Telkom’s data speed upgrades to ADSL lines since August have been progressing rather slowly due to lack of customer support.
South Africa’s leading telecommunications operator Telkom begun installation of high speed upgrades in August this year. The connection speed has been doubled from 1024kbps to 2048kbps. Clients with a 384kbps ADSL line has been upgraded 1Mbps on October 2012.
By October 22, statistics showed a percentage of 74 upgraded ADSL customers with 1Mbps connections. A further 84 percent has been enjoying an even higher speed of 2Mbps.
Apart from the automatic upgrades on Telkom’s side, users also had to upgrade in choice of account from 1Mpb to 2Mpb in order to receive the better service. These connections are not updated automatically as it requires the go-ahead from customers.
Originally, the transition period of updating higher speed connections were to be ticked off within six weeks. However, according to Telkom, the main reason of users who are not yet being able to use higher speed lines, is the switched off modems. This impedes the technical process of finding the best possible sync rate for their services.
While intended to be automatic, the updates do not require restarting of modems. Some of the older modems may however need a restart for the higher speed to be activated fully.
Telkom has also been doing some maintenance upgrades with regards to the SAT 3 undersea cable in late October.
