moving to a different ADSL exchange

[Sparkz0629]

Hi Guys,
i was wondering if it is possible to move to a different exchange?

The one I'm currently connected to is 5.7 km away from my place, but the one my neighbor is connected to is 3.7km from my place.

because I'm far from the one, i keep dropping connection, and can only sync at 2mb/s.

any advise?

thanks

 

[Kryon_MC]

Hi

Yes it is possible. I did it two years ago in JHB. Bascially, same situation as you where I was 6km from the exchange I was connected to and 1.5km from another sub-exchange. I phoned 10219 and applied for a line transfer. You will find that the operators are stumped when you specify the same address. Just explain that you want to be put on a new circuit that connects to a closer exchange. I had to fight for 4 months to get it to happen and eventually I was given the exchange managers number and he sorted it out in a day.

Good luck!

 

[Scoliosis]

Oh wow....ok, so how can I find out if there is another exchange closer to my house than the one I am currently on?

 

[Bellboyrsa]

Ok as an ex Telkom employee that worked extensivly (don't know the correct spelling as I'm a boertjie) with these this I can give my 2 cents here. Kryon might be right but Kryon might also just have been lucky.

Telkom have borders for every exchange. These borders are planned by their network planning guys. How they plan where an exchange and where the borders must be are their closely guarde secret. One would think that they would take a map and start making circles from the exchange with 5 km radius on it only to be influenced by topographic reasons such as rivers and mountains etc. Alas that isn't the case.

They also take into account how many people is currently residig in that area etc. In Pretoria CBD there are about 7 exchanges in one building with 1 extra about 1 km from there. In outlying areas they might have exchanges with coverage areas with a radius in excess of 40 km. In later stages they started with what I call mini exchanges placed on street corners and linked to the main exchanges with optic fibre links. In the begining they kept copper cable from the main exchanges right up to these exchanges to be able to provide services that they couldn't provide on these mini exchanges. This was ISDN's and Data circuits. Later on an ISDN card was developed to work on these exchanges. Then ADSL happened and the same problem occured ie ADSL's couldn't be provided on these exchanges. 3 years after the first ADSL was installed a card for these exchanges was created and ADSLs could now be provided on these exchanges.

The problem is that as everything in Telkom changes even the planning part in Telkom changes. Therefore it happens that although customers would have received on copper cable from the main exchange before the needed card is installed in the mini exchage and the card gets installed afterwards, there happens so many slipups that in many cases the customers are never cut over to the mini exchage. This results in customers that gets very annoyed as they want ADSL and are to far or they want higher speeds and can not get it as the KM distance is to far. By luck a ADSL work up to 6 km up to 384k. 5Km allow you 512k and 4km you can get up to 4 megs. With new codecs and encapsulations this speeds is ammending. certain guys service was allready upgraded from upto 4 meg to upto 10meg and the upto 512 to upto 1meg without any increase in pricing. This however allready had caused problems for customers who was to far and this upgrade caused the signal to noise level to drop below 6 dB resulting in the ADSL not working. In other instances the customer is within the distance limits but due to unknown influences the ADSL just don't work on the higher speeds. The maintenance of the ADSL's was also carried over from the techs that learned all the fine tricks and all the funny problems and had all the test equipment to find funny problems to other sections without proper training and in many instances without proper test equipment. Their easiest way to solve a ADSL not working problem is to drop the speed of the ADSL. Remember you pay for 512k so if a 1meg doesn't work they can drop it to 512k and you still get what you pay for. The new 10megs/old 4megs you actually pay for a 1meg and if they drop the line to a 1 meg to get it going you still get what you are paying for.

So if you in an area where a mini exchange was installed afterwards and you're not cut over onto it, if you're lucky and you get a Telkom tech to assist you might be cut over to this closer exchange. If you however are in an exchange border and 6k's from the exchange, although you might be within 1.5k's from exchange in the the other exchange border, Telkom cannot and will not provide you with service as there are no copper cables that links between exchange borders. There was one exception to this rule I know of and that was in Sunnyside Pretoria where you had the Sunnyside exchange accros from Sunnypark and the Bromberg exchnage about 2 k's from there. Right on the border between the 2 exchanges was an arial cable that link 2 underground cables from the 2 exchanges up.

I also believe that Telkom is no longer intersted in installing more of the mini exchanges to shorten the distance to customers premises. This dicision was made when they started with WCDMA wireless links and continues now that they promote their own 8ta cellphone service.

Therefore I don't want to be the messenger of death but I don't have high hope for you.