I realise that my opinion is probably shared by hundreds of thousands of people, but
I think it is a good idea, to record for prosperity, at least one of the very valid
reasons why I think TelkomSA sucks, right now.
I have reported my Telkom landline as faulty around 15 times the last 3 months. Mid April
I discovered their poorly designed web application, to report faults and have since
started using that to report my single (one) line fault. Here are the last 9 (nine)
reported faults over the past 8 weeks:
2CEK180612 Intermittent Connectivity Open Mon Jun 18 05:51:39 SAST 2012
3CEK090612 Intermittent service Closed Sat Jun 09 07:38:36 SAST 2012
1CEK280512 Intermittent Connectivity Closed Mon May 28 04:25:40 SAST 2012
2CEK180512 Intermittent service Closed Fri May 18 06:41:20 SAST 2012
55CEK160512 Intermittent service Closed Wed May 16 09:49:34 SAST 2012
126CEK040512 Intermittent Connectivity Closed Fri May 04 11:31:58 SAST 2012
43CEK250412 Intermittent Connectivity Closed Wed Apr 25 09:11:20 SAST 2012
134CEK230412 Intermittent service Closed Mon Apr 23 11:17:26 SAST 2012
131CEK180412 PSTN Line Fault Closed Wed Apr 18 12:51:02 SAST 2012
2012-06-18 05:11:08 – LCP down.
2012-06-18 05:12:10 – Initialize LCP.
2012-06-18 05:12:10 – LCP is allowed to come up.
2012-06-18 05:12:12 – PAP authentication success
2012-06-18 05:20:25 – LCP down.
2012-06-18 05:21:27 – Initialize LCP.
2012-06-18 05:21:27 – LCP is allowed to come up.
2012-06-18 05:21:52 – PAP authentication success
2012-06-18 05:25:44 – LCP down.
2012-06-18 05:26:47 – Initialize LCP.
2012-06-18 05:27:01 – LCP is allowed to come up.
2012-06-18 05:27:27 – PAP authentication success
2012-06-18 05:28:01 – LCP down.
2012-06-18 05:29:04 – Initialize LCP.
2012-06-18 05:29:04 – LCP is allowed to come up.
2012-06-18 05:29:12 – PAP authentication success
2012-06-18 05:37:36 – LCP down.
2012-06-18 05:38:41 – Initialize LCP.
2012-06-18 05:39:11 – LCP is allowed to come up.
2012-06-18 05:39:19 – PAP authentication success
It seems that TelkomSA just does not have the knowledge, skills or training to maintain
their own infrastructure or to keep their customers satisfied? How hard and technically
complex could it be to fix a single fault?
I have had ADSL lines (Telkom can check their records) for many many years now, yet
this is the first time that I have reported the same line faulty more than 10 times.
(The previous record was four times) So why is it so very very difficult this time?
What happens with this line is it seems to disconnect for a second and then just
resumes as normal. Don;t get me wrong, when the line works, it works fine, when
it doesn’t work, it cuts out every few minutes. This results in too many open
authentications on radius, which results in me not being able to authenticate
without first clearing those stale authentications.
Stressful. Then when the technician phones me, he informs me that he has tested
the line and it is working. Of course, at that time the line is working and
I have to agree that, right now, it is working. But it is faulty, intermittently
and in fact it does not work. ‘Yes Sir, thank you, we are marking this as resolved
right now, if it is still faulty, you can report it again…’
It is getting so bad that I don;t have to speak to TelkomSA any longer, I can
now setup a voice system to chat with their technician. Same questions, same
answers, same responses and same faulty line.
You suck TelkomSA, and this is why.
