Last week, Stuff got to witness the launch of Telkom’s 5G services. The launch left plenty to the imagination, only announcing that the service had launched and would first be hitting homes before launching as a mobile network. Now, Telkom has provided a little more to work with while speaking to MyBroadband.
Mark your calendars: Telkom’s fixed wireless products are officially launching on 17 November. Then subsequently unmark those calendars and take your business elsewhere.
Congratulations! You now own a router and antenna
Telkom is yet to announce any official pricing for its packages, though it has revealed more about how the packages are structured. Greg Roberts, Telkom senior manager for fixed wireless, has confirmed that packages will be sold as 24- and 36-month contracts that include a router (that you have to pay for).
If that wasn’t enough, should you fall outside one of Telkom’s 123 active 5G sites, you’ll need a separate antenna. That Telkom will give you. For a fee. Of course. An extra charge is added to allow a professional to come over and install the antenna.
Once they’re on sale, you’ll have a choice of three packages. The cheapest, offers speeds of 50Mbps, with the middle tier offering 100Mbps, and the third, most expensive package allows uncapped speeds.
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So far so good, right?
Problem is, all three packages trade under Telkom’s fair use policy. This means that throttling is somehow a thing. In 2022. After passing the monthly threshold, users’ speeds are slowed down to 4Mbps, slowing to 2Mbps if a further 50GB is used. On the cheapest package, users are allotted 500GB/m at the speed they’re paying for before being throttled. Users on the 100Mbps package have a 1TB/m limit, with the unrestricted speed package having a 2TB/m limit.
And it gets worse. Services that use peer-to-peer technology have a far smaller threshold than the standard. Sites and apps like Skype and BitTorrent have a limit of 50GB/month before Telkom throttles it down to 128kbps.
Telkom hasn’t announced pricing for these packages just yet. With the launch just over two weeks away, it’s possible we could see the prices as early as this week.
Source: MyBroadband