Load-shedding is killing South African networks - Stage 6 means even less time to recharge batteries

Vodacom and Telkom have warned that Eskom’s continued load-shedding means many broadband subscribers and smartphone users will experience downtime. Vodacom told subscribers that it is aware many customers around the country will be experiencing issues connecting to the network due to load-shedding. “Our towers do use batteries as a backup, but these do have limited power and will eventually fail,” Vodacom said.

Battery backup at cellphone towers are designed for slow recharge and not for intensive load shedding with short periods between the scheduled outages. This means batteries are sometimes only partially charged before the next outage and this could mean services failing. If you are lucky you will still access a more distant tower at a slower speed, but it could become overloaded with network traffic. Extended load shedding could result in damage to batteries which are not designed to run flat.

What it does mean is that cellphones may not be 100% reliable for mission critical services (some people in Whatsapp/Telegram groups may lose contact for up to 2 hours) and having backups such as radio may need to be planned for (probably why emergency services, police and security companies still use two-way radio as the backbone of their communications).

The higher the load shedding stage is, the more likely interruptions will occur.

See https://mybroadband.co.za/news/cellular/332098-load-shedding-is-killing-south-african-networks.html

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#^Load-shedding is killing South African networks