Vodacom and MTN, South Africa’s biggest mobile operators, are struggling to keep their networks online amid Eskom stage 6 loadshedding. Vodacom has even said that certain areas risk total coverage outages if the situation doesn’t improve soon. Not only does the long times of loadshedding mean their batteries can’t fully recharge before the next outage, the batteries that keep their towers up and running are being stolen amid the rolling backouts.
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The companies also need to burn massive amounts of fuel in order to keep their generators up and running. MTN has said that while the situation is challenging, the mobile operator is managing to keep its network stable using billions of rands worth of batteries.
“It’s tough, we’re managing to keep our mobile network stable, but that’s also because we’ve spent billions on batteries,” Jacqui O’Sullivan, MTN’s executive for corporate affairs, said.
“The problem is that the batteries need 12 to 18 hours to recharge. They give you 6 to 12 hours of capacity depending on the site,” she added. “The key thing is that during stage 5 and stage 6, there isn’t 12 to 18 hours between load-shedding to allow those batteries to recharge.”
Meanwhile, Vodacom has very similar struggles. “Vodacom’s towers are equipped with backup batteries, however these have limited power and will eventually fail,” a Vodacom spokesperson said. “Stage 6 does mean more frequent and protracted power outages, which impacts the ability of our batteries to recharge fully.”
“We would like to appeal to customers to follow Eskom’s load shedding schedules to keep planning ahead and we apologise for any inconvenience caused,” Vodacom said.
Have you struggled with network signal during our current loadshedding schedules? Some areas are worse affected than others. Let us know in the comments below where you have been hard hit.
