Telkom to Support Faster Fibre for Free during Stage 4 Lockdown

South African network provider, Telkom has announced that qualifying Fibre and DSL Internet customers will realise improved network experience, free of charge, from 1 May 2020 – the same day that the country expects to enter stage 4 of the national COVID-19 lockdown.

This additional bandwidth is to provide uninterrupted online connectivity and to support already existing Telkom Internet broadband customers who are at home using internet connectivity more than ever during the nationwide lockdown.

Telkom says that entry-level and lower-end package speeds will be significantly improved to ensure that its customers have enough additional bandwidth to cater for their work, kids’ learning activities and family entertainment needs during the lockdown.

Here’s a closer look at the expected upgrades:

• On Fibre, 10Mbps, 20Mbps and 40Mbps lines will be upgraded to 20Mbps, 40Mbps and 100Mbps respectively.
• 100Mbps and 200Mbps lines will remain unchanged.
• On copper, qualifying 1Mbps, 2Mbps, 4Mbps and 8Mbps lines will be upgraded to 10Mbps, subject to network and distance limitations.
• Services unable to achieve 10Mbps will be excluded from the upgrade.
• Existing DSL 10Mbps, 20Mbps and 40Mbps copper lines will remain unchanged.

“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, Consumer CEO 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.”