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As part of the South African diaspora in the UK, there are many things I miss about the country of my birth: the people, the weather, the biltong – but not Telkom, with its shaky offering and cumbersome service channels. When you live in a country where you can access a wifi signal just about everywhere you go, and often for free, you don’t need to deal much with telecommunications companies.
These days I take for granted that I can download whatever I like off the internet – in fact the whole family can download onto various devices wherever they are in the house – without even thinking about how much data is being transmitted. The only time I’ve lost an internet connection was when a handyman sawed through an electric cable, tripping the electricity supply.
But, after surfing networks in my vicinity, I quickly found a public one that let me in. The drawbacks of South Africa’s telecommunications infrastructure are highlighted in this piece by entrepreneur Willem Jardine. After being taken to the brink of his frustration threshold by Telkom’s so-called “uncapped” service, Jardine put pen to paper to share his experience.
Telkom has apologised for poor call centre service. And, it has made some adjustments to its offering, following customer complaints similar to Jardine’s. But, the state of Telkom’s infrastructure is such that it has to treat its business customers like a class of naughty school children: punishing all for the transgressions of a few.
I can’t imagine having services withheld here in the UK for my neighbour going overboard with his downloading – or vice versa. An efficient telecommunications structure is one of the basic features of a functioning modern economy. – Jackie Cameron
From Willem Jardine*
I call one of Telkom’s Customer Service numbers, listen to an electronic voice tell me that I am 247th in the queue, but my call is important. And, every so often the voice comes back to tell me I am lower down the queue until, finally, there is a click that indicates my call has been answered by a real person.
So, I start talking, but there is no response because the Telkom’s operator has dropped my call. So I do whatever it is I have to do to regain my sanity and calm myself sufficiently to repeat the process, and my second call is again answered by that electronic voice that informs that my call is important, but this time I am somehow the 789th caller in the queue …
Assuming that those of us who have experienced this phenomena have not yet died from a stress-related dreaded disease, my guess is that you would agree that this is the felt-sense of 99% of our engagements (there’s a pun in there somewhere) with Telkom.
However, Telkom has recently done something truly remarkable. They introduced a satellite-based broadband service (or “internet service”) called LTE Uncapped, that delivers broadband download speed of up to 90Mbps, for a reasonable fee of R 800.00/month, but subject to signing a 24 month service agreement. The product is an incredible advancement over ADSL, given that ADSL seldom produces download speeds much above 1.5Mbps.
This satellite network is not available everywhere, but coverage is good and Telkom is expanding its infrastructure quickly. And the product genuinely produces download speeds of up to 90Mbps. That’s 60 times faster than ADSL – and upload speeds are equally as impressive.
After learning that it is only possible to subscribe to LTE Uncapped by visiting a Telkom Mobile store, I did so in the last week of July 2016. I arranged with the manager to email me the application form. His covering email stated “Traffic … will not be capped and throttled. This means consumers will enjoy the full benefit of a truly uncapped experience with Telkom’s LTE Uncapped service”.
I’m the CEO of a company that is a SME. Like the owners of most SME, I have an onerous schedule and was only able to submit my application in the first week of September (and a week later Telkom LTE Uncapped was installed and working).
The next day I learned that due to abusive broadband consumption by some customers, from 1st September Telkom introduced an Acceptable Usage Policy (“AUP”) for LTE Uncapped that throttles broadband speed to 2 Mbps if a customer consumes more than 200Gb broadband/month, and to pre-ADSL speeds if more than 250Gb is consumed.
However, backlash from customers was so strong that within a few days Telkom amended its AUP restrictions such that speed is now throttled to 4Mbps only if more than 300Gb/month is consumed. But if more than 350Gb/month is consumed, speed is throttled to 2Mbps. In both cases, from the start of the next billing month, the AUP restrictions are lifted.
Telkom’s LTE Uncapped agreement states, “Telkom reserves the right to apply restrictions on an uncapped account if a customer’s behaviour is determined to be affecting the user experience of other customers …”.
