Telkom free options?

[invicta]

I'm sick to death of Telkom ineffeciency.

My wife & I work from home and rely on the net 7 days a week and use something like 8GB a month on an uncapped broadband connection and pay Telkom for a 512 or so connection.

Needless to say we don't get anything like that speed and in fact, in recent weeks, our connection speed has been too slow to measure at all.

We live just outside the town of White River near the KNP which I'm told is outside the iburst area.... Can anyone suggest any other options where we wouldn't have to use Telkom services and/or wire etc please?

 

[Surv0]

Have you looked at trying a non-uncapped account to compare speeds? Its possible your line is operating at full speed, but your account isnt. That or you live in a very rural area.

 

[invicta]

My friend up the road has a capped account and although his speeds aren't great, they're not as bad as ours are.

We live on a secure golf estate about 4 kms from White River so not really rural and Telkom claim to be using fibre optic cables and assuming that's correct, it should be faster.... I've also been complaining to both Telkom & M web about my speeds and they keep telling me there's a fault on the line but then they don't actually do anything about fixing it..... they just prefer to take my money for a service they're not providing and let me suffer.

I'm so sick of it, I just want to get a decent connection that bypasses their cables and piss poor performance and customer service.

 

[MickeyD]

Working from home... do you have a residential ADSL service or a Business ADSL service?

 

[invicta]

No idea..... is there a difference?

 

[Venomous]

on business you generally get quicker response from telkom.

you could try signing up for the free 1GB account from Afrihost or the once off trail from WebAfrica or buy a 1GB unshaped (R19) from Axxess. that way you can test to see if it's your line or is it's the ISP side.

personally if you use under 10GB why not sign up for an unshaped but capped service?
but before signing up try them first as I suggested above. then you'll know which ISP will offer you a more effective service in your area.

 

[Tweak]

I'm sick to death of Telkom ineffeciency.

My wife & I work from home and rely on the net 7 days a week and use something like 8GB a month on an uncapped broadband connection and pay Telkom for a 512 or so connection.

Needless to say we don't get anything like that speed and in fact, in recent weeks, our connection speed has been too slow to measure at all.

We live just outside the town of White River near the KNP which I'm told is outside the iburst area.... Can anyone suggest any other options where we wouldn't have to use Telkom services and/or wire etc please?

The further away from the exchange you are the crapper your speeds will get.

Called Signal to noise ratio (SNR).
Best bet would be to ask a family or friend in town to apply for a 4mb line and share the link to your own house using wireless equipment.
Let them pay 20-50% of the line rental depending on how keen they are to help you with this.

That is what we did, because we are too far out of town for a good dsl connection :>

 

[invicta]

I don't think that'd work because we have a bloody great mountain between us and town..... Today is laughably slow with download speeds of 326 and upload of 105.

When I call those clowns at Telkom they just tell me the fault is ongoing....... but it just never seems to get fixed. They're driving me nucking futs!

If iburst ever get set up in this area, I'll be their first customer and Telkom can go to hell.

ADDED

Over the last year or so, I've been having to make regular visits to the Karamoja region of Uganda..... it's about as remote as Africa can get and even they have better cellphone and wireless internet connections than RSA does. Even right up against the Sudan border, you can turn your laptop on and get faster internet connections than we do here.

Damn but it annoys the hell out of me!