Telkom enforces uplink speed

By Dave Glazier for Telkom

Johannesburg, 24 Aug 2006

Fixed-line operator Telkom has, according to numerous broadband users, "downgraded" the uplink service for its DSL 384 customers.

Although the DSL 384 service has always advertised uplink speeds to be 128Kbps, users have generally experienced much higher up-speeds until this month.

Andrew Baddeley, MD of Internet production company Fusion.01, says his uplink service was downgraded without any notification from Telkom.

"The uplink service is critical to business," he says, explaining that he constantly has to upload files to FTP servers.

Half as quick

Various members of the MyADSL forums have experienced the same problem. "The DSL 384 up-speed now syncs at 128Kbps, which is super slow. I can`t even upload at 10Kbps," says one forum member.

Another comment: "I used to upload at 20Kbps on my DSL 384, now I`m maxing out at like 11Kbps."

Gerhard Kotze, MD of a small Cape Town-based Internet company, says: "The service is definitely slower - I`m uploading large files at about half the speed I used to be able to."

Founder of MyADSL and Internet activist Rudolph Muller says: "Our previous testing gave very high uplink speeds, which indicated that Telkom did not enforce its uplink limits. On the DSL 384 service, our testing gave an average speed of around 300Kbps, which is significantly higher than now.

"However, I do not think Telkom changed its service conditions, but rather just started to implement them [the advertised 128Kbps uplink limit]," says Muller.

Telkom has confirmed the service, as advertised, has not been altered at all: "The upload speed for DSL 384 was always 128Kbps," says Lulu Letlape, group executive for corporate communications.

However, it appears the actual up-speeds a user experiences changed at around the same time that DSL 192 customers were automatically upgraded to the 384 service - at the beginning of August.