Telkom phasing out ADSL... what's next?

Burr

Burr

Active Member
Joined
Feb 7, 2013
Messages
55
Reaction score
2
Location
Glen Anil, Durban
So it appears that Telkom wants to phase out all of their copper infrastructure over the next two years or so, according to this: https://www.businesslive.co.za/fm/fm-fox/2018-05-31-telkom-calls-time-on-copper-cabling/

I've got a 10Mbps line at home with no fibre available (and there probably will never be any fibre available, as it's mostly just pensioners in North Beach, Durban). That leaves me in a pretty awkward predicament- I'd probably have to move over to an LTE product which I've not had good experiences with in the past. Do you guys reckon we'll see fibre rolled out more aggressively once copper lines are phased out altogether or do you think there will be a shift toward LTE and possibly 5G in the future?

I'm actually seriously considering moving into an area where fibre is available once my current lease is up. I go through about 350-400 gigs of data a month on my current ADSL product and don't really know if an "uncapped" Telkom LTE product would suit my needs. Anyone else in the same boat?
 
Yeah, the area that I live in is not going to get fibre any time soon either.

One Telkom pole fell down two months ago and is not being fixed, the wire has been left to run on the ground. Telkom have said, in the suburb next to mine, that they are not replacing stolen cables, and have moved everybody over to wireless phones and LTE. So I imagine this would also apply to damaged poles and wires as well.

So just a matter of time until the network fails in my area and they then tell us that we are being moved over on to LTE. I don't like it, because the signal in my suburb is very weak. All the networks have their towers on the other side of a hill from me, so I'm going to be shafted. Also, I highly doubt we will be given uncapped LTE packages for the same price that we are paying for on ADSL. :(

So basically I feel your pain, only time will tell if, when this happens, there will be any other viable options.
 
This is what happens if you privatise basic important services like, Transport-Rail, Electricity, Communication.
Instead it should be strictly managed with zero tolerance for corruption. Noticed how voice calls on celphones got worse as more data capacity is made available(well sort of depending on load).
To privatise successfully and sustainably, you need a very special commitment long term from the boardrooms, otherwise small towns run dry, or everything small for that matter. The "MODERN TECHNOLOGY" may leave you disconnected of power fails, in old day it did not matter.
 
Moto Guzzi said:
This is what happens if you privatise basic important services like, Transport-Rail, Electricity, Communication.
Instead it should be strictly managed with zero tolerance for corruption. Noticed how voice calls on celphones got worse as more data capacity is made available(well sort of depending on load).
To privatise successfully and sustainably, you need a very special commitment long term from the boardrooms, otherwise small towns run dry, or everything small for that matter. The "MODERN TECHNOLOGY" may leave you disconnected of power fails, in old day it did not matter.
Click to expand...
No all need is a governing body with a backbone unfortunately we don't have a governing body is South Africa.

ICASA certainly don't mean Jack.
 
Burr said:
So it appears that Telkom wants to phase out all of their copper infrastructure over the next two years or so, according to this: https://www.businesslive.co.za/fm/fm-fox/2018-05-31-telkom-calls-time-on-copper-cabling/

I've got a 10Mbps line at home with no fibre available (and there probably will never be any fibre available, as it's mostly just pensioners in North Beach, Durban). That leaves me in a pretty awkward predicament- I'd probably have to move over to an LTE product which I've not had good experiences with in the past. Do you guys reckon we'll see fibre rolled out more aggressively once copper lines are phased out altogether or do you think there will be a shift toward LTE and possibly 5G in the future?

I'm actually seriously considering moving into an area where fibre is available once my current lease is up. I go through about 350-400 gigs of data a month on my current ADSL product and don't really know if an "uncapped" Telkom LTE product would suit my needs. Anyone else in the same boat?
Click to expand...
Telkom has uncapped LTE which is R899 which is essentially is a 300GB soft cap.
 
Polymathic said:
Telkom has uncapped LTE which is R899 which is essentially is a 300GB soft cap.
Click to expand...

They are doing it in my town - my neighbour is on LTE now. SMALL problem - we have no back up in the blinking tower (batteries were stolen apparently) so a Telkom landline is the ONLY connectivity we have with loadshedding. If Telkom takes that away then someone has to make sure that there is a facility to call for help during an emergency. Otherwise they are all putting lives at risk.
 
Copper on Voice not adsl/vdsl. they are installing msan infrastructure, so it will stay well for now.
 
Disturbing when such gross inaccurate statements are made by parties in power.

The statement is similar to claim:
- We will do way with motorcars, all will use solar powered quad copters.
- Poverty will be removed by 2020, we will all eat lobsters.
Sure, we all want this. The reality is a very different matter.

A vast percentage of the developed world use copper and will continue to do so.
It is easy to provide fibre to 1 mile +1 meter removed from the client, the last mile is very expensive in time and cost to replace with fibre for the majority of the populous.

South Africa is a large country at +- 1.2 mil km^2.
A baboon, as I am, can take the fibre coverage maps and merge to the populated areas and see, impossible, this is dreaming of unicorns.

Should we argue GSM, 4G/ 5G will solve this, well... The trouble, these towers are quite dispersed, thus, hard to keep operational due to no power. We may say, backup power! Well, similar to the copper, these get stolen at an industrial scale.
Not some theory, In the past months alone I witnessed how nodes go offline due exactly this. back power is provided at client sites at huge cost, GSM tower is offline due to lack of power.

Precious infrastructure should be protected at all cost.
Since this core responsibility is failed => @Burr, you ask about the future.
Ensure you live where you have access / can produce:
a. Water. {It is very common to have water tanks, water purification and pumps per house now}
b. Electricity is next on the list. Solar, wind, generator, batteries.
c. Now worry about the fibre.

