My Telkom LTE is a nightmare

[w1z4rd]

Anyone else having major packet loss today?

On both my phone and my internet connection I am sitting with about 30% packet loss, making the Internet unusable. Im really pissed off as I have a lot of work to do and the Telkom network is a huge mess up. When I phone their office they say they recently released some QoS update that is causing this. Not sure how true this is. The reason I say that is because when I told the person I was speaking to at support and I told them, "I am getting huge packet loss", I get a "how do you know they are missing?" as a response....

I never knew how badly a poor internet connection would impact my ability to work

 

[Yuu]

Could be linked?

Something does seem to be happening.

22-03-2017

Is anyone managing to get speeds over 50-55mbps ? As of 2 weeks ago that's the max I'm getting. Used to be able to get between 65-80 most of the time

22-03-2017

I have been happily getting 30-40mbps download speeds for almost a year now. This last week my speeds have dropped to 2-5mbps consistently. I contacted Telkom via the chat portal and was received this message:

This customer has been detected as being a part of a trial to improve LTE speeds. We have enforced a network setting that may have impacted the customers LTE speed and negatively in some cases.

Should the customer be experiencing sudden poor LTE speeds then please explain to the customer that he is part of a trial and we will correct the issue shortly.

Anyone else received this message? She logged a ticket to have myself taken off this trial - we'll see how long this takes.

In my limited testing, forcing a new ip upto 8x seems to get my speeds up from 1/2/3+ Mbps to 40Mbps+. I have someone testing for me then will post more info.

Edit:
Good tip that may help others

My poor internet connection seems to be performing better today

Getting 20 to 30 Mb download speeds with 2 to 3 bars reception.. maybe a reset of the router needed.. Also for some reason i get better / stable speeds using the apn "TelkomInternet"

 

[Slootvreter]

Yeah mine also became useless the past few months. I'll cancel at the end of my contract.

 

[RedhotNeo]

My poor internet connection seems to be performing better today

Getting 20 to 30 Mb download speeds with 2 to 3 bars reception.. maybe a reset of the router needed.. Also for some reason i get better / stable speeds using the apn "TelkomInternet"

 

[RedhotNeo]

Something does seem to be happening.

22-03-2017


22-03-2017


In my limited testing, forcing a new ip upto 8x seems to get my speeds up from 1/2/3+ Mbps to 40Mbps+. I have someone testing for me then will post more info.

Edit:
Good tip that may help others

Telkom now employs 2 systems that govern your internet speeds.. This was implemented on ADSL/VSDL.. the systems are called Assia (new) and Fastpath (old)

Now Assia analyses your speeds and adjust accordingly using distance and SNR to give you the best speeds.. But this system has it kinks and doesnt up your speeds once it drops it.. u can phone telkom and have them move on back onto Fastpath which gives you the fastest possible speeds. From what ive heard Assia has precendence and overrides Fastpath and your speeds drop if needed..

I assume Telkom is now moving all fixed wireless LTE users onto this Assia service.. this doesnt look good for us and their support staff (telkom mobile) dont even know what systems they use.. or even understand us when we communicate with them..

Will need to get more info on this

 

[Yuu]

@RedhotNeo , never thought they could deploy it for fixed wireless LTE, seems plausible and timing with integrated data sims getting its allocation dropped also seems coincidental.

April is going to be interesting indeed.

Based on that agent chat, they pushing customers onto the trial and this is what is causing all these issues. Just a repeat of what happened to us on ADSL.

Keep trying with support until someone gets excluded from the trial if they were selected before?

@ghoti, you wanna try and ask support?

 

[tsume]

Yes. I've been getting extremely frustrated with the LTE on my phone. I have now forced my phone to use 3G but even thats horrible at times my phone will show it has no internet connection or back down to EDGE. I initially thought that there is something wrong with my phone until I tried to use my 3G modem today and found it was only able to connect to EDGE as well.

Is there not a Telkom rep on mybroadband we can message?

 

[bboy]

WTF assia would not make any sense on a LTE connection

 

[tsume]

I've even tried calling Telkom customer service and I can't make it through to a call centre agent cause they cannot here what I'm saying but I can hear the call centre agent. Anyone else had luck getting to Telkom to address this issue?

