Telkom lashes out at MTN

[NeoZA]

Thanks for answering all our questions, just wish we had someone working for MTN as well.

At the end of the day, no one will really own up to all the fualts, it bad for business, and then 90% of the people know its telkom that cause the faults,
due to past errors and experiences.

at the end of the day, we just want affordable and reliable services. and i dont think this will every happen in South Africa, they are to worried about profits.

Mtn and Vodacom have also realized that they have grown about as big as they are going to get, and are investing in our countries. so they are not worried about our service, they have us locked in with 24 month contracts,
and if you dont like it, try another service provider.

 

[marine1]

If it is to be believed that Telkom is the problem, surely the big three should flex their muscles and taker this to court to allow them to start offering fixed line services immediately?

 

[ike]

i dont know how all these 3 can make the kind of super profits they make and still not want to be accountable. if im an mtn customer, i dont expect mtn to tell me that someone else is the problem. they took my money on the basis that they could deliver. its no different than MC blaming their hardware suppliers/software developers for the HD PVR problems. cop-out of note. im glad telkom is denying it...

 

[TimTDP]

Cells adjacent to each other can (and must) handover a subscriber as he or she move through this maze of cells.

So why is that every time I drive over Wynberg hill in Cape Town the call gets dropped?

 

[Sting]

“It must also be remembered that the mobile operators had the right to self provide since September 2005 and that Telkom is no longer the sole provider of all their network capacity requirements.”

V3G: Why have you not self-provided since Sept 2005? How do you order links from Telkom? Individually or in batches of 1000's and then expect them to be delivered in 30 days? Have you NEVER had any failures on any of your networks? It just seems very convenient for you to always blame someone else...

 

[vodacom3g]

somehow everything in this industry is Telkom's fault. When did the operators notice that there were problems with Telkom's infrastructure. I believe that if they had any clue they would have come out with this when the complaints started getting out.
The one thing I know is that while Telkom is slow in providing services, and their customer care is crappy to say the least, once their services are up and running, then they work very well whether its individual customers even more so for corporates.

I know some of you are gonna jump up and tell me about that time when your line was stolen and your mother was sick and you could not make calls for an ambulance...blah blah...all i'm saying is that not all Telco problems are caused by Telkom

It's not that it's only been noticed now. The situation is pretty much the same way now than what its been for a long time. Including the fact that the bulk of network problems are transmission related.

Typically when the copper lines go in and stay untouched, they work extremely well. But they do break sometimes (contractors digging them up, weather, etc.) or they get stolen. A main line down the road from me got stolen 9AM in the morning!

In some areas I believe Telkom is not replacing lines due to the continuous theft.

So, one can understand Telkom's problems in maintaining the network.

But I really wish they could roll out faster to serve those thousands of backlog requests.

 

[vodacom3g]

Mtn and Vodacom have also realized that they have grown about as big as they are going to get, and are investing in our countries. so they are not worried about our service, they have us locked in with 24 month contracts,
and if you dont like it, try another service provider.

Not so from the VC side at least. We still see substantial growth, especially in data and that's why our 3G network is already nearly twice the size of the next one. Our HSDPA(3.6) network is nearly 8 (!) times bigger. And we continuously are upgrading the capacity on this network (the 8000 outstanding lines, for example).

Also, contract subscribers account for a small % of all subscribers, so customer retention is hugely important.

 

[vodacom3g]

If it is to be believed that Telkom is the problem, surely the big three should flex their muscles and taker this to court to allow them to start offering fixed line services immediately?

Not sure if you've read the news, but we are allowed to offer fixed line services and a couple of billion have already been spend to start building these networks.

But you don't catch up on a fixed line network decades in construction overnight.

 

[rpm]

Mtn and Vodacom have also realized that they have grown about as big as they are going to get, and are investing in other countries. so they are not worried about our service, they have us locked in with 24 month contracts, and if you dont like it, try another service provider.

This is not accurate NeoZA. MTN is investing R 8bil in MTN SA this year: http://mybroadband.co.za/news/Cellular/8056.html and Vodacom is most likely doing the same. Remember their fibre investments - inner city and national - and then their network upgrades and the like...

 

[The_Unbeliever]

How can we add oil to the fire so that telkom's got some unbearable pressure?

Playing the blame game is not good, it leads to confusion and a lot of anger, and unhappy customers.

 

[vodacom3g]

So why is that every time I drive over Wynberg hill in Cape Town the call gets dropped?

Because the geography is against you, I suspect, with the most likely problem the current placement of the towers (or rather where they were not allowed to be placed).

This probably means there is a 'gap' between these cells and when you move through this gap, you drop the call.

There is a similar spot on the N1 going over the Tygerberg hill where I sometimes drop a call. You get to know the spot down to a few meters. I've learned to finish off calls as I approached Tygerberg. Saves a lot of swearing when the call drops.

So the local guys know all about it but they can't do much about it until they can get a better spot.

Geography is a huge thing in radio planning, especially in a place like Cape Town with it's complex coast line and the bloody great mountain in the middle, leaving precious little space to put up enough towers to serve everybody. And in many of those places people don't want a tower near their R60M home......

