South Africa’s Telkom announced on Monday it is planning to increase line speeds for some customers as a result of the coronavirus crisis.
Fibre and copper connection customers will see speed changes from 1 May.
The company, however, did not specify how long the speed lines are being increased.
“This initiative is intended to ensure that our customers get to enjoy high-speed connectivity allowing them to study online, continue doing productive work, game and stream content to keep themselves and their families entertained during this lockdown,” says Serame Taukobong, Chief Executive Officer: Consumer at Telkom.
“In addition, we have recently revamped our Internet Uncapped Product offerings for home broadband connectivity with the removal of FUP (Fair Usage Policies) from Uncapped products, this means no more throttling of subscriber throughput when specific data thresholds are reached,”
Telkom said entry-level and lower-end package speeds will be significantly improved, to ensure that customers have enough additional bandwidth to cater for their work, kids’ learning activities and family entertainment needs at home during the lockdown.
On fibre, 10Mbps, 20Mbps and 40Mbps lines will be upgraded to 20Mbps, 40Mbps and 100Mbps respectively. “That is double the speed for free”.
The company said its 100Mbps and 200Mbps fibre lines will remain unchanged.
On copper, Telkom said qualifying 1Mbps, 2Mbps, 4Mbps and 8Mbps lines will be upgraded to 10Mbps, subject to network and distance limitations. The company added that services unable to achieve 10Mbps will be excluded from the upgrade.
It added that existing DSL 10Mbps, 20Mbps and 40Mbps copper lines will remain unchanged.
Telkom said the gesture was in response to the needs and increased connectivity demands placed on customers due to current conditions. As one of the largest telecommunications network providers, it is important to demonstrate continual support to our customers during these trying times of COVID-19.
5 Comments
Lies! i have 20MB/s Fibre with Telkom.
it is now 12:00 PM on May the first.
Still running at 20MB/s.
Where is the 40Mb/s download speed?
I have a 4 Mb/s ADSL line and as at 10:00 on 2 May, still no upgrade.
Will this also be for smart broadband lte 4mbps fixed customers also?
I got 1 mbps and during the day it went up to 9.5 but now down to 0.5mbps
No speed increase for LTE, BUT I have been on 10MB uncapped and it has not throttled down after 150GB. Hope this runs til after end of June