How long does it take to upgrade to 1Mbit?

A week after being told "I will escalate it for you and phone you back today" [har-de-frackin'-har] I phoned again today (*only* 11 minutes of annoying holding later) and spoke to another "support person" who said "well, it hasn't been escalated, but I will do it for you now - to the first level".

Me: "Erm, how many levels are there?
sp : "Um, actually, four."
Me: "So how do I get it to level four?"
sp: "It has to be with the first level for at least 48 hours..."
Me: "And the next level?
sp: "At least 48 hours..."
Me: "So should I resign myself to waiting another week?"
sp: "IF your line is capable of working with 1024."
Me: "Why has no-one at least asked me about the SNR Margin or the Line Attenuation - surely a good indicator of line capability?"
sp: "Essenaar? I dunno, that's the technical people. I'll give you their number if you like."
Me: "Will that speed things up?"
sp: "Probably not because they will refer it back to us."
Me: [bangs head on wall and starts singing '**** me Amadeus' while the phone drops quietly from my hand.]

SNO, get ready for the flood of customers!
 
Right, gave them a call exactly 24 hours after placing my order, and got a helpfull call hand to answer in about 15 minutes of holding. After quoting the relevant numbers the first words out of his mouth was, "It's too soon for you to be calling.... Oh hang on it's an upgrade, should be done by Friday...." After further prompting about being told it can take 5 days to test the line and a person needs to come out and do the installation I was told it is a change on their exchange only.

Right, maybe the need to learn to mark their orders:

"New Installations" / "Upgrades to existing lines"

Can't wait to call tomorrow.
 
Day 3. After another call to Telkom I was informed that there is two problems with my upgrade order. Firstly the line needs to be retested for complaince and this can take 3-4 days to happen once the correct department recieves the order. Secondly that they cannot give me a time as their systems has been down since Saturday and they are working through a back log to try and accomodate all the users on the system. My order should go through sometime next week.

Now where is that Telkom complaints number again ?
 
I ordered on the 1st of September, it was installed today.

Speeds are better but not great, 1024 theoretical max = 128k/s, i average about 80k/s so its way off..

Cheers,
Donald
 
TheRoDent said:
"We are currently experiencing large call volumes".

I cannot recall a single instance, no matter what time of the day, that that message wasn't being spooled. Shouldn't one increase "capacity" if one experiences "large call volumes"? ;)
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Thank you! I thought i was the only one who thinks it's absurd that whatever time day or night you call, they are experiencing large call volumes. I generally average about 15-20mins of hold before speaking to someone! My record is 32mins before i actually spoke to a human, before that i am just generally swearing at a voice prompt :/

My best though, is when they eventually give you a managers number and it's a capetown number, you call it (from durbs, so not cheap!) and his &^%@#%^ DIRECT LINE overflows to the SAME DAMN CALL CENTRE. THEN when someone finally answers your call (22mins) they say " Sorry sir, we can't transfer your call from the call centre. Please call him direct"

!!!

Considering i phone Telkom on a regular basis every day i figure i should sue their ass for the time they have stolen from my life!
 
It's taken a total of 9 days to upgrade me to 1Mb/s.

Three phonecalls, with an average of 20 minutes waiting before getting thru. After a 2 minute conversation the call centre staff promised me "someone would call back" after "escalating" it.

Calling or not calling, I think makes no difference.

It takes them 9-14 days. Period. Pathetic.
 
14 days. No notification. No apologies. Bullsh1t.

And although telskommel's speed test shows faster speed, buggerall subjective increase in speed in any protocol. And no real improvement in overseas speed tests.

Was it worth upgrading? Time will tell.
 
well, think about it this way...they need to set this up that everyone starts to expect the waiting and will not be shocked if they get to wait for 20-30mins. then when they need money, just start charging ppl for these calls! it would be a gold mine...0.o
 
Telkom have called me four time in the last 2 weeks to say they coming to upgrade my line and every time no one showed. Ordered the upgrade on the 1st.... so now its approaching the 3 week mark. *sigh*
 
I spoke to a consultant today again. It's now working day 5 since my upgrade order. I was told that everything I was told last week was incorrect and that the upgrade system has been down since Saturday and once they get it up it should be done tonight or tomorrow before the end of business.

Let's wait and see......
 
We ordered on the 2nd and still not got it, tho Telkom did apparently rock up about a week ago and put tone on our line to try and find where it was at the exchange. A bit odd! Call centre still says our line is being tested. Its crazy! All they have to do is login to the dslam, up the speed to 1024 and check that it sync's. If it does leave it there, if not revert to 512. Seems it is being done that way for the folks that get it in like a day, but for the rest of us the techies blindly follow some old install procures and it takes weeks!
 
My daily Telkom call today provided me with a reason to breath deeply and attempt at being calm. After a week it is finally revealed that my application was incorrectly logged as a new line and not a 1MB upgrade and therefore I need to restart the whole process from scratch and do another application for the upgrade which should take a week to process.

*deep breath*

I am willing to take bets on whether I will be upgraded before Christmas ? Anyone ?
 
ADSL Line Rental

Hi. Do you pay an extra R92/month line rental when you subscribe to ADSL?
 
malanjacobs said:
Hi. Do you pay an extra R92/month line rental when you subscribe to ADSL?
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Dude....have you been living in a cave all this time??? It ranges between R250 and R680 extra for ADSL plus your ISP which will be between R200 and R299 depending on what you go for. Can be much higher if you want an uncapped account. I still can't believe the question.... :rolleyes:

I laughed my ass off. Sorry. :)

PS: I also applied for the 1mbit upgrade, two weeks ago. They've upgraded the line now, but they are not 100% finished yet...whatever that means. :rolleyes:
 
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Well It's been a good 20 days (so much for 7-14 days) and nothing yet. I did however (after waiting about 25 mins listening to that annoying telkom theme music on 0800 456 786) call the number again on monday afternoon to find out that my line has indeed been tested and is capable of 1mbit and that it would be activated by tuesday evening... it's wendsday morning now and nothing, I'll let you guys know when i'm up and what my impressions on the difference in speed are...
 
I ordered the upgrade on the 5th on received it on the 20th. I made two calls to 0800375375, the last one being on the 19th, I was so polite Mother Theresa would seem crass by comparison, then yesterday I got the speed bump. Been averaging 112kB/sec according to Telkom's skewed speed test, the FTP test came in at a steady 105kB/sec. So far so good, I have however noticed that the intial connection to a site (SA or International) seems to take longer than previously. Could be that we in Cape Town are suffering again with same router issues as last week.
 
Thank goodness I don't live in Cape Town. You guys seem to have more problems than anyone else. But you got your upgrade already and I'm still sitting with 384kb....bloody Telkom. I actually wonder how many people they have sitting there, probably only two. :rolleyes:
 
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