Telkom - Landlines being obsoleted?

[elf_lord_ZC5]

Got a call from a lady, says they are doing away with copper land lines, end of April, and they want to give us LTE phones, to replace our current copper lines. They did not consider our ADSL line, and lady was not very knowledgeable.

Seems a bit dodgy to me, but heck, what do I know.

Is it possible to take our internet to a fixed LTE - A type service, and still keep our intekom.co.za, e-mail addresses. If this turns out to be seriously true.

 

[Topdoggdbn]

If you take the Fixed Line Look Alike- FLLA option then you could keep your email addresses.
they will migrate your internet account.

Mine took about 3 months to sort out. cables were damaged in the area and they are not replacing copper.

that means paying 200 line rental for copper line that no longer exits. Also the speeds vary on the LTE service when linked to FLLA. horrible ping.

other option take a LTE product for data, cancel your line but keep the internet portion and with that I mean just the email address for IIRC R20pm.
It is possible BUT good like speaking to someone who can actually help with a complex request.

 

[elf_lord_ZC5]

If you take the Fixed Line Look Alike- FLLA option then you could keep your email addresses.
they will migrate your internet account.

Mine took about 3 months to sort out. cables were damaged in the area and they are not replacing copper.

that means paying 200 line rental for copper line that no longer exits. Also the speeds vary on the LTE service when linked to FLLA. horrible ping.

other option take a LTE product for data, cancel your line but keep the internet portion and with that I mean just the email address for IIRC R20pm.
It is possible BUT good like speaking to someone who can actually help with a complex request.

Finding someone who knows what they are talking about is a problem.

 

[Topdoggdbn]

When you magically find the person who knows something you have a bigger problem to find someone who can do something.

most of the call centre only passes tickets to other to handle.

 

[elf_lord_ZC5]

When you magically find the person who knows something you have a bigger problem to find someone who can do something.

most of the call centre only passes tickets to other to handle.

My recommendation to the Boss, is to port the voice line numbers to a cellular provider, get an Afrihost LTE fixed line setup for internet. Create Gmail addresses for those that require them. E-mail all persons in the address books, once a week, each week, till notice period is reached, after canceling all Telkom services, that the e-mail address'es will cease to work, and to please update their records accordingly. Those we miss, will phone and complain that they are unable to e-mail us, and we can help them with current e-mail and we have minimal problems. He is starting to accept the proposal, but is wanting to keep current e-mail addresses.

Just too many issues when dealing with Telkom.

 

[RedhotNeo]

If your business operates in normal business hours then i would suggest a couple of rain sims activated with their R250PM off peak. get a few routers and a load balancer and output to your switch or router.. provided there is rain coverage you will have uncapped internet and enough bandwith to use.

You can then just keep the telkom flla number and email services

 

[Lew Skannen]

Got a call from a lady, says they are doing away with copper land lines, end of April, and they want to give us LTE phones, to replace our current copper lines. They did not consider our ADSL line, and lady was not very knowledgeable.

Seems a bit dodgy to me, but heck, what do I know.

Is it possible to take our internet to a fixed LTE - A type service, and still keep our intekom.co.za, e-mail addresses. If this turns out to be seriously true.

Telkom already started this process about 10 years ago. In areas with high number of cable theft they already started refusing to replace cables. Clients are forced onto wireless phones on Telkom Mobile. You can no longer get landlines, ADSL, etc. in these areas. There are a large number of posts about this on this forum over the course of the last few years.

They did the same in our area about 5 years ago. One morning all our phones were out and there were Telkom vehicles pitched up and told residents to take the wireless phones or they would experience indefinite outages. After about 4 weeks back then they eventually had ADSL back up and running but refused any new installations. Last month they started rolling out Fibre.

 

[Leanne Petro]

About a month ago I received one of those calls from a lady from Telkom saying that the copper lines were being replaced and that they will be sending me a new Huawei B525 router. So we received the router and all seemed to be fine and well until we realised there was a problem with the landline that had gone "dead" when plugged into the router. I unplugged the landline from the router and the phone then worked fine again, and the router works fine on it's own. However, the landline is now making an awful buzzing, crackling noise like there is massive interference. I logged a fault, thinking that it must be the cord or line that was faulty. Telkom came back saying that the issue had been resolved. No explanations though, and the phone is still making the horrible noise when unplugged from the router, even when no electrical appliances are in the near vicinity. I have tried plugging it back into the router again - the screen goes blank and there is no dialling tone, just a faint humming noise on the other end. I then thought it must be that the landline handset is incompatible with the new router. When I asked Telkom whether this could be the case, no one, not one person in the sales or technical departments, could offer any kind of advice whatsoever. Is one supposed to use a specific landline phone with the wireless router? If so, Telkom neglected to mention this to me during the initial conversation. I am shocked by the absolute glaring incompetence or perhaps lack of product knowledge I have experienced when dealing with the Telkom staff this past week. I am now going to attempt to go into a store to see if they can help me. If anyone has any advice or inputs, it would be greatly appreciated

