor their voice calls that have a long duration and check if they have disconnects while on voice.

You want to know the real kicker. I have a client who is complaining of exactly this. He has 64k isdn and his wifes uses the phone to call him when he is away on bussiness. He complains to me constantly about getting line drops on infinitcall when he is at home and just the other day he said his wife gets it as well when she makes voice calls after hours. Exactly the sympton as you described here. Line drops and no dialtone for a few minutes.

I hereby publically apologise to my client as I did think he was starting to smoke his socks. I have called Telkom on this matter and they tell me the line is fine after they "test" it.

Will look for your email and send you more info, names times etc. I need to go and install some monitoring software there I think.

Well wishes to Debbie2, keep up the good attitude and work.

 

[Debbie]

You want to know the real kicker. I have a client who is complaining of exactly this. He has 64k isdn and his wifes uses the phone to call him when he is away on bussiness. He complains to me constantly about getting line drops on infinitcall when he is at home and just the other day he said his wife gets it as well when she makes voice calls after hours. Exactly the sympton as you described here. Line drops and no dialtone for a few minutes.

I hereby publically apologise to my client as I did think he was starting to smoke his socks. I have called Telkom on this matter and they tell me the line is fine after they "test" it.

I can't tell you how happy I am to hear that someone else has experienced this problem - I was afraid people would think I was talking ****!

All of you who have given me advice - you are right, I need to do this correctly. Can anyone who is willing to provide further advice or information, please post it here or email me ([email protected]).

Thank you all for the continued advice.