Vodacom network receives an upgrade
The problem was identified on Monday the 22nd of August and true to Vodacom’s efficient service the cause of the problem was identified and fixed by the Wednesday.
Pieter Uys, chief operating officer at Vodacom, reported that the problems experienced by Vodacom subscribers were due to a variety of factors.
He noted that there were capacity problems, particularly in the Pretoria/Centurion region, which have been solved. The SMTP server on the Internet VPN was not working and there were also general complaints regarding Internet bandwidth.
Vodacom 3G upgraded their Internet bandwidth on Friday the 26th of August and added an extra line to SAIX in order to ease congestions problems.
Uys added that the transmission network is in a constant state of upgrade as the user base increases.
Vodacom 3G have also added another two DNS (domain name server) servers to provide load sharing according to Uys. DNS servers dedicated to the 3G community are also being installed on the Vodacom network to ensure that the traffic is routed correctly.
The SMTP (mail) server has also been replaced by a much larger, redundant system.
All in all Vodacom has managed to upgrade their 2G and 3G network in a matter of days and are still keeping ahead of schedule regarding their tower rollout.
Their customer service is also to be commended regarding the resolution of their network problems. Subscribers were informed on the MyADSL forum of the problem and throughout the process users were informed of the progress.
Uys states: “Vodacom would like to apologise to its customers for the inconvenience this incident caused. Vodacom understands this service to be crtitcal for business for them and treat it as such. We take the opportunity to re-iterate our commitment to our loyal customers.”
One can only hope that other Internet providers take note and in future keep users informed about network downtime and future upgrades. It is heartening to see the increased transparency in the telecommunications industry.
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