We have gone full circle now, once you solved the above, hire a private army as ants may come and carry the above away.
 
Moto Guzzi said:
This is what happens if you privatise basic important services like, Transport-Rail, Electricity, Communication.
Instead it should be strictly managed with zero tolerance for corruption. Noticed how voice calls on celphones got worse as more data capacity is made available(well sort of depending on load).
To privatise successfully and sustainably, you need a very special commitment long term from the boardrooms, otherwise small towns run dry, or everything small for that matter. The "MODERN TECHNOLOGY" may leave you disconnected of power fails, in old day it did not matter.
Click to expand...

You do realise that Telkom was often the industry's biggest enemy? Look at number portability of 0860 and 0800 numbers or naked DSL or local loop unbundling.

Privatisation is a good thing, if the above DSL strategies were followed I think we'd have a better DSL infrastructure and lifespan of the product.

Though operators couldn't use or compete with Telkom's DSL with a fixed line product (as fibre rollout is slow to remote areas) so came up with a strategy for licenced spectrum last mile services like 4G.

Also there is nothing wrong with 4G, it is possibly just poorly implemented in your area as can happen with DSL regarding poor voice calls. If infrastructure doesn't have enough capacity or is not setup who knows maybe QoS then you will have issues.

Also you need to admit that SA's post 1994 government cannot reform a SOE after they Africanised it...as we have seen so far. Look at SABC, PRASA, ESKOM, SAA etc and honestly tell me that there are any repercussions for poor governance? You know why? Because treasury (tax payers) will just bail them out.
 
I was actually going to apply for ADSL instead of fibre, purely for the fact that I thought DSLAM's would be less congested due to everyone leaving DSL for fibre.

Thank goodness I went fibre instead. Rock solid, lank stable.
 
Zoomzoom said:
They are doing it in my town - my neighbour is on LTE now. SMALL problem - we have no back up in the blinking tower (batteries were stolen apparently) so a Telkom landline is the ONLY connectivity we have with loadshedding. If Telkom takes that away then someone has to make sure that there is a facility to call for help during an emergency. Otherwise they are all putting lives at risk.
Click to expand...
They removed the landlines in my area a couple months ago, as soon as there's an issue with your lines, they are going to cancel all the landlines in your area
 
Burr said:
Do you guys reckon we'll see fibre rolled out more aggressively once copper lines are phased out
Click to expand...

No, if there is no demand you'll likely not see fibre being rolled out. For the ROI to make any form of sense you need demand first.
 
Polymathic said:
They removed the landlines in my area a couple months ago, as soon as there's an issue with your lines, they are going to cancel all the landlines in your area
Click to expand...

:<

Genisys said:
No, if there is no demand you'll likely not see fibre being rolled out. For the ROI to make any form of sense you need demand first.
Click to expand...

Best I start looking for somewhere new to live :'D
 
We have moved from VDSL to a WISP a Month or two ago. It was the best move I have ever made, I ha e 7 ping and 0% packet loss in a storm, and I'm 9km away. I did have to pay for a better dish but it's worth it just to make sure you have a good connection. I have not had a single problem with throughput and latency since the installation. Full speed all the time. I also want fiber, but since I am on a WISP I was wondering what my neighbors are on en what the rest of the suburb is on. To my surprise, every second house has a dish on it. To most I talk to is that they can not get higher than 4 meg most of the time. So they get much faster packages with a WISP and most of them pay well over 1.2k a month for internet. One of the fiber. Now I wanna know, how can the numbers be added of active paying users, when the infrastructure is barely working and this people moved over to a WISP?
 
Beware all readers.
@Veck is perhaps part of the 1% fortunate persons who mange to:
a. find a good WISP {super rare}.
b. at this time the link is great. {Let us know in 3- 9 months if your link is still good}

Veck, please tell us who the WISP is in what geographical location please?
Other can benefit from using a good WISP.

Moving on.
Why this stark warning? Also, in answer to your question in terms of numbers to add and paying clients.
You can link to WISP with:
a. Point to point link {The best one can go ito Wifi links}.
b. Usually WISPs provide point to multi point wifi links.

The above is usually connected to a cable link to an ISP.
Thus, they buy a link, say 50 Mb/s and sell it on to Y clients.

At first, provided they know what they do, the links will be good as there are: 1... (critical limit -1) clients.
Once the ration change to (critical limit + 1 .. n) for any of the factors/ entities below" the quality will significantly decrease.
Common entities which gets congested:
a. The Wifi spectrum used as more clients link to central tower. {An example, when many radio stations try and broadcast near same frequency on FM, you cannot enjoy your music. Sure we will not for much longer be able to use this example as fewer people listen to radios using FM/ AM / SW etc}
b. The hard / main link to the higher up ISP. An example, the WISP have a 50 MB fibre link to an ISP.


Exactly the same can happen for any other link, say DSL or fibre. {Search the forum for congested DSL exchanges as an example} It is much easier in general for providers to ensure good connections were cables are used.

The proof and truth always manifest in time.
Hope your link remains good. Please let us know in a few months how your link is doing.
 
WISP is way too slow. Friend of mine moved from DSL (8Mbps) to WISP, now maxing out at 2Mbps
 
It's all fine and well and I get the reasons for phasing out copper, but how are they going to offer me a commensurate package on their wireless system?

40 GB + 40 GB at night @ 10 mps
Free Telkom to Telkom calls 24/7
landline + adsl line
R700 pm

If they can't they can go take a running jump at themselves.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X