Telkom lashes out at MTN

Copper theft, weather and contractor cable damage are not Telkom problems. They are the result of crime, incompetent workers and your chosen deity.

I have a feeling it is much more to do with this mobile broadband explosion, where suddenly a tower must support 200 data users and the voice traffic/smses end up getting lost in the flood. Also, in the last 5 years or so, many many new complexes have been built in gauteng. So before, 1 tower would serve maybe 100 houses. Now it's 100 houses and 3000 people living in multilevel complexes. But the lead time on new towers and transmission capacity are years, not months.
 
sandmanm34 said:
2G=gsm?
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YUP.

Remember their are many more 2G (GSM) towers than 3G (UMTS).

So if your phone is active on both, it'll try and first atach to 3G and failing that will fall back to 2G. As you move around there is a good chance this will happen (potentially quite a lot). This 'hunting' takes more processing and more radios, etc. The handover is also more complex.

All this means the handover might be more complicated and will most likely eat your battery quicker.

So for voice, why bother? Set you phone to GSM for voice. If you want to do serious browsing, switch to 3G.

Even om my 3G Blackberries and 3G iPhone, I use 2G-only for voice and mail. If I want to stream a video, I switch to 3G.
 
vodacom3g said:
Firstly, the Idols issue was (as has now been confirmed) purely a sizing issue of a link in the Grapevine/IS architecture. The link could not handle the number of SMS's/second causing a backlog and thus the delays.
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Why the sizing problem?

Telkom's rediculously inflated rates for data pipes!
 
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vodacom3g said:
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. ;)
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There is a similar spot near Olifantsfontein on the N1 between Pretoria and Jo'burg.

The light posts in the centre of the highway seems at first glance just waiting for aerials :-)
 
And the interconnect agreement is written in the cell companies favour, not Telkom's?
 
vodacom3g said:
So for voice, why bother? Set you phone to GSM for voice. If you want to do serious browsing, switch to 3G.
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Yeah agreed, makes sense... As you always tend to do... Except when you defending Vodacom... Kidding, even then..
 
kaspaas said:
There is a similar spot near Olifantsfontein on the N1 between Pretoria and Jo'burg.

The light posts in the centre of the highway seems at first glance just waiting for aerials :-)
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We've actually managed to build a complete base station into one of those overhead billboards!

You can think that any dead spot on the Ben Schoeman would get major attention. Will see if I can find out what the problem is.
 
A very informative thread thanks to v3g. Just a quick question v3g... since Telkom sold its control of you.. have the amount of transmission links you are waiting for increased?
 
w1z4rd said:
A very informative thread thanks to v3g. Just a quick question v3g... since Telkom sold its control of you.. have the amount of transmission links you are waiting for increased?
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Not sure, but have you noticed the wonderful high throughputs people are reporting on the TELKOM 7.2 service? ;)

Sure does not look like they suffer from backhaul constraints. :)

/Added

Or maybe they only have a few users on the netwrok. :)
 
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rpm said:
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...
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the only reason MTN and Vodacom are building there own network, is to cut costs, and to make it faster .not to grow there network, we have more or less hit our limits. the amount of money the cellular networks pay out in 2 years to Telkom is about the cost of installing there own fiber network.
 
NeoZA said:
the only reason MTN and Vodacom are building there own network, is to cut costs, and to make it faster .not to grow there network, we have more or less hit our limits. the amount of money the cellular networks pay out in 2 years to Telkom is about the cost of installing there own fiber network.
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Hit our limits? Really?

Every person in South Africa has a 10Mb/s uncapped connection in his home?

Job done, then.
 
vodacom3g said:
Exactly.

And who supplies this extra bandwidth and capacity? And who is thousands of links behind in supplying ordered capacity? :rolleyes:
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Telkom typically likes to play the chicken vs. egg excuse.
Their favourite excuse previously regarding why local bandwidth wasn't made cheaper or uncapped was because "there wasn't much local content available".

:rolleyes:
 
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Is this thread about how mobile phone networks operate or.....ag crap, cant remember. :)

This is so interesting, just loved reading everything V3G posted! Thank you.
 
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