[size] It’s not really a surprise to see announcements from Telkom around this time of the year, so when we first heard
of the announcement of Telkom’s new product offerings, we were ready... Or so we thought.
The South African broadband market was rocked last month by the announcement, by Mweb surprisingly enough, of affordable
uncapped internet access. Naturally, to remain competitive, most other ISP’s rushed out the gates to announce similar offerings,
and soon enough, the market was buzzing. However, not all ISP’s namely Telkom and Webafrica, have rushed to announce
anything. Webafrica have claimed that these new offerings are unsustainable in the long run whilst Telkom have remained mum
on the subject, until now.
We were all expecting the increases in line speed as Telkom have been testing line capabilities, laying fibre optic cables and
upgrading DSLAM’s and exchanges to be ADSL2+ ready. Many internet users have claimed to hit remarkable speeds never before
seen in South Africa with regards to ADSL which all pointed to this being the case. And indeed, it is now official.
In a press conference held at 8a.m. this morning, Telkom officially stated that the rollout of the line speed increases will
commence on May 1st. However, because not all exchanges are 100% ready for the increase, it will be rolled out across the
country over the next few months, only stalled because FIFA regulations state that no network maintenance can be held during
the World cup. The line speeds will be bumped up as follows.
• 384 increased to 1024/103 Downstream/Upstream
• 512 increased to 2048/205 Downstream/Upstream
• 4096 increased to at least 8192 up to 10Mb/ps Downstream and 1.5Mb/ps upstream
However, we were told that these bumps in speed would be free of charge, but it seems this isn’t the case. These speeds
actually come at a reduced price as Telkom have finally chosen to go ahead with the much awaited Local Loop Unbundling (LLU).
For those who don’t understand what LLU implies, it means that line rentals are charged for specific speeds. The loss of line
rental has brought about a whole new game in the market, allowing consumers freedom in choosing their ISP’s, but you may
want to decide on that carefully according to Telkom. Why you may ask? Well it comes with the pricing structure of these new
packages.
• 1Mb/ps uncapped and semi-shaped at R199 per month
• 2Mb/ps uncapped and semi-shaped at R299 per month
• 8/10Mb/ps uncapped semi-shaped at R599 per month
• 1Mb/ps uncapped and unshaped at R299 per month
• 2Mb/ps uncapped and unshaped at R399 per month
• 8/10Mb/ps uncapped and unshaped at R799 per month
When asked the question over fair usage policies, the spokesperson had this to say, “We are well aware of the problems
that uncapped brings, in particular, the abuse of the system at such high speeds users will be achieving. However, we also know
that such abuse can’t be sustained over a lengthy period of time. Research shows that users who abuse the system usually only
do so during their first 2 months and thereafter slow down due to the lack of storage capacity they own but also due to the fact
that there’s only so much any user can wish to download in any given time. These packages will also only have 1 concurrent
connection as is industry standard to prevent abuse.
If this is an april fools I will kill you...
I was actually hopeful for a second about the LLU. Meh, then I realised it was April Fool's.
What got me was the "10Mb / ps
I got all excited and jumped around my study until I read the April Fools part1 Ouch! you got me so dam well!
Damn you Morgue! Getting us all excited, only to dash our hopes!
Oh well.... Another day with slow bandwidth.
![Morgue[FLB]](/thumb.php?src=%7Be_AVATAR%7Dupload%2Fap_59_morgueflb.png&aw=100&ah=100)
![Siversmith[PCD]](/thumb.php?src=%7Be_AVATAR%7Dupload%2Fap_7_1216834505_186_ft2896_siver_ava.jpg&aw=100&ah=100)
