Rumoured Telkom Price/Service changes!! w00t

[eraser]

I just had a chat to our Telkom Account Manager, and he confirmed that later this year Telkom will be dropping the 384k line and bumping everyone on it up to 512k

Good news for me!!

I asked about the rumoured 8meg and he said that word is around, but he cant confirm it.

[MIA]

You can work it, just search My ADSL for good SNR's and then look at what your modem's synched at.

Hence why I know mine's no good.

Sorry for being a nubcake, but i dont know how to do this

I dont even know what a SNR is

[Rayne]

It was on MyADSL's news page a day or two ago. They are leaning towards 8Mb yes but they know very well they would have to upgrade their network first, which they are not starting to do.

It would be nice yes, especially since I can't imagine ever using anything less than the 4Mb I've grown so accustomed to. But, what about caps? My greatest concern is my cap. Whether I downlaod 200Mb in 5 minutes or 2 minutes is nothing to me. Just how much I'm able to download is my problem and once my internet usage amounts to more than my car payment like it's been the case the past twp months, that problem becomes obvious.

Until they up the caps I don't even wan't to hear about speed boosts. It's not what any of us need, as clearly indicated by the fools jumping with joy about Neotel's 156k offering already.

[Rayne]

You can work it, just search My ADSL for good SNR's and then look at what your modem's synched at.

Hence why I know mine's no good.

Sorry for being a nubcake, but i dont know how to do this

I dont even know what a SNR is

Boot into your modem and then look at the statistics. You will see you SNR and Att. margins.

The absolute minimum your ADSL line can hande is an SNR of 6. Anything below that and you modem will not synch. Likewise the Att. is better the lower.

Now, every time your line speed is upped, that SNR decreases by an average of 4-6, simply because there's now more stres on your line. However, don't be confused, speeds are upped in steps, like 4Mb > 5Mb > 6Mb and so on. With each your line stability is dropping.

Now do you see the problem?

[MIA]

Hmm, ok thx rayne.

[DAE_JA_VOO]

I'm with you about the speed Rayne. I really don't mind having to wait longer for downloads, i just want more bandwidth. I'm chewing through 7 - 8GBs a month lately (and i'm not even downloading stuff really).

[lui007]

Sounds promising...
It must definitely be due to Telkom's new Competition Neotel.

I'm in London at the moment, where there is such a amazing amount of positive competition that my 24Mbps home ADSL connection (actual speed is about 23.4Mbps down, 8 up) is for something like £18per month (need to check, might have dropped again, BEthere internet is nice that way)

Regarding Local hosted websites:
It would be nice if Telkom did stop any cap for local sites...but international hosting is so cheap and service is usually much better (no Eskom power cuts etc...) I've always hosted my .co.za sites in the US.

I suspect with the speed increases and unlimited usage after 18:00 that VOIP services will start to flourish.
Might need to put some QOS (quality of Service) priority for voice though to make it better for my family to call me over Skype or other SIP type service like ictel or Vox.

Looking forward to the changes.
Got way too many slow connections in SA.
My December visit to CapeTown was the first time in a long time I saw Pre-loading on flash sites and Youtube.

Maybe then the a lot of SA sites will stop using such overly-optimized bad looking website images (looks horrible on 1680 x 1050 iMac or any large screen for that matter)

[MIA]

Well, it appears that it has happened. I noticed my notification emails telling me that i have used 1.1 gig of my cap, and telling me the % used is 30.57%, where it should have been 55% (i had a 2 gig cap). Seems like its 3 gig now.
Dont know about the internet speed, i'll run a speed check when i get home.

[Anakha56]

http://mybroadband.co.za/news/ADSL/5570.html

Recent usage percentage values sparked speculation about higher caps. Here is the explanation.

Speculation started that Telkom may have upped their 3 GB monthly usage limit to 5 GB after their subscribers reported strange usage percentages on their daily bandwidth email notifications.

According to some Telkom ADSL subscribers they received emails stating that they have used more bandwidth than their monthly allowance, but the ‘percentage used’ parameter indicated a value lower than 100%.

