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Vodacom is well-prepared for South Africa's holiday rush

Thursday, 15 December 2016

Vodacom has prepared its network for the influx of people to their holiday destinations

Each summer local and international visitors flock to South Africa’s popular holiday destinations, boasting beautiful beaches, green valleys, historic towns, hiking trails, game drives or walking safaris and world class shopping nightlife.

Given that demand on Vodacom’s mobile networks around these hotspots increases dramatically, Vodacom has done a lot of work in the past six months to ensure that its mobile networks are geared up to handle the shift in high volumes of traffic during this Festive season.

Andries Delport, Chief Technology Officer at Vodacom commented:

“We expect mobile traffic, particularly mobile data traffic, to more than double in certain places during this time of the year. We’ve been ramping up investment on the network for the past six months to make sure that we are ready for the high traffic this Festive season. To this end, we deployed 52 temporary mobile base stations to provide coverage and capacity at key areas along the coast as well some inland destinations.”

“Additionally, we completed the deployment of a further 100 permanent base stations in key holiday destinations. We have also upgraded the data capacity on 514 base stations and voice capacity on another 78 sites. On a practical basis, this means that we’ll be bringing faster data services and improved voice quality to tens of thousands of people when and where they need it.”

For the six months ended 30 September 2016, Vodacom invested over R4bn in its network in South Africa. This allowed the company to substantially widen its 3G and 4G data coverage. Vodacom’s 2G and 3G network coverage is at 99.9% and 99.2% respectively of the country’s population. The company’s 4G coverage in now at 68.7%, up from 46.8% a year ago and is the widest of the country’s Mobile Network Operators.

At a Group level, the company plans to invest just over R8bn in its networks this year, bringing its three-year investment total to R26 billion. The capex is targeted primarily at expanding our 2G, 3G and 4G coverage, enhancing the company’s network performance and improving customer experience.

“Our promise has always been to keep our customers confidently connected and we have been able to do so for over two decades. We have been able to do this through our significant investment in our network. The upgrades we’ve done on our network in the past six months mean that our customers and international holiday makers can rest assured that they’ll enjoy the best network experience on our mobile networks,” concluded Delport.



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