Telkom's copper nightmare

funny we had some thiefts last week stealing our cable at the corner of the street...

while "security" were patrolling the area.
 
Theft of copper cable is costing Telkom almost R1bn a year.
Click to expand...

Theft by Telkom of choice and service in the telecomms industry is costing consumers almost 7.3 Bn a year. :rolleyes:
 
Last week, the "copperheads" (the specialised cable and copper theft unit) found water meters, drain covers and various copper cables at SA Metal (Cape Town) for which they could not account for. It will be interesting to see will happen to them.
 
I'm in one of the areas where cables are no longer being replaced. I guess I should see the fact that at least they are now publicly admitting that they won't replace them as a step forward..... They are now promising EMGW as the new solution within a month, although details on the technology or pricing are non-existent, and rumour has it that they are experiencing problems with the technology where they have installed it;-(
 
Sorry Telkom, how long has this been going on? Could have made other plans long time ago. But yeah management cant think 1 minute into the future.
 
matrixweb said:
thats same 1bn could have been used for fibre instead
Click to expand...

My thoughts too.

But telkom seem to have had enough as well, they aren't replacing copper anymore in certain areas (those that have wimax) and are instead offering wimax to the people in the area.

What I dont understand is why dont telkom have some kind of warning system, line goes down, bells and whistles go off and someone can be on the scene within 10mins?
 
What's quite amazing is that if Teklom were properlee organised, and everyone had ADSL for like R30 per GB, and no line rental, then perhaps, just perhaps, when the line stops working, people would know who to call, and would do so, and then the perps could be caught in-the-act.

But .. Calling teklom is a freaking nightmare, and I don't remember which number to call anyways.

They have the biggest "hey there is a problem here" network in the country, but cannot use it to stop this theft.
:rolleyes:
 
As far as securing the cables is concerned, I think Telkom do deserve some credit for at least trying. In our area, when there was still cable, they did have a private security company patrolling the cables, and did have alarms on some key cables. The problem was that the security company patrolled km's of cable, and only came past a particular point once and hour or so. The thieves knew this, and stole the cable as soon as they have passed. I actually came across a theft in progress once (cable had been cut and was lying across the road, but had not been removed yet). I phoned around, and had 2 local armed response companies, the Telkom security company, and Telkom's own people on site literally within 5 minutes, but it was too late - they guys were gone by then!
 
"What? All our copper cable keeps getting stolen and it is costing us billions? Well let's keep replacing it! ... What's that? 'Faaaii-baarrr'? No, I don't know what that is, so let's just keep using copper."
 
the cost of lost revenue in outgoing calls was R626m
Click to expand...

Maybe if they cut the prices of their services, they won't lose quite as much money, hey?

While it's hard to have sympathy for Telkom, the government should declare copper a precious metal and be done with it. At least that way it will be subject to the same controls as gold and silver and much harder to dispose of at your local scrap yard...
 
http://www.alvarion.com/products/emgw/

The eMGW is a cost effective, rapidly deployable, point to multipoint FWA system that provides optimal data and voice services for both residential and small business users in urban, suburban and rural environments.

The eMGW is the optimal price / performance FWA system for operators who need to:

* Provide coverage to subscribers in green fields
* Upgrade existing networks with advanced data services
* Provide DSL services in low and medium subscriber density areas
* Provide voice services in sparse rural areas

The eMGW operates in a broad range of licensed and unlicensed (ISM) frequency bands (1.5-5.7GHz).
 
If they are simply not going to replace the copper cables and leave people like me without ADSL, why don't they instead invest in FTTx, such as Verizon's FiOS at a competetive price, and then bang goes the competition. Well, that's if they had any brains and a little bit of intuition. If Telkom don't sort out the problem with cable theft and come up with a proper solution soon, they're going to quite simply go down the drains.
 
ok wait just a second here. am i missing something or are they replacing the copper with some sort of wireless/sattelite thingy? if they are then wtf is the point in adsl as your latency has just been given the shaft.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X