One Telkom customer said he used 3.91 GB of his allotted 3 GB cap during October while the ‘percentage used’ was reported as 72.42%. This equates to a monthly usage limit in excess of 5 GB.

Many Telkom ADSL subscribers confirmed that they have received similar emails while other subscribers reported that their ‘percentage used’ calculation showed no unexpected values.

Telkom confirmed that the ‘percentage used’ value, in cases where users exceeded their monthly cap, was not an indication of an increased monthly usage allowance, but rather a measure of how far the user is away from the monthly threshold value.

TelkomInternet subscribers have access to Telkom’s “unique threshold management service” promising users more bandwidth than their standard monthly cap.

“This service operates as follows: should you exceed your initial individual service threshold, 1 GB, 2 GB or 4 GB service, you will automatically be transferred into our collective threshold option. This will enable you to stay online until such time that the average usage for all our subscribers reaches the collective service threshold,” Telkom explains.

The ‘percentage used’ value, after the initial monthly cap is reached, is therefore an indication of how far away the user is from the collective threshold limit.

After this collective threshold is reached, subscribers are placed on a local only bandwidth account with a limit of 10 times their initial blended bandwidth cap.

[MIA]

Cool, thx for the info.

[Bladerunner]

Well, it appears that it has happened. I noticed my notification emails telling me that i have used 1.1 gig of my cap, and telling me the % used is 30.57%, where it should have been 55% (i had a 2 gig cap). Seems like its 3 gig now.
Dont know about the internet speed, i'll run a speed check when i get home.

Yes I can confirm this as well. My 3GB cap seems to have been raised to 5.4023 GB exactly

[DAE_JA_VOO]

Hmmm, well i'm already on a 5GB account, so this doesn't help me

Any word on line speeds?

EDIT: I just tried downloading a file. It started at about 60KBps, and it stayed there for a while. I then paused it to just quickly calculate what speeds i should get if i were on a 512K line (i'm currently on a 384). I SHOULD get a theoretical top speed of 64KB per second, so i got MAD excited!! Then i unpaused the download and it continued at 40K

I hate it when downloads start off so fast

[DeathStrike]

you should not have paused it.

[Mow]

you should not have paused it.

lolololol

[DeathStrike]

Blended Usage
Uploaded - 69MB or [0.06GB]
Downloaded - 449MB or [0.43GB]
Combined Total - 519MB or [0.50GB]
Percentage used - 33.81%
Status - Not Capped

i have 1 Gig cap.

[Rayne]

I SHOULD get a theoretical top speed of 64KB per second(

52kBps (/8 -20% overheads)

[Zana]

Blended Usage
Uploaded - 316MB or [0.30GB]
Downloaded - 1.21GB
Combined Total - 1.52GB
Percentage used - 101.42%
Status - Capped


Local Usage
Uploaded - 0Bytes or [0.00GB]
Downloaded - 0Bytes or [0.00GB]
Combined Total - 0Bytes or [0.00GB]
Local Bandwidth Allocated - 10.00GB

Nope nothing special to me, i just got an extra 1% lol
but got a .50 Gb extra for combined total... while the rest of you were lucky and had extra .. hmm but these things have always been odd. I got capped when i was busy FTP-ing my site.

[Richard_]

Telkom has confirmed to bandwidth resellers (ISPs) that prices are scheduled for a decrease between December and January; an amount was not given.

[Zana]

I realy hope so then i cam meez not only once a month. But I may be gone by then,....
((^_^))
Thanks

[DeathStrike]

this is a old topic... i believe that telkom neva went ahead with that plan. i still on 384 and waiting....

[MIA]

You will experience true broadband later this year. That much is clear. And it wouldn't be difficult to predict the obvious like Telkom finally disposing of Vodacom, or the easy, like the Seacom cable landing, causing a drop in prices.

Source

[Rayne]

Not happening.

[D3PART3D]

Not happening.

Why?

[Rayne]

No? Explain to me how SEACOM's launch will magically upgrade my exchange to be true broadband capable when it's currently pushed to it's limit as is. And for anyone hoping for 10x their current caps, stop dreaming please.

This you believe when you see it, not before.

[DreamStar]

telkom is feeling the pinch especially with neotel on the way!