Telkom Internet Uncapped User Feedback.

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Youtube still giving issues....

but they did something to fix the ping issue...
 
djsam said:
Sorry i may have this wrong , but surely whether i connect... through MWEB, TELKOM ISP, etc I still would use the same DSLAM? surely congestion on the DSLAM would remain the same? I could be wrong....
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Yes, if your experience is the same (bad) with another ISP then it's line, exchange, if it's different then it's an ISP issue.
 
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Regarding the TI tracker and how it rates your usage, does it look at your overall usage too? Or just how much you used the naughty protocols outside of the 00h00 - 06h00 window?

I'm at 80gb so far on my 2mb account, and about to go into orange status. Don't know what I'm doing wrong.
 
Pakka said:
Regarding the TI tracker and how it rates your usage, does it look at your overall usage too? Or just how much you used the naughty protocols outside of the 00h00 - 06h00 window?

I'm at 80gb so far on my 2mb account, and about to go into orange status. Don't know what I'm doing wrong.
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Overall usage.
 
Torrents are running stably at full speed again(from international peers) Seems that they fixed the problem:)
 
Telkom call centre tells me to change accounts as Telkom uncapped is not for gaming. The call centre idot even suggested leaving telkom if I wanted to continue playing games. I have a 2mbps telkom uncapped line. ranger please confirm if this is true.
 
SHVAK said:
Telkom call centre tells me to change accounts as Telkom uncapped is not for gaming. The call centre idot even suggested leaving telkom if I wanted to continue playing games. I have a 2mbps telkom uncapped line. ranger please confirm if this is true.
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It's total bull****.
 
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Seems I managed to join TI at a very bad time.... Just got my line installed on Friday and have not had a proper internet connection since. Consistently slow loading of everything whether it be browsing or streaming
 
djsam said:
Thanks for the feedback ranger, appreciate it.. seems you are in quite the melting pot here, just seems weird to me... that's all wholesale this wholesale that seems like internal politics to me, congestion on dslams with upgrades which should have been prepared for they should have done the maths... especially after all the articles stating they have the infrastructure to handle this.. have a good weekend...
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Telkom is a listed public company - so even internal policies are not all that internal but a lot of "internal" things can't be disclosed without SENS notices and what not - on top of which the reason for the wholesale retail division is regulatory intervention and Order of the Competition Tribunal (which can be viewed as an Order of a High Court) which mandates the inclusion of policies as to how staff at Telkom Internet must behave. It must be borne in mind that the origin of this division is the ISPs (and IIRC MWEB and IS lead the charge) complaining not about a culture of uncompetitive and uncooperative and % [if one considers a letter Bloomberg is reporting on] behaviour but rather on the fact that "margin squeeze" by the retail operations of Telkom were hurting their profits (it would be the height of hypocrisy for Naspers to seriously complain about monopolistic behaviour if it wasn't to make more money for themselves) and consequently while the agreement should be welcomed in it driving towards addressing that uncompetitive and uncooperative corporate culture we have to recognize the extent to which it primarily aids the larger competitors to Telkom in the "VANS" space (so not the MNOs).

I am about to flob off an email to their regulatory services politely requesting internal-ish documents arising from the Tribunal Order and the expectation is that they will politely deliver even if they don't want to or that if they claim "internal document" the correspondence will be treated as a demand to send up the flagpole - my experience has been that Telkom replies to my emails and any complaints quite quickly and efficiently.

The most important consequence of the Order for the purposes of this thread is the Telkom Internet has been prejudiced compared to other ISPs in several material respects and so have to be damn competitive in order to survive. Where TI has a comparative advantage in the market is that they have a large user base and enjoy the branding power of Telkom and the TD stores - this comparative advantage needs to be used irrespective of baseless complaints from other ISPs or other nonsense.

So yes there is a very genuine reason why TI cannot simply chase Wholesale in the name of the consumer - and I suspect Wholesale's response will be that ADSL users are simply getting what they asked for ...

My guess - and I doubt they will be able to confirm that I am right - is that the problems at TI at the moment are that as the largest ISP in terms of user base the consequences of the line speed increases were most severely felt by TI and that the network freeze period has meant that getting additional IPC needed to carry the increased traffic loads has simply not happened at various points. When you have some of these sort of network problems at some places a domino effect can kick in. Moreover EVERYBODY (all ISPs) are affected by an increase in line speeds leading to an increase uptake at some exchanges that leads to congestion on the backhaul to the ESR (I don't believe there is a capacity problem on the network between ESRs at the moment but I might be wrong - this is where most of the reports about having sufficient capacity arise from and look at a map of Telkom's fibre network its bloody impressive). I strongly suspect that in rural-er areas the proportion of customers on TI as opposed to another ISP are higher and that it is at these exchanges where the backhaul capacity is not enough and again there is a domino effect on various management servers (IIRC in the US a DNS resolution server failed a few years back because it was flooded as a result of congestion on the network; the Internet is designed to be resilient but this resilience design has many unintended - and intended - consequences on the user experience). And then a person must never forget ADSL based broadband is inherently - and marketed as - a BEST EFFORT service and it is a contended service which means that your neighbours play a role in your experience as well.