 

[RedhotNeo]

WTF assia would not make any sense on a LTE connection

Remember now.. Telkom is routing all or most of the LTE data through its ADSL network.. When telkom started the routing many people here reported an increase in data speeds.. so it seems telkom has figured out a way for the system to work on LTE system as well.

Whether a LTE signal or cable, it just medians used to give u a connection so software can be configured accordingly..

 

[bboy]

Do you know how assia works and what it does?

 

[w1z4rd]

On the upside, between 11pm last night and 1AM I had full speed, so I manged to install my 17GB game Thank you for being incompetent. For once in my life, Telkoms incompetence helped me.

 

[tsume]

I called in yesterday, reported my area and everything seems fixed today

 

[RedhotNeo]

I called in yesterday, reported my area and everything seems fixed today

which number did you use.. 10210 or 081180

provide further details.. thanks

 

[tsume]

which number did you use.. 10210 or 081180

provide further details.. thanks

I called the 081180. Told them the network in my area has been horrible, and that various people I know have been complaining about the same thing. They lady checked my area and said they will have someone check the towers. A day later someone called and asked if I still had severe issues, and when I checked it seemed fine

 

[tsume]

Okay, my LTE is acting up again. Will call in tomorrow again.

 

[RedhotNeo]

Okay, my LTE is acting up again. Will call in tomorrow again.

Find out if u on that trial.. and whether you are on the Assisa system.

 

[GforceD]

I moved from a 4MB ADSL because the fastest speeds on my line was 2.5 mbs, and they knew there is a problem in my neighbour hood but were not prepared to fix it. Website says I live in a 10mb area. What a joke.

Move to LTE and got 4mbps speed.

Got them to install antenna 20mbps

Got capped back to 4mbps. :| my bad too much with the downloading.

New month back to normal 20mbps.

Less the 4mbps. did I get capped again? no!

Line drops, lag spikes, speeds lower the 1mpbs. Telkom get your act together.

Fibre? Not in my area. Losser!

Am I going to have to setup my own ISP company to ensure I always have the bestest interwebz.How much to run a few kilometres of fibre?

 

[PsYTraNc3]

I moved from a 4MB ADSL because the fastest speeds on my line was 2.5 mbs, and they knew there is a problem in my neighbour hood but were not prepared to fix it. Website says I live in a 10mb area. What a joke.

Move to LTE and got 4mbps speed.

Got them to install antenna 20mbps

Got capped back to 4mbps. :| my bad too much with the downloading.

New month back to normal 20mbps.

Less the 4mbps. did I get capped again? no!

Line drops, lag spikes, speeds lower the 1mpbs. Telkom get your act together.

Fibre? Not in my area. Losser!

Am I going to have to setup my own ISP company to ensure I always have the bestest interwebz.How much to run a few kilometres of fibre?

How did you get them to install an antenna?

 

[GforceD]

How did you get them to install an antenna?

I'll tell you one thing it wasn't easy.

I phoned, I tweeted, I emailed (uselessly I think). I complained about my speed until they sent some techs to install it.

It was all very advanced the one guy held the antenna while the other guy watched the signal bars on the routers homepage and shouted out the number of bars.

So I got an Xpol006 and when they left I had 4 bars of signal.

Now I get 2 sometime 3, sometimes 1 and then again often none.

Complained some more and the sent a tech, he come 300km from Joburg to visit me in Polokwane. Since apparently the local Telkom guys don't handle LTE Uncapped ordered online. He comes and takes down my setting and signal strengths, makes a weak joke about "hacking" my router when he's just pushed the wps button to sync his tablet to it. See my signal popping up and down and says hmm you should be getting a lot faster speeds. Probably a problem with the tower and off he goes. 3 weeks ago now.
I am so sick of Telkom right now.

*Edit* Doing my own research and it looks like the LTE Tower in my area is not working. My router is alternating between 4 towers all with very low speeds.

Does anyone have an up-to-date tower map for south Africa or Polokwane?