Malfeasant
Well-Known Member
Hey all,
Just thought I'd share my experience using the Telkom LIT bundles that were featured recently: https://mybroadband.co.za/news/cellular/239800-telkom-lit-prepaid-bundles-launched.html
TL;DR - I would NOT recommend this to anyone interesting in streaming videos from a modern device, as they throttle your speeds when trying to stream, effectively locking you into 360-480p quality. This is, IMHO, unacceptable for a CAPPED product.
I bought this bundle today because it looked like a decent deal at first glance. If you look at their ToS, they mention that the video package is intended for 360p streaming. They don't however mention the way this is enforced. Essentially, whenever you try to stream content, your speeds get throttled to around 1 Mbps. This is of course not enough to reliably stream content above 480p without any buffering.
Furthermore, the streaming bundle doesn't appear to apply for Netflix. YouTube works (albeit at the slower speeds), but Netflix won't load at all if this is the only bundle you have on your account. I'm not sure if there's anything extra you're supposed to do to get Netflix running, but I can't find anything on their website and their customer service has been absolutely clueless.
Right now I'm sitting with a SIM card which is (for all intents and purposes) unable to stream YouTube content, because their throttling takes place regardless of whether you have another bundle on your device. Apparently they aren't able to remove the bundle from your account, and trying to deplete 50 GB of data through random YouTube streaming would take almost 5 days of non-stop streaming.
Also, as an aside, the bundle won't work over a hotspot. The streaming has to be done from the device itself for it to apply. (NOTE: You'll STILL get throttled when streaming over your hotspot though!)
I admit I'm a bit peeved off that I essentially paid them money to screw up YouTube for me over the next 30 days, but whatever, should have known better than to trust Telkom. Just thought I'd give everyone else a head's up.
Just thought I'd share my experience using the Telkom LIT bundles that were featured recently: https://mybroadband.co.za/news/cellular/239800-telkom-lit-prepaid-bundles-launched.html
TL;DR - I would NOT recommend this to anyone interesting in streaming videos from a modern device, as they throttle your speeds when trying to stream, effectively locking you into 360-480p quality. This is, IMHO, unacceptable for a CAPPED product.
I bought this bundle today because it looked like a decent deal at first glance. If you look at their ToS, they mention that the video package is intended for 360p streaming. They don't however mention the way this is enforced. Essentially, whenever you try to stream content, your speeds get throttled to around 1 Mbps. This is of course not enough to reliably stream content above 480p without any buffering.
Furthermore, the streaming bundle doesn't appear to apply for Netflix. YouTube works (albeit at the slower speeds), but Netflix won't load at all if this is the only bundle you have on your account. I'm not sure if there's anything extra you're supposed to do to get Netflix running, but I can't find anything on their website and their customer service has been absolutely clueless.
Right now I'm sitting with a SIM card which is (for all intents and purposes) unable to stream YouTube content, because their throttling takes place regardless of whether you have another bundle on your device. Apparently they aren't able to remove the bundle from your account, and trying to deplete 50 GB of data through random YouTube streaming would take almost 5 days of non-stop streaming.
Also, as an aside, the bundle won't work over a hotspot. The streaming has to be done from the device itself for it to apply. (NOTE: You'll STILL get throttled when streaming over your hotspot though!)
I admit I'm a bit peeved off that I essentially paid them money to screw up YouTube for me over the next 30 days, but whatever, should have known better than to trust Telkom. Just thought I'd give everyone else a head's up.