 

[Totempole]

About a month ago I received one of those calls from a lady from Telkom saying that the copper lines were being replaced and that they will be sending me a new Huawei B525 router. So we received the router and all seemed to be fine and well until we realised there was a problem with the landline that had gone "dead" when plugged into the router. I unplugged the landline from the router and the phone then worked fine again, and the router works fine on it's own. However, the landline is now making an awful buzzing, crackling noise like there is massive interference. I logged a fault, thinking that it must be the cord or line that was faulty. Telkom came back saying that the issue had been resolved. No explanations though, and the phone is still making the horrible noise when unplugged from the router, even when no electrical appliances are in the near vicinity. I have tried plugging it back into the router again - the screen goes blank and there is no dialling tone, just a faint humming noise on the other end. I then thought it must be that the landline handset is incompatible with the new router. When I asked Telkom whether this could be the case, no one, not one person in the sales or technical departments, could offer any kind of advice whatsoever. Is one supposed to use a specific landline phone with the wireless router? If so, Telkom neglected to mention this to me during the initial conversation. I am shocked by the absolute glaring incompetence or perhaps lack of product knowledge I have experienced when dealing with the Telkom staff this past week. I am now going to attempt to go into a store to see if they can help me. If anyone has any advice or inputs, it would be greatly appreciated

Regarding receiving a notification that the issue had been resolved... This is something Telkom commonly does. The fault is marked as resolved automatically if it doesn't get attended to within a certain timeframe.

So log a fault with them again, and keep doing so until they actually contact you.

As for going to a store, your mileage may vary, but don't hold your breath that you'll find someone genuinely interested in assisting you.

 

[Leanne Petro]

I am actually dreading it...I think it'll be worse than a trip to the dentist! I have logged about 5 faults, each time they just give a reference and I never hear from them. The first time I received an SMS saying that I should reply "yes" if the fault was still evident, which I did, and, surprise surprise, the reply sms was never delivered within the 24hr turnaround time I think I'll just keep on logging faults to annoy them

 

[argh]

About a month ago I received one of those calls from a lady from Telkom saying that the copper lines were being replaced and that they will be sending me a new Huawei B525 router. So we received the router and all seemed to be fine and well until we realised there was a problem with the landline that had gone "dead" when plugged into the router. I unplugged the landline from the router and the phone then worked fine again, and the router works fine on it's own. However, the landline is now making an awful buzzing, crackling noise like there is massive interference. I logged a fault, thinking that it must be the cord or line that was faulty. Telkom came back saying that the issue had been resolved. No explanations though, and the phone is still making the horrible noise when unplugged from the router, even when no electrical appliances are in the near vicinity. I have tried plugging it back into the router again - the screen goes blank and there is no dialling tone, just a faint humming noise on the other end. I then thought it must be that the landline handset is incompatible with the new router. When I asked Telkom whether this could be the case, no one, not one person in the sales or technical departments, could offer any kind of advice whatsoever. Is one supposed to use a specific landline phone with the wireless router? If so, Telkom neglected to mention this to me during the initial conversation. I am shocked by the absolute glaring incompetence or perhaps lack of product knowledge I have experienced when dealing with the Telkom staff this past week. I am now going to attempt to go into a store to see if they can help me. If anyone has any advice or inputs, it would be greatly appreciated

I am replying as a lay person. I have no technical training, and apologise if what I write is too simplistic. The router that Telkom delivered to you must have an activated SIM card in it, be connected to the internet on one of the cellular networks, and have data loaded on the sim card. To make calls, the landline phone plugged into the back of the router would connect to the internet via the mobile network, and use the data loaded on the sim card. Has this been done?

Is the phone plugged into the phone jack at the back of the router, and nothing else (Telkom has a very basic video on this, not sure how helpful it is, https://secure.telkom.co.za/today/campaign/smartvoice-page/, scroll down page to see row of videos, press on arrows to left/right of the row of videos to see the full row of videos).

If the phone worked when not plugged into the router, the phone is fine. If the phone makes a noise when not plugged into anything, then the phone could be faulty.

Many Telkom customers find Telkom's customer service to be almost to completely useless; what you are experiencing from them in trying to get your problems fixed is common. If you want to keep your landline number, and connect your phone via the internet, it may be best to go to another provider to get this working, and to get good service. Telephone calls over the internet are called VOIP. Some VOIP providers are: Vox; Axxess; Mweb; Switchtel; Freshphone; there are others. You can port your phone number to a VOIP provider, and they will tell you exactly what you need to do, and help you set it up.

The following post contains some information on options to replace Telkom ADSL & landline phone services: https://mybroadband.co.za/forum/thr...-to-and-cant-cancel-it.1056431/#post-24443807