Just over two weeks after announcing a change of partnership to Vodacom for roaming services, South African network provider, Telkom, is facing a backlash from its customers. Reports show that many subscribers have taken to social media to decry the handover process from MTN to Vodacom.
Telkom earlier this month switched to Vodacom following the company’s decision not to renew its contract with its previous roaming partner, MTN, which expired at the end of June.
Among other benefits, the automatic handover from Telkom to Vodacom network would supposedly be seamless and instantaneous, ultimately minimising dropped calls and poor data connections that plagued the prior manual Telkom-MTN roaming service.
However, Telkom customers have expressed concerns over two particular issues since the handover came into effect on July
The first is that their devices would automatically connect to Telkom’s virtual roaming network (TelkomSA-R) on Vodacom’s infrastructure despite there being standard Telkom connectivity available. Also, Vodacom only offers All-Net data bundles, not Long Term Evolution (LTE) bundles, meaning LTE customers no longer had usable data.
“@TelkomZA why MARA? Why did you switch to Vodacom roaming? Do you understand how frustrating it is to be cut off from EVERYTHING?! I can’t even make a simple phone call. 😡. I regret moving to this network!” an aggrieved Telkom subscriber by the handle lesogo_great, tweeted.
In response to the complaint, Telkom responded as follows: “We recently changed roaming partners to enhance your network experience where you don’t have Telkom coverage. Where you see TelkomSA-R at the top of your phone screen, we advise that you purchase All-Net bundles instead of Telkom bundles.”.
“Telkom bundles will work great where you don’t see an ‘R’. To achieve this you will need to change your settings by removing the roaming option. If you prefer roaming please leave it enabled,” the company added.
According to Jamie McKane in an article for My Broadband, the reason users are experiencing issues when connecting to Vodacom infrastructure is that they only have Telkom LTE data available with no All-Net data balance.
“As the system stands, you will need to make sure that you have enough All-Net Telkom data to take advantage of the mobile operator’s roaming deal with Vodacom. If you would rather just buy cheaper Telkom-only data and not roam on Vodacom, you should simply turn off roaming in your smartphone settings,” McKane explained.
