The National Provider that turned into the National Fckp
Well if you live in South-Africa you will know how useless our National Telecom AKA "Telkom" or "Waiting on Telkom a National past time" provider has become.....
Short breakdown of my personal frustrations:
So over the last 3 years I have spent thousands of Rands phoning for technical assistance at 3 different locations in the same town.
First house we lived in 3 years ago, it took 7 technicians 8 months to replace a 2metre piece of cable, first trying all sorts of things, not listening to the client, when I told them I believed it was the cable running from the house to the pole. Well eventually you get one technician that listens, well your bound to find one poor soul that actually knows what they are doing, especially when you have so many coming to try their luck, problem is 99% of the company doesn't know what they are doing, don't care for the customers, and that goes for every department in my opinion. To top it off a month after the line was fixed and actually working to about 60% of what we where paying for, that house burned down, and we where forced to move house.
Second house we moved to in the town of Empangeni, same problems intermittent connections, line dropping all the time eventually after more than a year of complaining and technicians in and out, we where told its a high theft area and Telkom wont be replacing lines, fortunately I was still online but again only getting about 60% of what I paid for, so I thought Id just suffer through it until fiber came into the area, something I believe should have happened more than ten years ago, as 15 years ago I was working on Fiber connections in Private Game-lodges and companies in Johannesburg, I suppose our useless national provider wanted to ride the copper cables for as long as they could, even though these gets stolen all the time.... maybe the useless provider likes problems and ripping off the South-African People, whilst paying their CEO's millions.... Well as fiber became available in this area, we had to move as the owner of the house we were living in, wanted to move back to Empangeni, The funny thing is even Telkom is ashamed of themselves, creating another company called OpenServe, in a hope to get rid of their negative image that hangs on the Telkom/Hellkom name, even pulling in Nokia to work with them, well Nokia must be having issues if they are desperate enough to work with Telkom, since seeing Nokia working with Telkom, I switched to Huawei, as I see only problems for Nokia, if they keep working with the most useless Telecom company in South-Africa
Third house we moved into, we where fortunate to find the previous tenants ADSL still active after we moved in, now we had asked for our line to be moved to this new house in November already knowing we where moving there in December, as the line was still active, and we where able to use it, we didn't bother much about useless Telkom not coming to do the change and figured all they have to do, was to switch the ports at the exchange.... well that was a big mistake, relying that they would actually do their job....At midnight on 31 December 2017, the line dropped, then came back up synchronizing with the exchange, but the port was closed as the previous tenant had cancelled her line, and the incompetent employees of our National provider had not been able to complete the simple task of switching ports at the exchange. So eventually on the second of January, I was told that we live in a high theft area and the line has been stolen and wont be replaced.... funny how a stolen line can still sync with the exchange....After another month of fighting and phoning and emailing complaints...
We decided we would have to move as we require internet to work, and mobile data costs in South-Africa are some of the highest in the world, These companies love ripping off the South-African people....
So before we moved, we requested that Telkom move our line that we have been waiting for them to do for 3 months now, to the new house we had signed to move into, their response was, sure no problem, they would be at the new house on the 1st of March to test the lines and installation would happen on the 3rd, well guess what,,,,, I'm still waiting...... So yesterday I started posting on their twitter as complaining on Facebook for months did nothing but get more lies from the people on the other end of the line.... When I complained and asked what was going on I was told the area we moved out of was no longer a high theft area and they will come install the line, The idiots didn't capture our request for our line to be moved to the new house and wanted to go install where we just moved out of, because they said they would not be installing ADSL in that area again.... This boiled my blood, as we had just spent a fortune moving house again...
Well in December I was approached by a new company for assistance in helping them with their new Wireless Setup, as I have the knowledge and the contacts required to help them cover this little piece of Zululand, obviously more people than myself have had enough of our National F*CKup. I will be doing my best to help anyone who wants to move away from TELKOM/HELLKOM/OPENSERVE/NOKIA, to any alternate provider they choose, I personally now use this wireless company at my new office I had to get just to be online, This last week we installed a couple more towers around the towns of Empangeni and in Richardsbay, but I will even help people find alternate providers in their areas.
My advise to anyone looking for data connectivity in South-Africa would be, AVOID the South-Africa's National provider TELKOM or OPENSERVE or whatever they decide to call themselves, by all means if possible.
Hell use smoke signals or some drums, you'll have better luck.
Its a shame about Nokia, I used to like them.......
There it is, my little rant... besides The REBL crypto I couldn’t sell when it was at an ATH on the first on January, Telkom has caused me personally, thousands in losses, lets not counting the SBD and STEEM I could have been making over the last three months, and I’m sure if I stay with them I will die young...
You have now been warned, Stay away from Telkom, and all its derivatives, unless you are a fan of paying for nothing, love high blood pressure and early death,,,,, you might as well go and eat some polony then....
Now that I have Wifiber at the office and soon at home, I will be more active...