Telkom uncapped LTE throttling policy leaves users furious

Telkom recently informed subscribers on its uncapped LTE packages that it may start throttling their connections.

It reminded subscribers that its uncapped LTE services are subject to an acceptable use policy (AUP).

“Please note that Telkom will start to implement the AUP from September 2016,” said the company.

“Telkom reserves the right to apply restrictions if a customer’s behaviour is deemed to affect the experience of other LTE users on the network.”

Not what we signed up for

Uncapped LTE subscribers have complained on the MyBroadband forums that Telkom is not enforcing its existing AUP, and is throttling connections based on data usage alone.

Telkom previously stated that its main concern was “bandwidth-intensive protocols” – like peer-to-peer and news server (NNTP) downloads – being used to a point where they degraded the quality of the network for all users.

Downloads over such protocols were originally limited to 50GB per month.

Subscribers are now reporting that they are being throttled based on the total amount of data they consume, regardless of whether it is on bandwidth-intensive protocols or not.

According to subscribers, Telkom is throttling uncapped LTE connections to 4Mbps after around 185GB of data usage.

When you hit the 250GB mark, your connection is throttled to 256kbps, stated the Telkom customers.

The 50GB fair usage limit on peer-to-peer and NNTP downloads appears to be managed separately, said subscribers.

Users reported that after hitting the 250GB “softcap”, they could still download 50GB over bandwidth-intensive protocols.

Telkom was asked about the reports of throttling, but had not replied by the time of publication.

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