Telkom is investing in ever-more robust infrastructure, innovative technologies and proactive network management to deliver world-class levels of resilience, reliability and uninterrupted service.
This is according to Lebo Masalesa, Managing Executive: Mobile Networks at Telkom, who says Telkom remains committed to ensuring high-quality, reliable connectivity for customers across the country, even in the face of challenging conditions.
Masalesa says: “We operate in a very tough environment characterised by unstable power, theft and vandalism of network infrastructure. We constantly strive to maintain a stable and uninterruptible service despite all these challenges. For us, network resilience is at the core of what we do in terms of network connectivity.”
Resilient networks for a thriving SA economy
He notes that a resilient network is a key to driving inclusion and building what Telkom describes as a backbone for South Africa’s digital future.
“Digital services contribute nearly 10% to the GDP of this country, so you can imagine the economic impact if thousands of base stations are down. Reliable connectivity has to bridge the digital divide, which is especially critical as mobile internet is a predominant mode of connectivity for the majority of South Africans, and demand for data is growing rapidly.”
“As an indication of the amount of data traffic we carry, we’re looking at roughly 200 million petabytes a month, and this is growing by around 20% year on year. If your network is not resilient enough, there's no way that you can carry this amount of data. You are going to have challenges, and you're going to have gaps that you will always seek to close. For us, assuring resilience is about ensuring that we have modernised, efficient systems, redundancy and backup systems in place, and the ability to manage capacity – especially during high demand,” he says.
Masalesa adds that Telkom strives to exceed the ICASA service KPIs, which are aligned with global best practice. “For example, ICASA service levels prescribe a call drop rate for data and voice of below 3%. Our own KPIs are more stringent, and are set at 0.25%. Anything higher than that is not acceptable to us.”
Data-led resilience strategy
Masalesa says Telkom’s approach to building a resilient network is fully aligned with the group’s data-led strategy.
“Our results, and the way we've been able to read the market and effectively come up with a network strategy that meets our customers' demands, all rest on our data-led strategy and operational forecasts. Telkom has invested billions of rand on our network, and over the past three years, we have been focusing a lot on extending our network footprint,” he says.
“A sizeable chunk of our investments goes into improving our network presence and building greenfield sites where we have coverage holes. Eighty-four percent of the population in the country is now covered using our own network, and where we don't have our own network presence, we rely on national roaming. We also deploy the sub one gig spectrum (radio frequencies below 1GHz), especially in rural areas where we are seeing an increase in demand. Our investments have also gone into projects to increase the number of radios that we have at site level and optimising our spectral efficiency,” Masalesa says.
“We employ a multi-layer strategy to proactively manage the network and improve its performance and resilience. This strategy includes a combination of advanced technology and strategic infrastructure upgrades.”
“The biggest challenge with a data-led strategy is the massive volumes of data we're carrying, so we have to continuously innovate to support these growing data volumes. This is reflected in the technologies that we've deployed – for example, on the radio side, we worked with Huawei to pioneer the use of what we call TDD spectrum in South Africa.
"We have always been a leader in fixed wireless access in South Africa,” he says.
“We use AI-driven analytics to detect anomalies in the network, such as congestion or fibre cuts, in real-time. We also use smart power systems – a combination of hybrid solutions for power redundancy. If we have a power failure, the hybrid solution battery will take over, and our systems will monitor the voltage levels on our batteries and the remaining capacity of the batteries. If that capacity breaches a certain threshold, our generators will then run automatically. We also use other tools like monitoring social media to identify latent issues before they escalate,” he says.
Ongoing modernisation enhances network resilience, he says. “The older the technology is, the lower its spectral efficiency is. The newer the technology is – for example 4G, 4.5G and 5G – the higher the spectral efficiency. We've been very deliberate in our strategy to move away from legacy technologies towards newer technologies, and were the first MNO in the country to actually sunset 2G.”
Improved power management is also extending the lifespan of batteries at masts, which further supports network resilience, he says. “During load-shedding, the lifespan of the batteries was reduced significantly, so our sites started taking a knock in terms of availability. We had interventions that spoke to challenges such as these, and we have seen a significant improvement in our availability as a result. The fact that network traffic is growing strongly can be seen as an indirect measure of the improvements we brought about.”
Equally importantly, Telkom is investing heavily in securing sites and building redundancy in areas subject to theft and vandalism, to make the network more resilient.
“A lot of investment has also gone into countering theft and vandalism, and rebuilding sites that have been destroyed in acts of vandalism,” Masalesa says. “We've had incidents of sites being burned down, sites being run over by cars, and numerous incidents of people going into our sites and stealing batteries. We spend a lot of money on replacing batteries and securing them with the relevant security solutions – ranging from high security shelters made of steel and concrete all the way through to epoxy and concrete solutions. We are definitely seeing improvements in our ability to deter theft and respond to theft attempts much faster. We have also pioneered Power as a Service and Shelter as a Service, whereby we pay a premium to tower companies to manage these risks.”
Masalesa emphasises: “We don't deploy technology for the sake of deployment. We strike a balance between technology itself and the use of that technology to improve our customer experience. We are committed to digital inclusivity, and you cannot talk about digital inclusivity if you don't run a lean and mean operation from a network point of view. This is important in ensuring that we can offer affordable and high value products to our customers.”
Share
Editorial contacts