BD
Bryan D

1 reviews | Active since Dec 2013

21 Oct 2020, 17:36

LTE should be called BeeLTE for the sting in the tale (tail?)

I have been a subscriber to Telkom for my internet access and as my ISP for a number of years now, initially by telephone line, then by ADSL (happiest years!) and finally, on the advice of Telkom agents, with an LTE subscription. Internet is important to me because I have done 90% of my job over the internet from home for the last 3 years. Initially my LTE subscription was uncapped but that soon soured when I realised the early stage, 150GB, at which I was to be soft-capped from 10mbps to 4mbps and then further to 1mbps after another 50GB. Due to this I was compelled to change my contract to 200GB + 200GB Night Surfer per month at the cost of another router plus about R200 per month. Now the cop-out ... Telkom have so grossly over-subscribed the network that I SELDOM have above 1mbps at ANY time of the day, even having NO INTERNET at intermittent. The chances of LTE bandwidth in the evening are virtually zero. The only time I seem to have any worthwhile bandwidth is during the "witching hours", so my sleeping hours have had to change ... not good for my health at 68 years of age! Oh yes, at 4am I can be getting up to about 40mbps ... great for insomniacs! So, for over R1100 a month I keep having to buy extra data on other networks (e.g. MTN is best, but the most expensive) for those "emergency" times when the contention ratio (?) is approaching one to infinity it seems ... Vodacom is not much better in our area and I have given up using them for emergencies! DON'T DON'T DON'T subscribe to Telkom LTE, well not if you live in the Pietermaritzburg area, anyway ... I don't know about other areas. Finally fibre is being installed in my area, so I have already registered and will, hopefully, soon be a candidate for cancelling my Telkom contract NO MATTER WHAT. And I will not be caught again by going with Telkom on fibre. I would rather pay cancellation costs to go with somebody else, ANYBODY ELSE. Nothing can be as bad as Telkom! One final bit of advice ... don't let anybody convince you that LTE is good. It really depends on what sort of multitude you are going to have to share it with, and what network is going to limit that OR spend more where they "don't need to" to improve the situation?

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