Telkom response to ADSL complaint

sybawoods

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Copy of my forum post at Prophecy (http://forum.prophecy.co.za/showfla...=149341&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=2&fpart=

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">I also got the standard notification via email yesterday about the relocation of their data centre, and the recent lack of accurate usage reports. I responded to the email, and was surprised to get a response from the ADSL product manager. Read into it what you will - not sure if I should take up the offer and whether they would in fact come and "explain themselves" in a forum such as this. I think she misunderstood the concept of "public forum", thinking of it more like a meeting or something, but interesting nevertheless.



In reply to:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear ,
I appreciate your kind words and I understand your frustration. I
don't know if you believe me, but we are investigating potential
options to overcome the current limitations the service is providing.
I therefore value your response, and I have forwarded your mail to one
of the individuals responsible for the networks, asking him to
comment. I will send it through as soon as possible.

If you would like to I could potentially speak to our communications
department and we could offer to present at your public forums to
explain why Telkom is doing what they are doing and maybe take
questions from yourself and other frustrated subscribers. Let me know.

Your patience is much appreciated.

Regards,
Sonia



-----Original Message-----
From:[mailto:xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 04 August 2003 18:41
To: ADSL Feedback
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: ADSL Usage Tracker


Dear Sonia

Thank you for the excellent communication.

I do hope that you are able to get to read my response to this: whilst the ADSL usage tracker is an excellent utility, and I appreciate this feedback, it really is the least of my current concerns with ADSL.

I was an ISDN user prior to upgrading to ADSL late last year. When the service was initially rolled out, the performance was excellent. I was one of a handful of people who went into public forums to defend the SAIX offering - despite the many cries of "expensive" from the more cynical amongst our community.

Unfortunately, over time, I have found that the service has
significantly degraded, to the extent that I now have been forced to
reinstall my ISDN line to run alongside my ADSL line. While I do
understand that international bandwidth is at a premium, I fail to
understand why my ISDN line out-performs my more expensive ADSL line,
specifically for international usage. My latency (pings) to
international servers using my ADSL line is virtually unusable (in the 600ms+ range), whereas with ISDN and the correct ISP, they are as low as 200ms. It appears that ISDN international traffic is being routed along a much better performing international link. I fail to
understand why this is the case.

So for someonelike myself, I currently use ADSL mainly for local
traffic, and ISDN for international. I am happy to pay an additional
premium on my ADSL line if needs be, to get the kind of performance
that I do via ISDN. Unfortunately, there appears to be no such option.

It is already frustrating to manage a bandwidth cap (I can live with
that, I understand the circumstances), but it is almost unforgivable
to be forced to use this bandwidth in a particular way. It appears
that certain ports are blocked / capped, such that international
on-line gaming for example, is unusable. These limitations were never
publicised when the product was initially launched, and was certainly
not in place in the first few months after it was installed at my
premises at least.

While I make no claim to be speaking on behalf of other users, I
interact with many other ADSL users in public forums, and in the
on-line gaming world locally on a daily basis, and I do know that my
levels of frustration are mild compared to their's! I do hope that
these rather crippling limitations in the current product offering will be addressed shortly.

Thanks for your time.

Very unhappy ADSL user.



Monday, August 4, 2003, 9:17:50 AM, you wrote:

&gt; Dear Telkom Internet Subscriber,

&gt; Telkom Internet has experienced enormous growth over the past year
to
&gt; the extent that we have outgrown the facilities where the service
&gt; infrastructure was housed. To support our Internet service offering
and
&gt; to accommodate new developments in the ISP arena, we have moved the
&gt; service infrastructure to our new data centre facility in Centurion.
&gt; This facility rates among the top 3 data centres in the world and is
&gt; truly state of art.

&gt; Unfortunately, we were unable to update the usage tracker and send
you
&gt; updates during the move. However, now that the move has been
completed,
&gt; you can once again view your updated usage. Please note that we
won't
&gt; be able to update the history for the time the data wasn't read, the
&gt; status will therefore remain as is since 1 July. Also note that the
&gt; tracker tool only updates on a 24-hour cycle at midnight and is not
a
&gt; real-time tracker as such. All usage for a particular day is only
&gt; updated at midnight and will only be reflected on the tracker tool
the
&gt; following day. If you were to check the usage on the tracker during
the
&gt; morning and again later in the day after being online, then the
usage
&gt; shown on the tracker will be unchanged and will not reflect the
sessions
&gt; of that day until after midnight. The tracker service will be fully
&gt; restored on Friday the 1st of August and we trust that you will
&gt; correctly interpret the data displayed as historic and not real-time
&gt; data.

&gt; Please accept our sincerest apologies for any inconvenience caused.

&gt; Regards,
&gt; Sonia Labuschagne
&gt; Telkom Internet powered by ADSL Product Manager <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
 
Last edited:
I have spoken to Sonia many months ago. If she still does not understand the issues, then it confirms my suspicions that this is a typical response and nothing further will happen.

My conversations with her started off in a similair trend and after a couple of weeks, she came back with the same 'party line' response that I have received from everyone else. It seems someone at the top is regulating the responses. I won't be surprised if it's Steven White himself. She does not have any power to do anything, that she has proven to me months ago.

I'm sorry if i sound negative, but believe me, i've been down that road too many times to start believing Telkom now.

<b>I will believe it when i see it</b>

Notice the comment about having a communications rep on the forum.

<i>If you would like to I could potentially speak to our communications department and we could offer to present at your public forums <b>to explain why Telkom is doing what they are doing </b>and maybe take questions from yourself and other frustrated subscribers. </i>

They are basically going to tell us why it's in such a mess, using the same old excuse of keeping the majority of their subscribers happy and keeping the 'abusers' at bay and that international comms is expensive.

<b><b>After 5 months of this crap, quite honestly, I should have told them to stick their ADSL someplace where the sun don't shine, four months ago!</b></b>
 
While i'm in this crappy mood, she should change her sig from,

<b><i>Sonia Labuschagne
Telkom Internet powered by ADSL Product Manager </i></b>

to,

<b><i>Sonia Labuschagne
Telkom Internet slowed down by ADSL Product Manager </i></b>

There's two ways to read that, Telkom Internet slowed down by ADSL or slowed down by the ADSL Product Manager, either will apply in this case.
 
I couldn't agree with you more.

People like Sonia are hostage to policy decisions by their senior management. Remember their primary goal is to prevent the migration of diginet business users to ADSL
 
If it is that bad, why don't you just cancel your subscription?

Stop downloading pirate software and movies, and 3 GIG will be sufficient.
 
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