bushguru
Active Member
Telkom says we have a "network failure" across the whole of our town's DSL due to a congested DSLAM but they are unwilling to give us any idea of when it will be fixed. This also affects wireless internet because there is no other fibre in our area for backhaul, so our WISP business is reliant on load-balanced DSL, which sucks at the best of times but is now threatening to fold our business. We have been told, off the record, that the problem has arisen due to Vodacom moving their traffic onto Telkom infrastructure following their major network failure at the end of June. Vodacom data customers report that their speeds are also reduced lately but not as badly as Telkom-based services. Presumably this is because they're not running through the congested DSLAM.
Telkom-based services are running at between 10% and 25% of normal capacity. Normal was never great (we're not even on the waiting list for 10mbps) but the lines were usable until 5 July - over 6 weeks ago. For about 4 months before that, the lines were slower than normal but not too appalling. The problem was reported but we were told an upgrade would be needed on the DSLAM and "it might take a while".
To cut a long story short, we have been told for nearly 7 weeks that they are "working on it". Things started to happen faster when the MD of a local mine (part-owned by a really big international company) complained that he was having trouble doing his work and got his London management team to lean on Telkom's Pretoria people. It seems that Telkom promised them action to shut them up and then went back to sitting on their bums. Telkom scheduled maintenance on 5 August and then didn't do it (see why not by looking at my comments under the thread). Last week I was told that they had now ordered the DSLAM card and it would be arriving within a week. Now everything's gone quiet again and nobody will answer queries.
We have pulled every string known to man to get more specific and reliable information. We are currently keeping tabs on the situation through about six different contacts, some senior, some junior, some local, some national. Each one has a different story. The call centre (10217) has no story at all; we long ago gave up phoning them more than once a week just to remind them that it's not sorted yet. ALL complaints to Telkom and ICASA have been completely ignored.
What next? Does anyone have a magic contact? I'm half thinking of hiring a private investigator to dig up the personal cellphone number for Pinky Moholi... but I have a horrible feeling that she wouldn't give a toss either. It's something to do with being in Phalaborwa rather than somewhere "important" like Sandton.
Telkom-based services are running at between 10% and 25% of normal capacity. Normal was never great (we're not even on the waiting list for 10mbps) but the lines were usable until 5 July - over 6 weeks ago. For about 4 months before that, the lines were slower than normal but not too appalling. The problem was reported but we were told an upgrade would be needed on the DSLAM and "it might take a while".
To cut a long story short, we have been told for nearly 7 weeks that they are "working on it". Things started to happen faster when the MD of a local mine (part-owned by a really big international company) complained that he was having trouble doing his work and got his London management team to lean on Telkom's Pretoria people. It seems that Telkom promised them action to shut them up and then went back to sitting on their bums. Telkom scheduled maintenance on 5 August and then didn't do it (see why not by looking at my comments under the thread). Last week I was told that they had now ordered the DSLAM card and it would be arriving within a week. Now everything's gone quiet again and nobody will answer queries.
We have pulled every string known to man to get more specific and reliable information. We are currently keeping tabs on the situation through about six different contacts, some senior, some junior, some local, some national. Each one has a different story. The call centre (10217) has no story at all; we long ago gave up phoning them more than once a week just to remind them that it's not sorted yet. ALL complaints to Telkom and ICASA have been completely ignored.
What next? Does anyone have a magic contact? I'm half thinking of hiring a private investigator to dig up the personal cellphone number for Pinky Moholi... but I have a horrible feeling that she wouldn't give a toss either. It's something to do with being in Phalaborwa rather than somewhere "important" like Sandton.
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i'll blame it on the drugs 
