On 1 February this year Telkom introduced its new promotional packages which includ 10 GB of local bandwidth for each 1 GB of blended (international) bandwidth in the package.<\/p>\n
This was welcomed by many TelkomInternet subscribers as it allows them to access their email and locally hosted content after reaching their cap.<\/p>\n
The company however warned that it would bill subscribers for local bandwidth usage which exceeds the 10 GB to 40 GB limit, and this has now started to happen.<\/p>\n
“If a customer exceeds his or her allocated free local only bandwidth, the customer is charged R25.55 per GB for each additional GB that is consumed,” said Nabintu Petsana, Telkom’s Acting Group Executive for Corporate Communication.<\/p>\n
Poor notification<\/strong><\/p>\n One customer said that he received an unexpected bill of R 2432.00 for extra local bandwidth usage without receiving a warning about the over usage for three months.<\/p>\n According to the rather agitated Telkom subscriber, the first he heard about this additional bill was when Telkom called him to tell him that he was in arrears.<\/p>\n Telkom was asked why it takes such a long time to bill for additional usage – and queried about delays in informing customers about these charges – but Petsana said that it is difficult to say why this customer was only billed a few months after the actual bandwidth usage as they don’t have all the facts.<\/p>\n There does not currently seem to be a pro-active notification system warning users that they have exceeded their usage limit and can expect to be billed out-of-bundle rates.<\/p>\n