Telkom (HELLKOM) Denying Students ACCESS to EDUCATION!

We are an NPO based Molweni which is a rural area in eThekwini. We work with young people enabling them to access study material and write online examinations etc. We have been using Telkom as our internet service provider which has allowed us to bridge the digital gap but the past few months have been a headache result some of UNISA students being unable to write their examinations.

In October we contacted Telkom about a query on our account and the outcome was that they cancelled our contract for fibre. We tried many times to get them to re-instate the fibre line without success. We then tried again over October, November and December to get them to re-instate our line and during this time we had no access to the internet. This was particularly important as it was during exam time which is how some of the students ended up not write their exams. To rub the salt in, Telkom then charged us over R3000 for cancelling the contract before the end of the 2 years that we had signed up for. We phoned to object to this and our requests were denied. We finally decided to just cancel the contract so that we could get another service provider to provide the fibre service we need as we were drained by being moved from pillar to post. Now the problem is that this cannot happen until Telkom releases the line. Regardless of them charging us this +R3000 cancelation fee, they have not released the line and we have made numerous calls and have spoken to almost everyone at Telkom (Sales sends us to Technical, Technical sends us to Sales.....) As it stands now Telkom won't provide us with internet service and they also won't allow anyone else to provide the service... Schools have opened and learners need access to the internet... Tertiary institutions are busy with registrations and some have begun their supplementary examinations... Unfortunately, for the ones in our community it will be a repeat of the previous episode.

Somebody...anybody PLEASE HELP!!!!!!