Then you have additional problems in mountainous areas. For example, if you're high enough up, not only will you be able to see a cell lower down, but you'll see all of them! Now your handset gets very confused and there goes the quality again.

 

[Tassidar]

Because the geography is against you, I suspect, with the most likely problem the current placement of the towers (or rather where they were not allowed to be placed).

This probably means there is a 'gap' between these cells and when you move through this gap, you drop the call.

There is a similar spot on the N1 going over the Tygerberg hill where I sometimes drop a call. You get to know the spot down to a few meters. I've learned to finsh off calls as I approached Tygerberg. Saves a lot of swaering when the call drops.

So the local guys know all about it but they can't do much about it until they can get a better spot.

Geography is a huge thing in radio planning, especially in a place like Cape Town with it's complex coast line and the bloody great mountain in the middle, leaving precious little space to put up enough towers to serve everybody. And in many of those places people don't want a tower near their R60M home......

Then you have additional problems in mountainous areas. For example, if you're high enough up, not only will you be able to see a cell lower down, but you'll see all of them! Now your handset gets very confused and there goes the quality again.

Out of interest, I have heard that the reason for not allowing calls in aeroplanes is less a matter of safety, than the fact that cell phones operating so high could cause massive problems for networks. Is there any truth to this?

 

[Amida]

What about the SLA's that Telkom holds with the Service Providers? IF they break the SLA they will get fined. IN the article Telkom mentioned they have 99.5% SLA's which means that They cannot be blamed for all the problems.

 

[vodacom3g]

“It must also be remembered that the mobile operators had the right to self provide since September 2005 and that Telkom is no longer the sole provider of all their network capacity requirements.”

V3G: Why have you not self-provided since Sept 2005? How do you order links from Telkom? Individually or in batches of 1000's and then expect them to be delivered in 30 days? Have you NEVER had any failures on any of your networks? It just seems very convenient for you to always blame someone else...

Again, as stated before, you try and get capacity from wherever its the quickest. Would you be happy if I say to you, you must please wait 5 years and then we'll give you bandwidth?

Building a network the size required will take decades and while we had the plans ready on the 1st of October 2005, it's not exactly an overnight go to blow billions of rands if there already are other potential suppliers that can supply quicker. But from that time on, it because clear that you will have to self provide. Especially when the SNO took so long to come out the blocks.

Network planning is done extremely well and links and not bought like tomatoes in a green grocer. You don't go to Telkom and say, give me a thousand 'links' and I'll deploy them where I want.

Rather each link is determined by it's start and end point (they're underground remember) and it's up to Telkom to figure out how to connect those two points at the required bandwidth.

Show me where "It just seems very convenient for you to always blame someone else.", won't you. Go read my posts again and you'll that we are very open to the fact that things do break and go wrong. And often these are caused by us just plainly stuffing up, as humans tend to do or a router or firewall breaks.

But it does not detract from the fact that the line on the top of our list of network failure causes happens to be transmission.

 

[The_Unbeliever]

As v3g says the cellphone towers are reliant on copper connections.

How do they monitor the quality and consistency of said copper connections?

 

[sand_man]

While I concede geography is the greatest contributor to signal fluctuations and the dropped call syndrome I have been on my cell from my office to a 3rd party on his/her cell in his/her office and the calls dropped/disconnected.

I'm with MTN BTW. The handset is constantly swapping from edge to 3G and thats when I'm sitting at my desk at home... There definitely issues and they not the result of Telkom...

 

[marine1]

It seems like a mess that will not get resolved anytime soon.

 

[vodacom3g]

What about the SLA's that Telkom holds with the Service Providers? IF they break the SLA they will get fined. IN the article Telkom mentioned they have 99.5% SLA's which means that They cannot be blamed for all the problems.

It's all about how these SLA's are measured and what is included in them.

If we loose a tower in Gat Sonder Water, even if our monitoring systems tell us it's the link, we need to first send a techie out. Once he is there and can now 100% say it's the Telkom link, can we only then report it to Telkom and the SLA starts. (One would expect they monitor their own links....)

Secondly, there are a number of exceptions to the SLA's. Basically anything Telkom deem outside of their control. Like theft.

So, the SLA kicks in once we've informed them of the fault and it's not something outside their control. Like theft, etc.

 

[vodacom3g]

Out of interest, I have heard that the reason for not allowing calls in aeroplanes is less a matter of safety, than the fact that cell phones operating so high could cause massive problems for networks. Is there any truth to this?

Not sure. We should ask Rouxenator. He's the one that insist to fly with his phone on.

But it does make sense to some degree, I guess. If you're close to the ground, your mobile will be able to attach to a cell below it.

But at cruising altitude, it should be fine. The phones will attach to an on-board cell and the backhaul will be via satellite.

 

[vodacom3g]

While I concede geography is the greatest contributor to signal fluctuations and the dropped call syndrome I have been on my cell from my office to a 3rd party on his/her cell in his/her office and the calls dropped/disconnected.

I'm with MTN BTW. The handset is constantly swapping from edge to 3G and thats when I'm sitting at my desk at home... There definitely issues and they not the result of Telkom...

MY advice (for any network): Set your phone to 2G-only for voice. Saves battery life and frustration.