The effect of load-shedding, which reduces access to the internet due to outages for telecommunications providers, is worse in rural and outlying areas which have low levels of network coverage, the Wireless Access Provider’s Association (Wapa) says.
Increased load-shedding has resulted in the growing use of backup power such as generators and batteries, which have become targets of rampant theft and vandalism. This has driven up costs and threatens network availability.
In December, the heads of SA’s two largest mobile carriers, Vodacom and MTN, sounded the alarm about a network crisis due to load-shedding.
“Many people now have small devices [like a UPS] to keep their connectivity on during load-shedding. The problem is the signal coming in is coming from a network that requires power,” Paul Colmer told Business Day. He is an executive committee member at Wapa, which has about 250 members across SA, 200 of which are licensed internet service providers like Vox.
“But now it’s the intensity of the load-shedding which is not allowing those batteries enough time to recharge and because of the value of these batteries, especially on more remote tower sites, theft is a huge issue.”
Mobile operators argue that networks will not be able to run consistently if stage six load-shedding persists. An example of this is batteries that need up to 18 hours to fully charge in some instances, which is not possible during stage six load-shedding and becomes almost impossible beyond that.
MTN is using more than 400,000l of fuel a month to keep generators operational at more than 9,000 of its network sites, while Vodacom is estimated to use double that amount of diesel. The latter company has spent upwards of R2bn trying to insulate its network from the effects of blackouts.
These factors also apply to internet exchanges through which fibre networks are routed, and is acutely worse in places where there is little to no coverage.
“With regard to the cellular networks, the problem is compounded by the fact that in the metro areas, a lot of the towers have access to the internet via their own fibre,” said Colmer.
“In the outlying and semirural areas, you will find that the individual towers are getting their access from other towers. It’s sort of relayed or daisy-chained. One tower, with stolen batteries or weak power, when that goes down, creates a knock-on effect with the remaining towers. Even if they have power, there’s no connectivity coming to them.”
There is thus a danger that the longer the power crisis continues, the further the already big gap in access to the internet between rich and poor SA — known as the digital divide — will widen further.
Promoting members of his association, Colmer says many wireless ISPs like BitCo and Herotel are better placed to deal with power uncertainty as they invested in off-grid and power backup solutions from the start, “mostly because that was always the only reliable way to ensure consistent power supply in the outlying and lower density areas they service”.
Wireless ISPs make use of unlicensed spectrum — through specialised equipment — to offer internet services to customers, with many operating in outlying areas, taking the opportunity to plug connectivity gaps.
Some have invested in their own fibre networks, while those that maintain battery backups for wireless links are said to be able to respond quicker to theft “than the larger, less nimble providers”.
The market for such providers is growing. Remgro’s telecom unit CIVH recently acquired Herotel, the largest player in the local market, connecting more than 95,000 homes.
Stats SA says the percentage of households with access to the internet at home, or for which “at least one member has access to, or used the internet”, was 65% in 2018. In largely rural provinces such as Limpopo and the Eastern Cape, this percentage is considerably lower, at 46% and 55%, respectively.
More than 30% of South Africans still do not use the internet, though mobile broadband service covers more than 95% of the population, according to the World Bank.
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