{"id":316213,"date":"2019-08-20T06:59:48","date_gmt":"2019-08-20T04:59:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=316213"},"modified":"2019-08-20T08:59:17","modified_gmt":"2019-08-20T06:59:17","slug":"why-i-left-telkom-for-vodacom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/316213-why-i-left-telkom-for-vodacom.html","title":{"rendered":"Why I left Telkom for Vodacom"},"content":{"rendered":"

After many years of being a Telkom mobile subscriber, I moved to Vodacom. The reasons are simple \u2013 Telkom has roaming problems and Vodacom now offers big data deals on an excellent network.<\/p>\n

Over the last few years, Telkom showed strong mobile growth thanks to its good value proposition to consumers.<\/p>\n

Telkom\u2019s data-centric FreeMe bundles offer many smartphone users what they want \u2013 lots of data and free calls at an affordable price.<\/p>\n

I preferred Telkom\u2019s prepaid data bundles. Although these products offer less value than FreeMe bundles, I never make calls or send SMSs, which means a data-only product suits me better.<\/p>\n

While Telkom has poor coverage with slow speeds in some areas, it was easy to solve this problem by always roaming on MTN.<\/p>\n

Although only 3G roaming was available to Telkom subscribers, the speeds were still very good. In short, I was a happy Telkom customer.<\/p>\n

Roaming changes<\/h3>\n

In June this year, Telkom started to roam on Vodacom\u2019s 2G, 3G, and 4G infrastructure<\/strong><\/a> with seamless handover.<\/p>\n

Apart from the benefit of 4G roaming, Telkom said its new roaming service means that customers will not experience dropped calls when moving from Telkom to Vodacom infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, there were many teething problems<\/strong><\/a> with the new roaming agreement. This left subscribers without connectivity in many cases.<\/p>\n

While subscribers see the \u201cTelkomSA-R\u201d sign, which means they should roam on Vodacom\u2019s network, the service simply does not work.<\/p>\n

The situation is even worse for Telkom\u2019s on-net only data bundle users, who reported that their connections have become unstable.<\/p>\n

Moving to Vodacom<\/h3>\n

The frustration of an unstable connection and being left without connectivity because of Telkom\u2019s new roaming service made me look for an alternative.<\/p>\n

The good news for me was that Vodacom and MTN recently launched big data packages which offer excellent value for money.<\/p>\n

These bundles, which range between 10GB and 50GB anytime data per month, were exactly what I need to stay connected when not at home.<\/p>\n

The only real choice was which network to select \u2013 MTN or Vodacom. MTN has the best network in South Africa, but Vodacom is a close second with excellent coverage countrywide.<\/p>\n

The choice was made for me when my wife offered me one of her Vodacom contract SIMs with a 10GB data contract on it (she combined her personal and business phones).<\/p>\n

I am now back on Vodacom\u2019s network, and it just works. There are no roaming problems and I have enough data not to worry about top-ups.<\/p>\n

I do hope Telkom resolves its roaming problems, as we need strong competition from the smaller operators to put pressure on Vodacom and MTN.<\/p>\n

For now, however, it is tough to beat the overall value proposition of the big data deals from South Africa\u2019s large operators.<\/p>\n

This is an opinion piece.<\/em><\/p>\n

Now read: MTN\u2019s 3-point plan to take on Vodacom<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been a Telkom mobile subscriber for years, but recently moved to Vodacom. Here is why I made the switch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[35,42,109,41],"class_list":["post-316213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-headline","tag-mtn","tag-telkom","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316213"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316213"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":316869,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316213\/revisions\/316869"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}