Telkoms Infrastructure Upgrade

I would imagine that a few readers would have huge smiles on their faces right now with the thought that Telkom, our love and joy, are finally getting their act together. Sorry to say, there is a ‘but’ in this article.

I read in the Financial Mail a few months back that Telkom were spending millions if not billions on upgrading and improving their existing infrastructure to increase capacity and reliability and on FM Tech it was proven when Telkom announced that they were going to have a huge decrease in profits when they release their 6 month results to 30 September this coming Monday.

Now this is where the but comes in…I work in the internet business so Telkom is a huge part of my everyday life. Since Friday last week many ADSL users have been experiencing connectivity issues in the Northern Gauteng Region and we had huge outgoing mail problems today using the SAIX outgoing server. After many hours on the phone to both Telkom and SAIX we found out there was a problem.

So I ask this question, if Telkom has spent all this money on upgrading and improving, where has it exactly gone to? We continuously have issues and have had to phone them everyday to get updates and faults and to log them.

I will be happy one we have 16Mb lines at cheaper prices than we are paying for our 4Mb(1Mb) lines and get a huge cap with it, NO extra costs.

I had the luxury of trying out my friends line in Australia while I was ever there a few years back, and all I can say is WOW! Huge download and upload speeds, and 100’s of GB’s of data to upload and download at your hearts content.

Lets hope that when Neotel, Vodacom and the about the be Giant MTN can better Telkom’s rein on top with great prices and most of all great service.

Written by Seagyn Davis on November 14th, 2007
Categories: South Africa, Technophobic
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MTN looking to buy Telkom!

Those of you who have a telephone line, ADSL line or anything that the South African Telecommunications giant has to offer know who Telkom are. They are the “Fixed line operator” that were given a monopoly by the South African government and allowed them to have total dominance in the fixed line market until about 2000/2001.

It has taken 6 years for any competition to Telkom to start brewing and now it is coming in barrels. Neotel, who have been in the country for almost 2 years now, have suggested that they will soon launch there services to residential clients in a few months, but they will not be running a fixed line service, well on the most part. Check out an article I wrote a few months back.

Well now MTN is looking at buying out Telkom. Which would make it a huge telecommunications company by anyones standards. I think the deal should go ahead, we need a fresh name in the industry and I think many consumers will agree.

Duncan McLeod from fmtech.co.za wrote:

Those concerned that power in the industry will be concentrated in too few hands should look to the US, a highly competitive telecom market, which has only two big telephone companies, both of which provide the full ambit of telecom services to a market dozens of times larger than SA’s.

I will try update you as soon as I get any information. Competition is good, and even though this would theoretically remove some of the competition it will give the likes of Vodacom and Neotel a wake up call.

The original article can be found on fmtech.co.za

Written by Seagyn Davis on November 2nd, 2007
Categories: South Africa, Technophobic
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