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Telkom revises Fair Use Policy for uncapped LTE

By , ITWeb
South Africa , 20 Sep 2016

Telkom revises Fair Use Policy for uncapped LTE

Telkom has revised the conditions of its Fair Use Policy (FUP) for Uncapped LTE. The revisions seek to offer customers a fair and sustainable connectivity experience.

Effective immediately, the telco announced that customers making use of the LTE Uncapped product will receive an additional 100GB of full speed data per month.

"This means that customers would have to use in excess of 300GB of data per month before Telkom's FUP will be applied. Telkom has also included an additional 50GB data allocation for peer-to- peer services such as BitTorrent and Skype," reads a statement by the company.

In instances where customers exceed the data allocation of 300GB Telkom has said it will offer 50GB of data at a reduced speed of 4MBps. Should customers exceed the additional 50GB of data, Telkom will offer another 50GB of data at 2Mbps for the remainder of the month.

A speed of 2Mbps is adequate for standard definition streaming to one screen across popular content streaming providers like Netflix and ShowMax.

"We are confident that our revised Fair Use Policy offers greater value for our high data usage customers without compromising the connectivity experience of our other customers. In the few instances in which we are forced to apply the FUP, we have ensured that customers still have a fast enough connection to ensure that their service is still usable for the remainder of the month," explained Telkom spokesperson, Jacqui O'Sullivan.

"Our decision to implement the Fair Use Policy is premised on our commitment to deliver a quality connectivity to experience to all our customers. Even in instances where our FUP is applied the reduction in speed will still allow for content streaming."

Aside from managing usage behaviour, Telkom has also ramped up investment in additional infrastructure to accommodate the growing demand of our LTE service.

"We understand that quality data connectivity is in high demand our new FUP reflects our understanding of this. We have made every effort to ensure that customers receive a quality data experience. However, in instances where existing LTE Uncapped customers may have requirements beyond what we can cater for on this specific LTE product, we would like to engage these customers on alternate products better suited to their needs. We are also willing to release these customers impacted by the FUP from their existing contracts without any penalty," concluded O'Sullivan.

ShowMax partnership

Telkom has also announced a partnership with ShowMax through which ShowMax subscribers can purchase bolt-on packages from the telco.

The companies believe the alliance will lead to an increase in Subscription Video on Demand (SVoD) takeup.

"It's great to be partnering with Telkom – we've now got the perfect combination of content and connectivity in one simple package," said ShowMax South Africa General Manager, John Kotsaftis.

"SVOD is the future of content and Telkom is committed to offering our customers the latest and greatest in technology," said Attila Vitai, CEO of Telkom Consumer.

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