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- Vodacom Group to upgrade its network over the next two months
- To cater to the rising traffic across its mobile and fixed networks after the lockdown, it will spend more than 500 million rand ($27 million)
To arrest the spread of the coronavirus, the South African government imposed a five-week lockdown to the end of April. Since then the telecoms sector has experienced an unprecedented surge in network data traffic. This has prompted South Africa’s Vodacom Group to upgrade its network over the next two months. Vodacom has announced that to cater to the rising traffic across its mobile and fixed networks after the lockdown, it will spend more than 500 million rand ($27 million) to increase network capacity.
Announcing the decision, Vodacom said in a statement that the additional investment is expected to improve network resilience during the lockdown period and help the mobile phone operator to cope with any possible load shedding. It may be noted that Vodacom recently implemented price cuts of up to 40% on its 30-day data bundles and free access to certain websites, such as health sites and e-school platforms. The move is expected to increase network traffic even more as customers connect for longer. The traffic before the lockdown used to peak during specific hours of the day. However, post lockdown its network experiences sustained peak traffic patterns for almost the entire day. To ease network congestion, after the outbreak of COVID19 large international content providers such as Netflix, YouTube and Facebook have reduced the resolution of video content around the world.
Vodacom, which competes with MTN Group, has also applied to the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) telecoms regulator for a temporary additional spectrum. The company spokesperson stated that it was monitoring all traffic patterns daily and prioritizing key network upgrades to ensure the capacity and quality of services.
