Just on the vague off-chance that anyone from Telkom might read this (yeah right):
This planned maintenance didn't happen, which means that Phalaborwa has now been on a permanent go-slow since March: one of my business contacts says he's getting no more than 128kbps out of any of his business's 4mbps lines, and we're getting a little more than that (up to 500kbps) just by virtue of being closer to the exchange. Try sharing that out between end users and you'll find that we're currently experiencing speeds that belong in the early 1990s. Today Windows 7 wants to do a load of updates: once again I'm not even going to attempt this because there's no way in hell the town's network will cope. Most end users won't know how to prevent the updates from running automatically so the network is going to be absolutely choked today (more than usual) and most of the updates probably won't work. Telkom is therefore exposing Phalaborwa's thousands of computers to security risks.
I am told by someone who works at Telkom (not the call centre) that this work didn't take place because the team couldn't get their act together in time. Allegedly they were blaming each other for not having got all the information and resources together that were needed. They then all sodded off for a nice long weekend, because obviously they deserved it after all that stress. The stress, let me mention, is being caused by certain very large international companies putting pressure on them to fix this problem because, up until these big guys got involved a few weeks ago, Telkom wasn't planning on doing ANYTHING for the foreseeable future. They were just going to leave us paying for 4mbps lines but receiving an average of 100-400kbps for eternity. Because they can. Apparenlty, "it would be very expensive" to fix the problem. Oh, well, that's OK then!
Since the beginning of July I have complained at least daily to Telkom, who do nothing and can't tell me anything most of the time. I have escalated my complaint, and they still ignore me. I have complained to ICASA, who also ignore me. WTF?!!!! Nobody in this industry is answerable for their incompetence and lack of service. It's left up to the poor old last-mile providers like us to clear up the mess and deal with unhappy customers. Please won't someone else put fibre through to Phalaborwa? Please? Pretty please?
