Perhaps my experience of getting VDSL may be of help to others out there who are about to go through the same unexpected birthing process and are still totally unaware of it. I will attempt to list in detail al the symptoms that may indicate that you are getting VDSL soon or may already have it.
When Mybroadband ran the news story about Telkom launching 20 Mbps ADSL2+ I started watching the Telkom ADSL checker website on a regular basis and about a month ago it showed that 20 Mbit speeds were available in my area. My line is with Afrihost (yes yes I know!) so I requested an upgrade from 10 to 20 Mbps on their website’s clientzone. A few days later my speedtests suddenly showed 13 Mbps and my router showed that the line was synced in the 15Mbps profile. I did ask AfriGuy and AfriMan to check if it would be stable at 20Mbps but one of them did not seem to understand what I meant and the other said no, 15Mbps is the maximum even though I am only 700m from the exchange and my router stats page saying the line should be able to go up to 24Mbit.
But anyway the speed was still great and I was very happy for about 3 weeks. My first Telkom statement I received after the upgrade to 20Mbps ADSL2+ showed an unexplained R300 charge for an item listed only as “other” which I disputed. They later informed me via SMS that my account will be credited with the R300 and everything was good again. Then about three weeks after the upgrade to 20Mbps ADSL2+ out of the blue my internet connection went dead… as in yellow exclamation mark over the system tray networking icon. The phone still worked and I could still connect to the Telkom guest account and the Telkom website, as well as do a speed test on saix.net. My Afrihost and WebAfrica accounts also connected and sometimes I could browse telkom.co.za from these accounts and sometimes not, but the rest of the internet was gone. The Telkom ADSL checker for my phone number changed from showing “20Mbps available in your area” to “Your request failed No StationCodes exist for the DN constitutions provided”.
Afrihost logged a line fault for me with Telkom who contacted me saying they can see my line is synced at 15Mbps and it is connected to an Afrihost account so there is no Telkom line fault. I insisted that they come out to my place even if I have to pay the unnecessary call out fee. Three days later the Telkom tech came to my place on a Saturday morning. She connected her own modem and laptop to my line and opened what seemed to be some strange piece of advanced networking software but on closer inspection turned out to be an old version of internet explorer with at least a dozen or more of those browser search bars installed. They literally covered about 2/3 of the screen! I should have known then I was screwed. OK, so she then also could not get an internet connection despite her modem syncing successfully on my line. She said it was indeed some unusual Telkom fault and that the hard-core guys would have to go into the exchange and do their dark magic to get it working again.
The next day was of course the Sunday from hell with no internet no Netflix and plenty of eskom load shedding. Starting Monday I made an endless series of desperate calls for help to both Afrihost and Telkom. Afrihost was utterly useless and they will get my request to transfer the line back to Telkom soon.
In various calls to both Afrihost and Telkom I asked them if perhaps I needed to verify my ADSL line again after the upgrade to 20Mbps ADSL2+ because I have read posts on Mybroadband of people that had to do that after getting 20Mbps VDSL. Various Telkom support minions said “no that would not be necessary” since it is an existing ADSL line and Afrihost even gave me an order number for something on my line which I entered on the Telkom ADSL verification site without success. Telkom later changed their story to “my line has been migrated to VDSL” and I need to get “the new pace router”. At this stage my old Telkom D-link ADSL2+ router was still syncing on the line so I told them it is impossible that my line is now VDSL because I never requested a VDSL line and because that router could not possibly sync on a VDSL line.
By Thursday I contacted TelkomZA on this forum via PM who phoned my yesterday (Fryday) morning and informed me that there was indeed some upgrade order on my line and therefore the line needed to be verified again! He gave me an order number and also told me that I am correct in thinking that my line must still be an ADSL2+ line because my old D-link router can still sync on the line. I did the verification online and the site reported that the order number was valid and that my connection would be active in about 30min.
I then had to go to work but when I came back during lunch there was still no connection and the router no longer connected, even to the Telkom guest account. Telkom phone support kept on saying I must get the damn new pace router and in a moment of despair I went and bought the thing knowing/hoping that VDSL may one day come to my area and also to show them that the router is not the problem. I got home and connected the new pace router knowing it would not solve the problem and….
20Mbps VDSL? I can’t be absolutely sure because I haven’t really explored the new Telkom PACE 921VNX router’s settings yet but based on those upload speeds I am sure it is VDSL. My internet and wifi feels like I am in Europe! I open the curtains and expect to see snow and reindeer! Netflix plays in HD almost instantly and you can skip around a movie with almost no buffering. This is what the internet was supposed to be!