Furthermore, Telkom’s Standard Terms and Conditions in respect of all services provides, “Telkom reserves the right to amend its standard terms and conditions from time to time …”. This means that Telkom can legally implement and enforce its AUP broadband consumption restrictions.
Of course #datamustfall and they will. In 2017.
— Michael Jordaan (@MichaelJordaan) September 22, 2016
While it can be argued that a 300Gb/month restriction is generous, especially if speeds are only throttled to ADSL-type speeds if exceeded, I still object for several reasons.
Firstly, in July I ordered one product, but in September I was delivered another product because I was not informed of the introduction of the AUP restrictions that fundamentally alter the product.
Secondly, the decision to limit usage to 300Gb is unilateral such that it punishes both customers who abuse LTE Uncapped and those who do not, alike. Experts I consulted inform that Telkom can monitor network (“internet”) activity by both the amount of broadband consumed and the type of broadband consumed. Ergo, it is technically possible to identify those who abuse LTE Uncapped from those who do not, and to only punish those who abuse LTE Uncapped. So why punish all customers by unilaterally imposing a 300Gb/month AUP restriction?
Thirdly, I was promised a broadband service where “Traffic … will not be capped and throttled” and which would mean that I could “enjoy the full benefit of a truly uncapped service”, whereas the product delivered is, in reality, both capped (because broadband speed limits how much broadband I can access in a given period) and throttled.
A genuinely remarkable Telkom product is now tainted with the same felt-sense experience of 99% (okay, maybe that is an exaggeration that should be replaced by “the vast majority”) of my engagements with Telkom, and Telkom LTE Uncapped is not uncapped and is definitely throttled.
- Willem Jardine is CEO of FSG Forensics.
Telkom group executive for communication and brand, Jacqui O’Sullivan, responds:
Firstly, we would like to apologise to Mr Jardine for his poor experience with our call centre. We are continuously looking to improve our service on this platform.
Regarding our revised Fair Use Policy (FUP) for Uncapped LTE, Telkom has listened to the concerns of its customers regarding the implementation of the FUP on our Uncapped LTE product and on 20 September we revised the FUP as follows:
• Telkom will give customers an additional 100GB of full speed data per month. This means that customers would have to use in excess of 300GB of data per month before Telkom’s FUP will be applied.
It is important to note that the data is never capped – in instances when our FUP is applied we continue to deliver data at reduced speeds. In instances where the speeds are reduced, customers can still enjoy speeds of 4Mbps and, only in sever instances, 2Mbps. A speed of 2Mbps is adequate for standard definition streaming to one screen across popular content streaming providers like Netflix and ShowMax.
We have exercised much leniency in enforcing our FUP since the launch of the product last year.
However in recent months we have seen some customers reaching downloads of four terabytes and more. This actually translates to approximately 720 hours of full HD viewing per month or 25 hours of full HD viewing per day.
Unfortunately this extreme usage of some users has had a negative impact on the network and on the online experience of others.
It is an absolute priority to ensure we can continue to deliver the quality performance our customers deserve. Aside from managing usage behaviour Telkom has also ramped up investment in additional infrastructure to accommodate the growing demand of our LTE service.
"the need for food, shelter and clothing isn't as paramount as the need to communicate." #datamustfall pic.twitter.com/DrfCRLrBeb
— News24 (@News24) September 21, 2016
We understand that quality data connectivity is in high demand our new FUP reflects our understanding of this. We have made every effort to ensure that customers receive a quality data experience.
However, in instances where existing LTE Uncapped customers may have requirements beyond what we can cater for on this specific LTE product, we would like to engage these customers on alternate products better suited to their needs. We are also willing to release these customers impacted by the FUP from their existing contracts without any penalty.
Lastly, regarding ADSL speeds, this technology does reach up to 10Mbps depending on infrastructure availability, quality of copper cabling and physical distance the exchange.”
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