How a monopoly works

Getting the broadband activated has been the hardest part of moving to South Africa. Transferring money over from the UK with Currencies Direct is a close second. Telkom has the monopoly on phone lines. It took them six weeks and countless phone calls (all of them from us bar one) to get them to enable the ADSL in our phone line. There are protocolls on what should happen but no-one seemed to care. No-one ever phoned us and the engineer did not turn up for his first appointment. They were supposed to come back to us with a new appointment within 48 hours, but did not do so even after 144 hours. At this time we were phoning them 2-3 times a day. We were basically lied to time and time again. Finally it took one concientous customer support person to sort things out. We got a date that was Thursday the 15th but on Wednesday 14th our phone rang. The engineer arrived within ten minutes and made sure everything worked. He was here 30 minutes max. Most of his time was spent on his non-working plug.

Telkom provides only the line. We have our own router and signed up for content with axxess.co.za. Setting that up took one hour.