Vodacom blames weather

By Candice Jones, ITWeb online telecoms editor

Johannesburg, 27 Nov 2007

Vodacom has denied a series of large-scale network failures, despite numerous customer complaints over the last month, attributing service interruptions to bad weather.

For the third time in four weeks, several Johannesburg residents complained during the weekend that they experienced intermittent network access.

Vodacom chief communications officer Dot Field confirmed that the company experienced transmission troubles in the Johannesburg area. "I can report back that the Blairgowrie site was down for two hours on Saturday afternoon due to transmission issues. Certain other sites were also sporadically affected due to the bad weather on Saturday."

This appears to be the third time this month that the operator has experienced connectivity problems; however, the company would only confirm the latest two incidents.

Field says: "I would not consider the downtime over the weekend a network failure. We have 5 500 base stations across the country and only one or two in the Johannesburg area were affected. There is nothing untoward and no problem with the network at all."

Lightning strikes

Two weeks ago, the company confirmed it had experienced large-scale downtime when its system was struck by lightning.

Numerous customer complaints were filed on Web sites, such as hellopeter.com and mybroadband.co.za, criticising Vodacom`s lack of network coverage. According to Field, the situation was resolved as quickly as possible.

Customers had filed similar grievances on the sites at the beginning of the month. At the time, Field said: "A small percentage of Vodacom prepaid customers experienced difficulty in making calls when they moved from one base station to another, for a very limited period on Friday afternoon."

On hellopeter.com, Vodacom also responded to the complaints, saying: "Our network division has confirmed there was a problem with one of the platforms. However, this has been resolved." The mobile operator apologised for any inconvenience caused and asked customers to switch their handsets off and on again to update their location on the network.