The inclement weather currently enveloping most of South Africa has caused havoc with Telkom`s telecommunication services in many parts of the country.
"Not only have our services in various part of the country been severely affected, our response time in restoring these services are also being hampered by the extremely adverse weather conditions," said Lulu Letlape, Group Executive for Telkom Corporate Communication.
Letlape added that impassable roads as well as an increasing number of road closures, were making it difficult for Telkom staff to access sites where service disruptions were being encountered.
"In certain areas roads have been washed away, rivers are in flood, cables have broken owing to falling trees and staff have also been unable to climb towers to restore services because of strong winds," explained Letlape.
The worst-hit areas include most parts of KwaZulu-Natal, Western Cape (especially Knysna and George) as well as Port Elizabeth, Transkei and East London in the Eastern Cape. Pretoria, Gauteng central, Mpumalanga and the Northern Province are also badly hit.
By early afternoon today, 47% of all weather-related voice faults linked to the core network were in KZN, with 80% of these faults being linked to network failures.
Affected Telkom customers span all market segments, namely, corporate, business, residential and wholesale. "There`s a dramatic increase in reported faults from all over the country," stated Letlape.
"Being a customer-centric organisation, Telkom is closely monitoring the situation and will do everything possible to restore services," stated Letlape.
However, she cautioned that even after the extreme weather conditions subsided, factors such as accessibility to affected areas and disruption of power supplies could also impede repair work. "Local authorities have prevented Telkom staff from entering certain areas owing to hazardous conditions while the restoration of certain services will also depend on the availability of electricity," concluded Letlape.
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Telkom SA Limited is one of the largest companies registered in the Republic of South Africa and is the largest telecommunications service provider on the African continent based on operating revenue and assets. Telkom offers fixed-line voice and data services, branded as Telkom, and mobile communications services through a 50% shareholding in the joint venture, Vodacom, a company incorporated in the republic of South Africa, Tanzania, Lesotho, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique.
Telkom has approximately 4.7 million telephone access lines in service as of March 2006. Telkom is South Africa`s incumbent operator. Telkom had consolidated operating revenue of R47.6 billion ($7.7 billion) for the year ended 31 March 2006. Telkom`s subsidiaries include Telkom Directory Services (Pty) Ltd who provides complete yellow and white pages directory services as well as electronic services, and Swiftnet (Pty) Ltd. Swifnet trades under the name of FastNet Wireless Service and provides synchronous wireless access on Telkom`s X25 network, Saponet-P, to its customers. Telkom strongly believes in corporate social investment and has a dedicated wing, the Telkom Foundation, which focuses in investing and developing previously disadvantaged South African communities.
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