Review: Telkom FTTH, One Month In

I have had Telkom FTTH since the 20th of May 2015. That makes June my first full month testing it out. You can read about the installation here.

I got the 50GB soft cap package from TelkomSA. This made my total cost R999.00 per month, discounted to R499.00 for the first three months. As this is a 24 month contract it included a modem/router and a DSTV Explora along with the DSTV Explora wifi adapter. It also included free installation.

Very rarely do we get to compliment a service provider in South Africa, let alone Telkom but they have done a wonderful job. My internet has not dropped once since it was installed. It is very stable and speed tests are consistent even to Europe and the US. I have included a whole selection of screen shots below from different times to different servers to show you how stable this connection is.

No matter what time of the day or night I get full line speed even on P2P downloads. This would indicate that Telkom is not shaping or throttling their capped accounts.

There is a breakdown of my daily usage. My monthly total usage was 184GB. I attained this using my “Night Surfer” data. Unfortunately I didn’t reach my cap so I couldn’t test out the soft cap speed.

Telkom’s social media promotion helped too as I saved about 3GB of data by not paying for data to Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook.

The included Huawei Router is shit. Like MEGA shit. Buy your own one. I hooked up an Apple Airport Express and it works like a dream.

Since I have had this installed, Telkom has announced a 10mb fibre option making it even more affordable. You have to take note that with ADSL and VDSL you need to pay analogue line rental. This isn’t required with the fibre. Telkom also announced today that they are lowering the fibre and ADSL/VDSL prices.

I was quite sour about this as I had JUST signed a 24 month contract. I reached out to Telkom and they passed on the good news:

I am a lot less bitter about having a 24 month contract knowing that the price decreases are passed along even mid contract. This means I will be paying R849.00 per month for 20mbps FTTH after the first 3 months instead of R999.00.

All around I am very happy with this service. I have streamed YouTube in 4k without buffering and done many software updates. I see no shaping on my line and have even streamed a 1080p movie from Popcorn Time. I give this service and Telkom a 10 out of 10.

Now we just wait and see if it lasts as Telkom is expanding its fibre coverage at a rate of knots in my area. I hope the service levels remain once more people sign up.