Vodacom is looking to spend R500m on its network and power backup in the Eastern Cape during the current financial year.
Part of the mission is for this investment to expand connectivity in deep rural areas.
Rural internet connectivity, or that of areas outside big centres such as Johannesburg, Cape Town or Durban, remains a sore point in SA.
While access to internet services is necessary, the cost of building networking infrastructure in underserved areas remains a challenge. With internet connectivity a big part of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s economic agenda, telecom regulator the Independent Communication Authority of SA (Icasa) made rural connectivity a part of the licensing terms for spectrum at its most recent auction.
This week, SA’s largest mobile operator said it would invest more than R500m into the network and power backup upgrades across the province during the 2023/24 financial year.
“This significant investment into the network will help the region expand connectivity in deep rural areas and townships that had no connectivity before,” SA’s largest mobile operator said.
Vodacom and rival MTN have famously spent up to R10bn per annum over the last decade expanding their networks in SA.
In the financial year to March 2023, the Vodafone subsidiary spent R16.5bn in capital expenditure, building more than 40,000 network sites across its operations. Of that, R11.2bn was spent in SA. Part of this cost is now being taken up by backup power systems to cope with the effects of load-shedding. Since 2020, the operator has spent R4bn addressing what it terms “energy resilience”.
For the current financial year, the group has committed to investing between 13% and 14.5% of revenue on capital expenditure.
For Vodacom's Eastern Cape operation, the bulk of the capital will be used to build and deploy new base station sites, improve network capacity, perform power backup upgrades due to power outages and roll out more 5G technology.
The operator switched on its 5G service in three major municipal districts in the Eastern Cape in 2021 and plans to push this further by rolling it out over 50 new sites.
“It is important for us to invest in the next generation of communication technology to give our customers access to networks that provide faster speeds and support the digital economy,” managing executive for Vodacom’s Eastern Cape region Zakhele Jiyane said.
Therefore, “our accelerated investment in 5G in this financial year is in line with our commitment to connect the unconnected and will ultimately help the region bridge the digital divide between the urban and rural areas of the province”.
A total of 106 new deep rural sites will be built in local municipalities such as Buffalo City, Matatiele, Mbashe, Mnquma, Nelson Mandela Bay, Ngqushwa, Ngquza Hill, Ntabankulu and Port St Johns, to mention a few.
LTE capacity expansion will be performed at 396 sites and 17 new urban sites will be deployed across the province.
Outside the Eastern Cape, the group has been making similar investments in other provinces, putting down R300m in Limpopo and another R340m between the Free State and Northern Cape, in this financial year
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