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Vodacom meltdown

Johannesburg, 01 Jul 2011

As SA's largest cellular operator Vodacom tries to come to grips with what caused yesterday's widespread network outage, consumers are left fuming and worried about whether they will have access to the network today.

Vodacom's huge network failure, which left millions of South Africans unable to communicate, is the second such large incident in about three years.

Yesterday's outage was compounded by the fact that it happened on the same day millions of South Africans had their last chance to register SIM cards, or be cut-off from the networks.

South Africans are heavily reliant on cellphones for communications. Although all three of SA's largest operators are pumping billions into the network, growth in demand far outstrips upgrades, and the cell companies are battling to increase capacity.

The use of cellphones also exceeds fixed-lines: there are an estimated 38 million people using cellphones, and about 52 million SIM cards in other devices, compared with Telkom's fixed-line penetration of 4.5 million customers, a figure that has been falling for years.

SA's cellular industry has grown at a surprising rate. Vodacom CEO Pieter Uys previously said SA's first operator only expected the market to reach a total of 500 000 subscribers within 10 years when it launched 17 years ago.

Working on it

Vodacom is SA's largest cellular network, with 26.5 million subscribers and an estimated 50% market share. Its network crashed early yesterday morning and services only started being restored in the early evening.

The cause of the outage, which affected subscribers in selected spots across the country, was a multiple failure of transmission system equipment, the company explained yesterday evening.

Vodacom says the transmission system is the backbone that provides connectivity allowing base stations to communicate with each other. The transmission failure had a knock-on effect on other areas on the network, resulting in an “overall degradation of service”.

Richard Boorman, Vodacom's executive head of media relations, explains two independent pieces of equipment in the transmission network, located in Johannesburg, failed yesterday morning.

The failure was “unprecedented” as both items went down at the same time, and had a “major” impact on the rest of the network, explains Boorman. He says the company, which was inundated with complaints, acted as quickly as possible to restore services.

Technicians were on site throughout the night and were still working on the network early this morning, notes Boorman. He says the company will do a complete post-mortem to understand why the failure happened, why redundant systems were cancelled out, and how widespread it was.

Boorman adds the failure was not linked to the RICA deadline, although some mobile sites could not process requests as they were unable to access the network.

Lighter moments

Consumer complaints poured in on social networking sites during the course of the day.

On consumer complaint Web site HelloPeter alone, there were pages of complaints about the disruption in services. Social networking Twitter was also abuzz with tweets from irate subscribers, several of which included hash tags such as #VodacomFail and #vodacommovies.

Apart from angry subscribers, who were unable to check their RICA status by SMSing the cellular provider, jokes were also flying around: “Breaking News: Vodacom's announced a huge corporate sponsorship for Signal Hill, CT. It will now be called 'Vodacom No Signal Hill'.”

Other tweets included: “#vodacommovies--> Crouching Tower, Hidden Signal. The Lord of No Rings. Silence of the LANs. The Anti-Social Network. My Big Fat Weak Signal,” and “The bright red seems to have gone a bit jaded. #VodacomFail.”

One person tweeted: “Did Vodacom forget to RICA? #NoCoverage,” and a post on HelloPeter complained that the outage resulted in the loss of a “major property” deal. Both Uys and “#vodacommovies were trending in Johannesburg yesterday.

Dramatic failure

Chris Gilmour, Absa Investments analyst, says “we are heavily dependent on mobile... this could have profound consequences”. The networks “all have a long way to go in filling gaps in infrastructure,” he comments.

Vodacom is spending R6 billion on its network this year, while MTN previously indicated it would pump R5.7 billion into infrastructure. Cell C is also investing in upgrades.

Gilmour says it is difficult to quantify the knock-on effects on businesses, but retailers that rely on Vodacom SIM card-enabled credit card machines, and travelling salespeople would have been affected.

Arthur Goldstuck, MD of World Wide Worx, says there was a similar outage on the Vodacom network about three years ago, and there have been smaller failures from time-to-time. However, yesterday's failure was “probably the most dramatic yet because it was on a day people were panicking about their accounts,” he says.

Yesterday, people were queuing out the door at several operators' outlets because of the last-minute RICA rush, says Goldstuck. He notes there would have been a large volume of SMSes and data queries as people tried to confirm their status.

Millions of South Africans had until midnight yesterday to register their SIM cards in terms of the RICA law. About 5% of all SIM cards still needed to be verified in terms of the legislation, or be cut off from the network.

Demand for cellular services, especially data, is growing at a faster pace than mobile operators can upgrade despite the heavy investments, says Goldstuck. He points out that a complete fibre - or IP - backbone would have provided redundancy, and the failure shows there is a long way to go before upgrades are finished.

The failure placed additional loads on SA's other networks as consumers shared devices, says Goldstuck.

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