Why Telkom Subscribers are Kicking against Its new Roaming Partner

Telkom, a South African network provider who recently switched its roaming partner from MTN to Vodacom has received a lot of castigations from its subscribers. The subscribers took to social media to vent about their displeasure over the porting from MTN to Vodacom.

@wendyknowler @TelkomZA what’s with Telkom fibre ? Every month we have an issue. Slow or no connectivity. Phone in switch this off jiggle this stand on one leg. 100mb line uncapped. Rubbish.

— Sartjie (@SarahClover) July 21, 2019

If its not Telkom and bad network,
Its this used to be smart phone of mine owh Nkosi yam kurough yazi ngempela ku bird shame pic.twitter.com/zzHSP9Zaq7

— Teboho Ndlovu (@Te6zaN) July 22, 2019

Is it just me or @TelkomZA data is running out quickly lately? Bona! Ke naar ke yona pic.twitter.com/biRhtLjvHD

— Pearly Pops ♈️🔥 (@pearlz_mn) July 19, 2019

Telkom responded to their subscribers saying, they changed their roaming partners in a bid to enhance their subscribers’ network experience in places with little Telkom coverage. They advised subscribers to purchase All-Net bundles in places that they see TelkomSA-R at the top of their phone screen.

It was also revealed that the Telkom bundles will work great where they don’t see an ‘R’. To achieve this, however, users will have to change their settings by removing the roaming option. Subscribers can choose to ignore switching the option if they prefer it on.

Jamie McKane in an article for My Broadband, said the reason subscribers are experiencing issues when connecting to Vodacom infrastructure is that they only have Telkom LTE data available with no All-Net data balance. The system, however, demands that users subscribe to All-Net Telkom data to make most of their roaming deal with Vodacom.

Telkom subscribers have faced major problems since the handover, this includes:

i) Devices automatically connecting to Telkom’s virtual roaming network (TelkomSA-R) on Vodacom’s infrastructure even with standard Telkom connectivity available, and

(ii) the fact that Vodacom only offers All-Net data bundles, not LTE bundles, thereby obstructing LTE customers from accessing longer had useable data.