Rain 5G towers down during loadshedding?

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nolsie1

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I only signed up for the rain 5g service on Fri.
But now the router is not working during loadshedding. I have ups at home, but the router shows no signal.
I called Rain, and the service person told be that Rain's 5G towers are down during loadshedding. Is that correct?
Are there any plans to put the Rain 5G towers on UPS?
Why does Rain not publish this as a warning to costumers?
I live in Rosebank, Cape Town
 
This the response from Rain;
Kindly note that our 5G towers are powered by electricity and unless the sites have backup power, they are affected by loadshedding.
Click to expand...
Not very helpful, and could imply none of their towers have backup power.
Not a very robust service for our poor power supply.

And why do they not provide information around this or warn potential clients.
 
No cellular network guarantees battery backups at all their sites, and also they won't guarantee battery up-time during loadshedding either.
 
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genetic said:
No cellular network guarantees battery backups at all their sites, and also they won't guarantee battery up-time during loadshedding either.
Click to expand...
Yes, but other networks (MTN & Vodacom) in my area has power backup, which makes sense with the frequent load shedding

And if Rain provide a fixed wireless service to locked to an address, it would be ethical and honest to warn a potential customer, that the towers servicing you do not have backup power.

It would have saved me from signing up and now cancelling
 
nolsie1 said:
Yes, but other networks (MTN & Vodacom) in my area has power backup, which makes sense with the frequent load shedding

And if Rain provide a fixed wireless service to locked to an address, it would be ethical and honest to warn a potential customer, that the towers servicing you do not have backup power.

It would have saved me from signing up and now cancelling
Click to expand...

It's in their T&C's;

Our 5G network has a high energy / power demand and performance thereof is heavily reliant on availability of power. Therefore, when there’s load shedding our 5G network will be interrupted and go down. Rain shall not be liable to the consumer for failure to perform any obligation due to network interruptions caused by a power service provider, when the failure is beyond Rain’s reasonable back-up control measures.”
Click to expand...

www.rain.co.za

rain | uncapped 5G home internet & mobile, South Africa — no contracts

LoopPhone — a dual display 5G phone with a Glance back screen, 200MP camera and 7000mAh battery Free to use with rain mobile plans
www.rain.co.za www.rain.co.za
 
Oh, but then it must be OK (sarcasm)
Signing up a customer for a service to a fixed location, which you know will be down during load shedding - is not honest. But its in the T&Cs - then it must be OK
 
nolsie1 said:
Oh, but then it must be OK (sarcasm)
Signing up a customer for a service to a fixed location, which you know will be down during load shedding - is not honest. But its in the T&Cs - then it must be OK
Click to expand...

If you didn't do your research and Rain specifically say they don't have battery backup during load shedding, then what more do you want?

No fixed wireless provider guarantees service during load shedding. You're lucky if you have it - it's not a given.
 
I literally have the location where the only Rain 5g tower I have a legit internet connection to is added to my Eskomsepush app so I know when to expect no internet. However that tower has been offline since 00:00 this morning. After that the closest tower is 2.1km. Pretty pointless with a Oppo 5G indoor router.
 
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nolsie1 said:
Oh, but then it must be OK (sarcasm)
Signing up a customer for a service to a fixed location, which you know will be down during load shedding - is not honest. But its in the T&Cs - then it must be OK
Click to expand...
Some fiber works like this, in fact when the council and the fiber operator in Bedfordview got into a dispute it ran on dirty generators needing to be stopped and refuled often. I cant recall the operator name off the top of my head...

I agree its not great, but I guess publishing the information would make for a shopping list for those looking to steal from a tower.
I've no doubt in some core areas there is a backup, and others, there is not.

The closest tower to me in JHB seems to be down, and I'm using another one 3x further away from me. Its slower, but still usable.
 
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Rain owns their own hardware and towers.
They sell some network capacity from their towers, to Vodacom under contract.

www.huawei.com

rain and Huawei Jointly Launches Africa's First Standalone 5G Network - Huawei

rain, South Africa’s data-only mobile network launched its first Standalone 5G (SA 5G) network in the country. Powered by Huawei, this is the first commercial standalone 5G network in Africa.
www.huawei.com www.huawei.com

I would suspect they share some tower space with other operators, but they own their own network hardware.
 
My connection has been down since 8am. Pretty sure its the municipality being their usual self.

My rain connection is looking into it but there is nothing rain can do about Eskom/Municipal shortcomings.
 
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maybe the 5g Equipment takes too much of a load on the towers, so they revert to 3G/2G during LS,
I mean at least you can get some things through but not Internet.
 
So I had my first proper load shedding experience while trying to make use of Rain 5G.

First hour, I had no issues. After around an hour, it kicked off, and my connection became terrible.
It was connected to something, and could be used, but for nothing more than opening a web-page. The website map doesn't seem to update or know what I was connected to, and didnt show a line connecting me to any tower.

Once the power came back, the RAIN would switch back, seemingly.
 
Packet-Kollector said:
So I had my first proper load shedding experience while trying to make use of Rain 5G.

First hour, I had no issues. After around an hour, it kicked off, and my connection became terrible.
It was connected to something, and could be used, but for nothing more than opening a web-page. The website map doesn't seem to update or know what I was connected to, and didnt show a line connecting me to any tower.

Once the power came back, the RAIN would switch back, seemingly.
Click to expand...
Same we had internet for exactly an hour before having loadshedding. This means we won't be having internet for another 8 hours and then have internet for an hour. Very dissapointed. However when there is no loadshedding have 99.9% up time.
 
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