All hail the little people

Over the past six or so years, I have move from a standard landline to an ISDN line and then to ADSL.

Installations have always been done reasonably promptly and without much fuss, even though the chap who installed my ISDN line fell through my ceiling.

After lusting after an ADSL line for a number of years, Telkom was nice enough to introduce its 384 kilobit per second (Kbps) DSL option that not only gave me permanent access to the net, but also ultimately reduced my phone bill to 40% of what it once was.

Any time I have had issues with the line I have had prompt service from Telkom and it's been up and running within an acceptable length of time.

Of course I want more bandwidth and of course I want higher speeds but for me, the basic concept of having a reasonably priced connection is more important.

Frustration

Because of my experience of the benefits of broadband, I have been trying to convince my brother that it would be a good idea to forego the dial-up connection that has been his home connection to the internet for a broadband connection.

After he got to experience the joys of broadband on the MWeb WiMax trial, his eyes were opened and he started to explore the possibilities of broadband.

First he applied for an ADSL connection. Living in Randburg, you would think that this would be the obvious option and should result in a speedy connection to always on internet. This was not the case as he was told there were no ports available on his exchange and he would have to wait until August for more to be installed.

IBurst was out of the question as the reception at his house was too poor and the price of the cellular operators' data services was still to dear for him.

For a little extra, our friends at Telkom would connect him via WiMax but when the technician came out to his house the signal wasn't strong enough.

Missing info

Just a few days later, the nice people at Telkom found that there was an ADSL port available at the exchange and he could be up and running in a matter of days.

Why any person in an established area should be given the runaround to this extent is beyond me; surely it would be possible to deliver a service within a few weeks?

This is not an isolated incident; more and more people are being driven into the arms of alternative operators because they simply cannot get the service they want from Telkom.

My brother, not being of a technical bent, called me up to do the self-install he had selected as his option. Bizarrely, no-one at Telkom had told him that he needed a router or that if he wanted to continue to use his normal phone line-in conjunction with the ADSL router, he would need a micro-filter for each of his phone jacks.

Luckily, I had both a spare router and a micro filter lying around my house so I was able to help him out.

Who's who

Unfortunately for me I needed to call Telkom's ADSL helpdesk on a Sunday to ask a question; while you can read more details about that in next week's Finweek, suffice to say that I would rather be dragged down the N1 highway behind wild horses than do that again.

It emerged that my problems were related to the Telkom technical staff working on the system - once they were finished everything was working perfectly.

This once again proved to me that while there are good people in Telkom, they aren't sitting behind a desk; they are out there every day in those white vans fixing our phone lines.

Such a pity that when the next round of restructuring happens at Telkom these are probably going to get the short end of the stick.

- Fin24.com