Outage alerts sent by SMS

Johannesburg's City Power will inform residents in the region through SMS when power outages happen.

Spokesman Sol Masolo says the city has developed a database that contains the cellphone numbers of almost 70 000 residents. This database is the core of a plan to communicate with Johannesburg residents, he explains.

By the end of the year, the utility aims to be able to send out information on blackouts and other items, such as overdue accounts, through the system, Masolo explains.

The utility covers Johannesburg to Midrand in the north, to Lenasia in the south, Roodepoort in the west, and Kensington in the east. The official Johannesburg Web site says the region has 3.2 million residents in just over a million households.

The utility has sent out a message, informing the city's residents about the new service. “City Power will be keeping you informed of major planned or unplanned power outages. This is a free SMS service. Update your information on the Web at www.citypoweralerts.co.za, or on mobile at www.citypoweralerts.mobi.”

To register, people need to input their name, surname, region, account number, mobile number, e-mail and physical address into an online form.

Masolo says City Power advertised the project in Caxton's 14 local publications and has captured the numbers it has received in the database. It has also partnered with a direct marketing company, which provided the utility with additional numbers.

He says, now that the database is in place, the utility is able to provide city-based information. “If you are in Sandton, we will be able to send you an SMS about outages in Sandton.”

The next phase, which is currently under way, is to take the level of information down to street level, informing customers of outages in their neighbourhood.

Once this is running, the utility will start communicating directly with people around issues such as overdue accounts. “We want to be able to communicate with people on their personal information by year-end,” Masola says.

He adds that the end goal is for the system to allow two-way communication with City Power, such as reporting of power outages.

City Power employs 1 800 staff and its customer base is segmented into key customers, large power users, and prepaid, domestic, agricultural and commercial customers. The domestic segment forms the majority of the customer base.

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