Telkom reaches new lows (and you thought they were there already)

[Marq]

You have given me some thoughts to process.

My last trip to the Telkom sales office did not give me an answer like this which is why I was under the impression that I was stuck with the landline adsl option only.

[dcs]

As an aside, I am with Telkom ADSL and recently upgraded my router (to the NetGear N300). On installation I found my connection speed was significantly faster and the router comes standard with a USB port for a Wi-Fi backup. I gather that there have been some technical changes which my old router (Billion 800 VGT) did not use. I never saw any notices about this.

Another point to note is that Telkom is currently rolling out something called VDSL which "should" be available in main centers by 2015. Theoretical speeds with this are really impressive, but I guess that over-selling will slow this down impressively as well. You will definitely need a new router to connect and get the higher speeds. I am not a Telkom fan either, but the Neotel option is really another wireless connection and based on what the reality is overseas, I would not consider a wireless only option for business use. Overseas the fastest connections are landline and not wireless as in SA and ultimately the same must happen here, and sooner rather than later.

[SilverNodashi]

You have given me some thoughts to process.

My last trip to the Telkom sales office did not give me an answer like this which is why I was under the impression that I was stuck with the landline adsl option only.

sales reps, especially those working in "shops" are generally useless. they earn a salary and could't care less if you got what you needed, or not. just my 2c

[ians]

Not if you speak the right person.

[Marq]

For interest, latest stats.....

Midrand has been rated South Africa’s top broadband suburb with an average speed of 10.92Mbps, while the country continues to lag behind its peers in rolling out high-speed internet services.

The latest Ookla net index published last week shows that the average download speed in South Africa is 4.03Mbps, which is far lower than the global average of 13.64Mbps. There is not even a single suburb in South Africa with an average broadband speed higher than the global average or matching it.

This comes after Akamai’s latest report placed South Africa 80th in world in the first quarter of this year in terms of connectivity. This is despite internet connections rising 16% over last year

http://business.iafrica.com/businessday/873971.html

[Marq]

Do you think its the end of the Road for telkom......or will Vodacom and MTN take over and give us more of the same?

Telkom has been insulated from reality for so long that any competitive instincts it possessed have long since atrophied. Its ill-fated venture into mobile telephony and data is an amusing case in point. Launched in 2010, its mobile network has stalled at 1.5-million subscribers and continues to bleed billions of rands a year. In a classic case of shooting the messenger, it has abandoned the original 8ta brand in favour of the dubiously generic "Telkom Mobile".

So embarrassing are these numbers that Telkom has stopped separating out its mobile operations in its financial statements. And now Telkom's last refuge, the "local loop", is about to be unbundled. This network of copper cables, spread throughout South Africa, is what you use when you phone someone on a landline or connect to ADSL. It is the only network over which Telkom still has an absolute monopoly. The unbundling process will force Telkom to allow competitors to use the network at reasonable rates.

Local loop unbundling has been delayed countless times since 2006, but it may finally be under way. Icasa has submitted its draft regulations to Yunus Carrim, the new communications minister, and if all goes according to plan, the draft will be approved within a fortnight. That may be wishful thinking, but even a further year of delay is not enough time for Telkom to prepare for the disruption of unbundling. It made over R10-billion from data in the past financial year – nearly 30% of its total revenue. It will not be able to sustain such revenues when it has to compete for customers in the open market.

To their credit, Telkom's new leaders do seem to recognise the need for change. If they hope to keep the company afloat while their legacy businesses die, they will need to cuddle up to wholesale data customers such as internet service Telkom, they will jump at the chance.

Telkom may not realise it, but millions of South Africans loathe its brand and everything for which it stands. If its leaders are truly sorry, then they should put their money where their mouths are. For starters, they could unbundle the local loop without any further fuss, drop interconnect fees and reduce line rentals. Nothing says "I'm sorry" like positive actions.providers (ISPs). Considering they have been fighting those same customers in court for the better part of a decade, this realisation is long overdue. And they had better hurry. As the penetration of fibre optic networks increases, Telkom is in real danger of being cut out of the market completely. Fibre is faster, cheaper to maintain and, unlike copper, does not get stolen for scrap. If ISPs and other service providers can connect directly to customers without going through

http://mg.co.za/article/2013-08-04-00-telkoms-apology-too-little-too-late

[irneb]

If you are happy with super fast speed of around 0.53 Mbps on an iphone5 or the like, then 8 ta (Telkom mobile) would definitely be the way to go. Their response to my "no signal" line dropping problem and no data coverage, "We are still new in the data network industry so you will just have to be patient, it will improve in years to come"

Just a question ... how much do you pay for that and what's your cap? Even on my prepaid vodacom I get 20GB for R500 and speedwise I'm seeing between 4Mbits/s up to 10Mbits/s (i.e. download throughput between 400kbytes/sec up to 1MByte per sec) - depending on time of day, sometimes (late at night / early morning) I've even seen spikes going to around 2MBytes/sec (i.e. close to 20MBits/sec). Good enough to watch HD video direct from Amazon or the like.

Latencies are usually the issue on 3G/HSDPA. Wonder if we're ever going to get the LTE which is now available in Europe. Apparently that has latencies close to the same as a wired / fiber connection. http://mybroadband.co.za/news/broadb...-its-fast.html

Look at those ping times in the tests (i.e. latency test). Anything below 500ms (half a second) is considered acceptable, so 36ms is nearly nothing. The international test is longer because it has more jumps beyond the LTE connection, even an ADSL/Fiber would have to go through those same jumps - but still at 204ms (1/5th second) to receive data after requesting is very good indeed. I've personally seen ping times for 3G/HSDPA between 700ms and 3000ms, on ADSL/Fibre (NeoTel BroadLink) between 10 and 300.