For you guys on congested exchanges - hope the exchange upgrades reaches you soon and perhaps by then the process of migrating to VDSL will be a bit smoother. By the way VDSL is spreading like crazy all over Gauteng and even the North West and much much faster than you may have imagined; just check here: http://www.telkom.co.za/coverage/
When Mybroadband ran the news story about Telkom launching 20 Mbps ADSL2+ I started watching the Telkom ADSL checker website on a regular basis and about a month ago it showed that 20 Mbit speeds were available in my area. My line is with Afrihost (yes yes I know!) so I requested an upgrade from 10 to 20 Mbps on their website’s clientzone. A few days later my speedtests suddenly showed 13 Mbps and my router showed that the line was synced in the 15Mbps profile. I did ask AfriGuy and AfriMan to check if it would be stable at 20Mbps but one of them did not seem to understand what I meant and the other said no, 15Mbps is the maximum even though I am only 700m from the exchange and my router stats page saying the line should be able to go up to 24Mbit.
But anyway the speed was still great and I was very happy for about 3 weeks. My first Telkom statement I received after the upgrade to 20Mbps ADSL2+ showed an unexplained R300 charge for an item listed only as “other” which I disputed. They later informed me via SMS that my account will be credited with the R300 and everything was good again. Then about three weeks after the upgrade to 20Mbps ADSL2+ out of the blue my internet connection went dead… as in yellow exclamation mark over the system tray networking icon. The phone still worked and I could still connect to the Telkom guest account and the Telkom website, as well as do a speed test on saix.net. My Afrihost and WebAfrica accounts also connected and sometimes I could browse telkom.co.za from these accounts and sometimes not, but the rest of the internet was gone. The Telkom ADSL checker for my phone number changed from showing “20Mbps available in your area” to “Your request failed No StationCodes exist for the DN constitutions provided”.
Afrihost logged a line fault for me with Telkom who contacted me saying they can see my line is synced at 15Mbps and it is connected to an Afrihost account so there is no Telkom line fault. I insisted that they come out to my place even if I have to pay the unnecessary call out fee. Three days later the Telkom tech came to my place on a Saturday morning. She connected her own modem and laptop to my line and opened what seemed to be some strange piece of advanced networking software but on closer inspection turned out to be an old version of internet explorer with at least a dozen or more of those browser search bars installed. They literally covered about 2/3 of the screen! I should have known then I was screwed. OK, so she then also could not get an internet connection despite her modem syncing successfully on my line. She said it was indeed some unusual Telkom fault and that the hard-core guys would have to go into the exchange and do their dark magic to get it working again.
The next day was of course the Sunday from hell with no internet no Netflix and plenty of eskom load shedding. Starting Monday I made an endless series of desperate calls for help to both Afrihost and Telkom. Afrihost was utterly useless and they will get my request to transfer the line back to Telkom soon.
In various calls to both Afrihost and Telkom I asked them if perhaps I needed to verify my ADSL line again after the upgrade to 20Mbps ADSL2+ because I have read posts on Mybroadband of people that had to do that after getting 20Mbps VDSL. Various Telkom support minions said “no that would not be necessary” since it is an existing ADSL line and Afrihost even gave me an order number for something on my line which I entered on the Telkom ADSL verification site without success. Telkom later changed their story to “my line has been migrated to VDSL” and I need to get “the new pace router”. At this stage my old Telkom D-link ADSL2+ router was still syncing on the line so I told them it is impossible that my line is now VDSL because I never requested a VDSL line and because that router could not possibly sync on a VDSL line.
By Thursday I contacted TelkomZA on this forum via PM who phoned my yesterday (Fryday) morning and informed me that there was indeed some upgrade order on my line and therefore the line needed to be verified again! He gave me an order number and also told me that I am correct in thinking that my line must still be an ADSL2+ line because my old D-link router can still sync on the line. I did the verification online and the site reported that the order number was valid and that my connection would be active in about 30min.
I then had to go to work but when I came back during lunch there was still no connection and the router no longer connected, even to the Telkom guest account. Telkom phone support kept on saying I must get the damn new pace router and in a moment of despair I went and bought the thing knowing/hoping that VDSL may one day come to my area and also to show them that the router is not the problem. I got home and connected the new pace router knowing it would not solve the problem and….
20Mbps VDSL? I can’t be absolutely sure because I haven’t really explored the new Telkom PACE 921VNX router’s settings yet but based on those upload speeds I am sure it is VDSL. My internet and wifi feels like I am in Europe! I open the curtains and expect to see snow and reindeer! Netflix plays in HD almost instantly and you can skip around a movie with almost no buffering. This is what the internet was supposed to be!
For you guys on congested exchanges - hope the exchange upgrades reaches you soon and perhaps by then the process of migrating to VDSL will be a bit smoother. By the way VDSL is spreading like crazy all over Gauteng and even the North West and much much faster than you may have imagined; just check here: http://www.telkom.co.za/coverage/
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and the process of being moved over to vdsl is unnecessarily confusing. I've heard about this happening many times with it disconnecting and changing from adsl2+ to vdsl with no help from anyone as nobody knows what's up with it?
