Many South African ADSL users have been reporting poor speeds and degraded service levels.
Some of these users are blaming their Internet Service Provider (ISP) for the slow speeds, but the problems may lay elsewhere.
One ISP which has come under particular pressure because of the slow speeds is MWEB. Some MWEB subscribers feel that the service provider has been throttling their speed. However, MWEB’s Derek Hershaw said this is “absolutely not true”, and that ADSL users may be affected by congestion problems on Telkom’s network.
“We have been seeing an increasing number of complaints which suggest that the congestion problems on Telkom’s network are not getting any better,” said Hershaw.
Consumer activist website HelloPeter also has numerous complaints related to ADSL exchange congestion.
“Since the 1MB to 2MB ADSL upgrades in my area the ADSL exchange has been congested,” said one HelloPeter user.
“Telkom ADSL, Technical and Billing Departments have confirmed that the Roshnee Area is experiencing severely limited ADSL connectivity due to massive Contention/Congestion after 5pm in the week and on weekends in the Roshnee Telkom Exchange,” said another ADSL user.
Hershaw said that he is also a victim of the ADSL network congestion at his residence. “I can get about 3Mbps on my 4Mbps connection during business hours, but from around 17:00 onwards I’m lucky if I get 1Mbps. And it’s that bad for pretty much the entire weekend,” said Hershaw.
Hershaw explained that before Telkom started upgrading line speeds, around 22% of their DSLAM’s were “highly utilised” (another word for congested). However, by the end of January 2013 this figure had climbed to over 30%.
“We don’t know which DSLAM’s they are or what Telkom’s plans are to address this, but it’s clearly a problem,” said Hershaw.
Telkom was asked about the alleged ADSL network congestion, but the company did not respond by the time of publication.
Telkom previously stated that traffic profiles on the backhaul bandwidth between the DSLAM and the ESR are continuously monitored and any subsequent congestion is addressed accordingly in line with the product specification of their three offerings.
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