Telkom may close many exchanges, replace copper with wireless services

rpm said:
I have been using Telkom's LTE service lately, and it is an excellent ADSL replacement. The only problem is the cost for high usage - hence over 20GB per month.
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AFAIK there could be a legal/regulatory issue regarding pricing if Telkom substitutes your existing service with an alternative service. It should be at the same price as what you had previously would have paid...

/need to confer with the pear-shaped crowd in the Cape :D
 
rpm said:
LTE latency should be fine for gamers - under 50ms locally. However, the problem with large gaming downloads remain...
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I play on PS3/PS4 and the servers are based over seas.
Some games are very finicky, like Gran Turismo and generally the cell phones guys lag badly and are usually more prone to dc.
Don't think the FPS games like cell phones either.

That said I've never played with 3G or LTE.
 
rpm said:
LTE latency should be fine for gamers - under 50ms locally. However, the problem with large gaming downloads remain...
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And Coverage...MTN 3G in my area is useless so how will LTE compare?

I can see real estate agents including "ADSL available" in their ads.
 
ld13 said:
Bad news. I wonder how many business will be lost, ISP wise, when those 300 exchanges are axed. I also wonder how much money telkom makes from payphones these days ... I understand that the current payphones are somewhat problematic for MSAN use? Will the payphones linked to the above 300 exchanges also go the way of the doodoo?
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FIFY
 
This had to happen it is part of the communications evolution .
Every telecommunications company is cherry picking , so Telkom is going to do the same .
ICASA must sort this mess out or soon there will only be infrastructure in areas where it is profitable.
 
rpm said:
The majority of Telkom’s exchanges – around 1,000 which are not particularly profitable but are also not losing money – will be maintained in their current state.Telkom is planning to stop offering copper based services like ADSL in some areas, and replace it with LTE or 3G
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So I guess we are stuck with 4mb/p/s for life.
 
good news.... no more 1month+ waiting for stolen lines to be replaced. assuming the stability and speed is good.
but... what price? are they gonna offer at same price level as ADSL (like in areas where no more phone lines, 3G phones offer same call cost as fixed line?)

whats it gonna do to the ADSL industry? I assume the recent 'lower' pricing is in part the effect of lots of ADSL users who can 'cross subsidise'?
may need to formulate a new price model?
 
lexis said:
So I guess we are stuck with 4mb/p/s for life.
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I doubt it. As the current switching technology becomes obsolete telcos will be forced to replace it with newer technology. The cost of maintaining old/obsolete technology is exorbitant and labour intensive when compared to the latest stuff. It will also force them to run multiple network management systems as there are compatibility issues.

This makes me believe that they are focussing on their priority exchanges in phase one and will then move to the next block of exchanges.

The problem that I foresee is that by the time they finish phase one, the current technology will be obsolete and require replacement with whatever is new in the future!!!
 
MickeyD said:
Would this not become an excellent opportunity for other network operators to roll out FTTc or FTTh in those areas?
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If they can't even manage a copper network, what are the chances of them rolling out a fibre network to these same areas? I would imagine a fibre network is a lot more expensive.
 
MickeyD said:
From a technology perspective it makes sense. I would imagine that most of these exchanges are in rural or deep rural areas where copper theft is rife. The customer wants a link to the outside world... how he gets a link should not be important, whether it be via a copper cable or wireless via LTE, as a link is a link.
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I disagree because Douglasdale and Jukskei park was a victim of copper theft on Telkom as well
 
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yes, that's the way to do it Telkom.
Do not upgrade the exchanges to fibre which won't get stolen.
Do not upgrade the exchanges so that there isn't congestion on the exchanges.
Do not drop your prices so that you can be competitive and then actually use the exchanges.
The good old days seems to be gone for Telkom, thank you for milking us.
 
I'm a gamer and if they change my solid line to wireless I'm going to end up complaining to them until they place cables back, Wireless is unstable for gaming purposes and that's pretty much the only reason I have internet in the first place...

I say this is a BAD idea.
 
Those who think this is a good thing needs their heads examined... seriously.
This is terrible news and just another sign of what's happening to this country.
Wireless is a complete turd and no small. medium or large business who needs stable, low latency online services etc. setup will benefit from this.
 
One hopes, and is 99% likely to be wrong, that Telkom would do to the rest of the mobile chaps what they are doing to the ADSL ISPs. Offer the LTE/3G data at the same order of magnitude cost-wise that they do on ADSL and force the other boys to play along. The mobile companies are laughing to the bank every time we spend the same money for 300MB on their data that we pay for 30GB on ADSL.
 
So, in a nutshell, Telkom are closing all their uncongested exchanges.
 
MartyMarts said:
So, in a nutshell, Telkom are closing all their uncongested exchanges.
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That's what I'm thinking too.... :(
My guess is that announcement from the a few weeks ago that they're now done with the planned ADSL upgrades for now probably means it was the last bit of love we'll see on the existing infrastructure... so it's all either downhill from here, or it'll take them another few decades to move a handful of exchanges over to fibre, and only in "high profitable" areas.
 
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Rickster said:
And I wonder how ISP's are going to react to this, their income comes mostly from Uncapped users and there is no way we will have unshapped LTE unless they find a way to limit it to ADSL speeds.
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1. No it doesn't.
2. Limit?? Like LTE speeds are anywhere NEAR ADSL speeds. The networks are so congested you're lucky to get 128K
 
RaptorSA said:
Those who think this is a good thing needs their heads examined... seriously.
This is terrible news and just another sign of what's happening to this country.
Wireless is a complete turd and no small. medium or large business who needs stable, low latency online services etc. setup will benefit from this.
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Bingo. Although most medium or large businesses can afford fibre or some other dedicated connection. Us poor home sods who want to use the internet like it's actually the 21st century are getting shafted by this the most.
 
This is kinda bad......

If LTE is launched yes that will be nice cause of the fast speeds and good latency. Thats all.

You will be locked to which ever provider provides LTE to you. The caps on LTE are low so Telkom should have some incentives like uncapped downloads between 00:00 and 4am or something like that. Then I can see LTE doing well. Other than that it will be bad.
 
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