Enforcing penalties that are both unfair and unreasonable

My business is going through financial difficulties and we are closing down our offices at the business address. To get the overheads cut as quickly as possible I sent an email to Fat Budgie, also known as Connection Telecom, to cancel all our telecommunication services we have through them. This includes Telkom ADSL, a VIOP service, and Neotel Fibre.

They are prepared to cancel everything, within a reasonable 30 day notice period, so from 11 Jan when I requested it, it will be effective 11 Feb. The only exception is Neotel.

They are insisting their hands are tied by Neotel, and that I have to pay a penalty for the early cancellation of the Neotel Fibre. We signed a contract in August 2015 for Fibre, we upgraded in August 2016 from 5MB to 10MB. They are now invoicing me penalties for cancelling before August 2018.

As we are over the initial 24 Months from the 2015 contract, I would think it only fair that we are allowed to give a 30 day notice for cancelling. My upgrade agreement also does not stipulate that there would be penalties app**** if we cancelled within the next 24 months. I would like to understand what validation Neotel has for insisting on a penalty. What costs are they incurring, that I am causing, that they think I need to pay them until August. The upgrade in 2016 included no equipment, or even a technician to come out, and was all done remotely. So I do not find it fair or reasonable that Neotel would insist that we pay penalties for cancelling before August. We will not even have offices there shortly, so no one could be using that data, it feels very much like theft on their part, and as if they are consciously choosing to try and wring every cent out of the little guy (who is worried at this point about paying food bills) by trying to enforce fine print from the original 2015 contract that is not fair, reasonable or justifiable on a human level.