A recent survey in which consumers were asked a variety of questions related to ADSL, broadband pricing and speeds, 8ta contract bundling and IPTV, sparked speculation that Telkom was looking at offering bundled uncapped ADSL services.

While Telkom was not explicitly mentioned in the survey, the questions pointed strongly towards the fact that the survey was conducted by Telkom.

Last week Telkom would neither confirm nor deny that the survey originated from them, but the fact that 8ta and ADSL bundles were explicitly mentioned was a further indication that Telkom is investigating uncapped ADSL services.

In March last year Telkom said that they have been tailoring uncapped ADSL offerings for the past three years as a customer-specific solution to enterprise customers, and first took the Uncapped Usage-Based Service to market to cater for organisations requiring higher data packages.

“Uncapped speed-locked ADSL service consumer offerings are in development. However, no time-frames, offering specifications or price points can be disclosed at this stage. In the development process, Telkom is striving for optimal quality, reliability and affordability,” Telkom said at the time.

One service provider working closely with Telkom said that the company is indeed developing an uncapped ADSL product, but that they are facing the same challenges as competing ISPs like MWEB and Internet Solutions.

TelkomInternet previously did not use their own IPC – instead using SAIX’s capped wholesale ADSL products to serve their customers. SAIX’s wholesale pricing may however prove too costly for an uncapped service, forcing TelkomInternet to employ their own IPC service.

In the recent survey (see image above) broadband speeds of up to 20Mbps were mentioned. These ADSL2+ speeds will require a short local loop length – and even fibre to the curb in many cases. This has been happening for years already.

In August 2008 Telkom said that they are actively rolling out fibre to the curb, both to serve its enterprise customers and to shorten the local loop for ADSL2+ purposes.

One can expect that Telkom’s planned high speed ADSL services will mainly be available in metropolitan areas where there is strong demand – similar to the company’s 10Mbps DSL services.

Telkom was asked about their broadband plans and speculation that it is planning an uncapped ADSL service, but the company did not respond to requests for information.