Cellular20.09.2016

Telkom uncapped LTE “excessive users” no longer throttled

Telkom shadow logo

Telkom appears to have un-throttled multiple uncapped LTE accounts on its network following complaints from subscribers.

The company faced backlash from clients on its uncapped LTE packages earlier this month when they discovered they had been “soft capped”.

This came after Telkom informed uncapped clients it would enforce its acceptable use policy (AUP) more aggressively by throttling connections.

From September, subscribers said their connections were throttled – with reports stating the operator had introduced new usage thresholds.

Telkom previously stated its AUP targeted “bandwidth-intensive protocols” being used to a point where they degraded the quality of the network for all users.

It defined these as peer-to-peer services like BitTorrent, and news server downloads.

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

A new soft cap

Telkom customers said a separate 250GB usage threshold was introduced at the start of September.

Subscribers said Telkom throttled uncapped LTE connections to 4Mbps after around 185GB of data usage. When you hit 250GB, your connection was throttled to 256kbps.

The soft cap functioned separately to the 50GB limit for “bandwidth-intensive” usage. Subscribers reported they could torrent at full speed after hitting the 185GB and 250GB thresholds.

Telkom exercised “much leniency”

Telkom did not provide feedback to MyBroadband on the issue after we sent questions to the operator.

It told Times Live unhappy uncapped LTE subscribers can cancel their contracts with no penalties. Telkom did not say whether LTE modems or devices would have to be returned following a contract cancellation.

Telkom added that it had been lenient in enforcing its AUP since the launch of its uncapped service.

However, in the past few months it found that excessive usage was negatively impacting customers.

“Some [customers] have downloaded as much as 4TB of data through their LTE connections,” said Telkom.

Telkom said 11% of its existing LTE users would be throttled because of excessive usage.

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