There is a complex conundrum with respect to the ADSL based services in South Africa. There is a need to keep things cheap for the end user on a bundled service built using a huge number of expensive components. Installing a MSAN represents a large capital outlay and getting more ports on an exchange cannot be justified for 1 or 2 users. Now where Telkom are being dumb asses in this entire thing is the very simple fact that complex systems with information scattered and all over the show is the very reason why "markets" work better than central planning. The problem is that Telkom Wholesale are a single point of failure and the key role that decisions taken by wholesale have on the entire system represents a problem. Moreover Telkom is carrying all of the risk in the entire exercise and only by unbundling things and by internetworking and so on can more responsive decision making take place and can the ADSL based market thrive.

Now I don't know how the ordering systems work or how Wholesale take decisions on installing additional "exchange capacity"* at some place or another but presumably they work on information from ISPs including TI and the regulatory parameters. The two key pieces of information I suspect are [1] the number of lines in different access products at the DSLAM and [2] the 1:20 contention ratio which is found in earlier regulations and is a fairly general international norm - but which really doesn't hold true in SA ADSL (one of the benefits of VDSL is that it should hold true there as speeds increase and usage stops being on maximum line capacity) with reports coming from the ISPs (including TI) but such reports would need to identify the particular point at which capacity is needed (which is why tracerts etc ... are important).

Of course all of the ISPs (possibly except TI because they are presumably carrying the legacy of higher international backhaul costs) are wanting IPC to come down in price and the Order provides for price reductions on a schedule BUT look at a very simple reality of the situation the reality is that IPConnect really is the means by which both all but the last mile is provided. I don't believe that a single ISP (except maybe TI) has more than 3 ESRs where they are picking up IPC traffic.
So when MWEB make demands like an increase in the discount factor for ISPs providing additional points at which they connect on IPConnect as a pro-competition thing they deserve our scorn and ridicule. As has repeatedly been pointed out on this forum (I think McD and I lead the charge most of the time) IECNS licence holders (so IS, MTN, Vodacom, MWEB, Neotel and possibly Sentech) can all roll out their own network but they don't because despite their complaints about Telkom they cannot do better - or at least can't convince investors that they can do better to cover the risk. The entire issue with LLU is that only 1 IECNS holder (Neotel) has thus far sought to lease a last mile copper facility and been refused - leading to a CCC determination that didn't fine Telkom because the process of LLU regulations is on going.

If on the 20th of February ICASA says that as at the 1st of March 2014 a zero tolerance policy will apply with respect to facility leasing requests on the last mile copper facilities (with the result that Telkom could face 500k fines left right an centre if other operators take initiative) we cannot expect that the IECNS licence holders taking up the opportunity to move into the local loop because that involves assuming some of the risk in a market which is not particularly lucrative. Again where Telkom are being dumbasses is in failing to call Nasper's bluff - give the ISPs nakedDSL as follows: The line is leased from Telkom by the ISP at R4500 ex VAT for a 24 month period and Telkom will allocate priority staff for maintaining the line with an SLA for 90% uptime over the course of the 24 months with a full refund if the SLA is breached. If the ISP collocates terminating equipment at the exchange point (or other point designated by Telkom in which event they carry to cable to that point) then there are no IPC costs because no traffic transits on Telkom's network, however if the ISP elects to go on the Telkom network (because it is cheaper) then they are paying IPC for national carriage. In due course Telkom or another operator can introduce products competing with the IPC based traffic carriage on the national network and so things will gradually changed.

What worries and irritates me is that it appeared for some time that Telkom was moving in this direction - despite the best efforts of Pule to derail things - but that the good days of an Internet and Mobile modern company have experienced a bit of a failed start and that the attempt to "sweat assets" is going to return.

* a concept I am deliberately keeping vague and poorly defined, but I assume its meaning is clear - things like ports and backhaul to a point and DSLAM / MSAN or whatever
 
PostmanPot said:
Best way to go about getting a refund for this month?
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was the service ever outside of any SLA you have with Telkom?

in respect of TI I highly doubt that there is an SLA for ADSL services at all - best effort and all that - it is exactly the same with all ISPs

If you ADSL line dropped outside of the guarantees Telkom will refund you - log a billing dispute.
 
PostmanPot said:
Best way to go about getting a refund for this month?
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I've been thinking about this as well...

My logic says that when your service deteriorates:
1. on the TI account run a local and international speedtest
2. on the TI account run tracerts to a local and international site
3. use another ISP (eg free 1GB from Afrihost) and repeats steps 1 and 2.
4. phone 10210 and log a fault regarding slow speeds
5. Save all the data collected above

If the fault is not cleared by the next day, repeat the above steps.

Once you are seriously gatvol, email all your data to them and demand a refund!
 
but if you results from step 3 are also bad you should probably take on both the ISP (unless it is the free 1Gb from Afrihost - because its well free) who will also fight with Telkom Wholesale
MickeyD said:
I've been thinking about this as well...

My logic says that when your service deteriorates:
1. on the TI account run a local and international speedtest
2. on the TI account run tracerts to a local and international site
3. use another ISP (eg free 1GB from Afrihost) and repeats steps 1 and 2.
4. phone 10210 and log a fault regarding slow speeds
5. Save all the data collected above

If the fault is not cleared by the next day, repeat the above steps.

Once you are seriously gatvol, email all your data to them and demand a refund!
Click to expand...
 
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