Telkom’s wholesale division, Openserve, has become the latest fixed broadband infrastructure provider to increase line speeds for some customers as a result of the Covid-19 crisis.
Openserve said on Thursday that it will increase fibre and copper connections for three months, between 1 May and 31 July, free of charge.
This follows similar announcements by fibre rivals Vumatel, Frogoot, Metrofibre Networks and Link Africa.
Openserve said it’s making the changes as a result of people being forced to work from home amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
The company said it has “taken the necessary steps to ensure Internet service providers are not negatively impacted” by the changes.
Not all line speeds will be upgraded, however, with an emphasis on entry-level and lower-end packages.
“Our lower-speed fibre customers will have their speeds doubled at the very least, ensuring that they have enough additional bandwidth to adapt to their demands,” said Openserve CEO Althon Beukes.
The details
“We have also concentrated our efforts on increasing the speeds of our lower-speed DSL customers. Our lowest-speed DSL customers will be afforded an upgrade of up to 10 times the existing speed, where network constraints allow.”
On fibre, 10Mbit/s, 20Mit/s and 40Mbit/s lines will be upgraded to 20Mbit/s, 40Mit/s and 100Mbit/s respectively. 100Mbit/s and 200Mbit/s lines will remain unchanged.
On copper, qualifying 1Mbit/s, 2Mbit/s, 4Mbit/s and 8Mbit/s lines will be upgraded to 10Mbit/s, subject to network and distance limitations. Services unable to achieve 10Mbit/s will be excluded from the upgrade. Existing 10Mbit/s, 20Mbit/s and 40Mbit/s copper lines will remain unchanged. — (c) 2020 NewsCentral Media