Eskom putting cellular providers under pressure
Eskom’s electricity load shedding is impacting heavily on industry, and South Africa’s three cellular providers are not spared in this regard. In an uptime-critical industry like telecommunications it can be costly to build and monitor the necessary infrastructure and processes needed to minimize the impact of electricity downtime.
Vodacom, MTN and Cell C are however performing well amidst constant and prolonged power outages across the country due to Eskom’s load shedding.
Vodacom
Vodacom says that they do not expect any major disruptions as their core infrastructure is equipped with battery backup, standby generators or both. Vodacom says that their macro outdoor, as opposed to indoor microcell base station sites, have battery backup.
“Furthermore most other key core infrastructure sites (switches, radio controllers and the like) have standby generators and battery backup and Vodacom continually evaluates this position for possible improvement,” the company said.
Vodacom said that in general base stations the battery backups can last up to 8 hours, depending on the frequency of outages in an area and therefore the time available to recharge.
“Due to the cyclical nature of Eskom’s power restoration Vodacom does not generally expect major disruptions, except with regards to its Microcells which provide mainly indoor coverage and do not necessarily have battery backup or where power outages are especially long,” Vodacom said.
Vodacom reassured their customers that they are taking every pro-active measure possible to ensure minimum disruption to their services.
Cell C
Cell C has also not experienced major disruptions due to power failures as all of their sites carrying traffic are equipped with back up power.
“In main data centers, switching centers and campuses (physical business sites) we have generators, uninterrupted power supply systems and batteries that provide the backup. In radio base station sites we typically have batteries with 8 hours autonomy and in case of extended power outage of more than 8 hours we deploy mobile generators to the affected site,” said Cell C.
Costly affair
The investment in additional power infrastructure, maintenance, monitoring and running of the generators comes at a cost.
“The cost to deploy permanent generators at all sites is somewhat prohibitive due to capital outlay, servicing, re-fueling and theft. For our 2000+ base transceiver station sites we deploy mobile generators at sites where there is an extended outage usually due to a fault rather than load shedding,” said Cell C.
“These costs will vary depending on distance to site and duration of the outage. We are looking at approximately R1, 500 per day per site. For 2007 this cost was in excess of R2, 000,000.”
“For the main switch sites and data centers we have generators capable of supporting full load backed up by fully secondary generators in case the first generator fails to start. For these we are looking at approximately R2, 000 per hour to run based on consumption of diesel fuel,” Cell C pointed out.
The good news for consumers
Good news for consumers is that the cellular providers do not envisage any immediate price increases to cover the costs related to the power outages.
“We do not envisage increasing our tariffs in the short term. We will however, review this position once we have a full understanding from Eskom of how long the current situation will continue for,” Cell C said.
Vodacom also said that it is definitely not their intention to pass these costs on to consumers, but that the impact of the outages will be assessed and that it is difficult to speculate about it at this time.
MTN did not provide feedback by the time of publication.
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