SA's largest cellular provider, Vodacom, says it is currently restoring network services after an outage earlier that saw many subscribers cut off from the network.
The company says the cause of the outage, which affected subscribers in selected spots across the country, was a multiple failure of transmission system equipment.
Vodacom explains the transmission system provides the connectivity to support the wireless network. The transmission failure, which occurred late this morning, had a knock-on effect on other areas of the network, which resulted in an overall degradation of service, it says.
Subscribers have complained on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and HelloPeter about being unable to connect. It is understood retail outlets may also have been affected by being unable to process credit card payments.
CTO Andries Delport says: “We're currently working flat out to get service restored to all customers as quickly as possible.”
Vodacom expects that network congestion could persist into this evening but are confident that it will subside quickly. Delport says the company will run a full investigation into the cause of the failure and, more importantly, how it “can further improve network redundancy”.
Vodacom has apologised to every customer who has been affected. “What happened today was not acceptable and we will make sure that we do everything possible to avoid a recurrence,” says Delport.
Vodacom is spending more than R6 billion on its network in South Africa this year to improve its service to customers. “We will be increasing the number of 3G base stations and adding significantly to our own transmission network capacity,” says Delport.
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