Internet service provider (ISP) Rumba`s dial-up service has been down for a week after it "failed to negotiate an acceptable financial agreement" with Telkom.
Rumba marketing manager Charles Odenaal confirms the dial-up service has been suspended. He says Rumba met with Telkom this morning to try find a solution to the problem.
"The suspension of the service is not a cash flow problem, but rather our connectivity provider, yournet, has failed to renegotiate its connectivity agreement with Telkom," he says.
Pieter Coetzee, MD of yournet, says yournet was unable to renegotiate its contract with Telkom before it stopped providing Internet connectivity. He would not comment further.
Rumba launched the dial-up service at the beginning of May at a rate of R49 a month for both ISDN lines and dial-up connections. Odendaal declines to give details of the number of subscribers, but says Rumba is "well subscribed to and there had been a huge response".
The service caused a stir among ISPs when launched as Rumba undercut other players in the market by around R15 a month. There was also speculation that Rumba was owned by Telkom after it was found Rumba`s domain name was owned by Issachar Informatix Limited which owns yournet, the ISP from which Rumba gets its connectivity.
A domain name search of yournet reveals Telkom owns yournet`s domain name, which raised questions on whether yournet was owned by Telkom.
Odendaal denies this, saying Rumba is a close corporation registered under the name Lyan Enterprises and is not owned by Telkom.
Coetzee says Rumba is able to offer ISDN lines at R49 a month because of an agreement yournet signed with Telkom two years ago. It is on this deal that yournet and Telkom have failed to reach an agreement.
While Odendaal says the dial-up service has been down for a couple of days, a call to Rumba`s help-desk revealed the service had been down since Thursday last week. The call centre agent did confirm that a rebate would be offered for the time the service was unavailable.
An e-mail sent to Rumba users states: "Our dial-up network is currently unavailable. That means you will not be able to connect to the Internet. We are unable to negotiate an acceptable financial agreement with Telkom in order to continue to provide the service to you. Your mail is still available on the Web and if you can arrange alternate dial-up access, you will be able to access your mail at http://www.rumba.co.za/squirrelmail.
"We apologise for this inconvenience and even though we believe the situation will be resolved, we cannot guarantee it. When we get the situation resolved, we will contact you directly by phone," it says.
Telkom has not yet commented on the Rumba/yournet shutdown.
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Rumba denies Telkom ownership
Rumba to offer ISDN at R49 a month
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