{"id":386164,"date":"2021-02-12T13:25:58","date_gmt":"2021-02-12T11:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=386164"},"modified":"2021-02-12T13:27:12","modified_gmt":"2021-02-12T11:27:12","slug":"vodacom-subscribers-complaining-about-poor-signal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/386164-vodacom-subscribers-complaining-about-poor-signal.html","title":{"rendered":"Vodacom subscribers complaining about poor signal"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the past few weeks, several Vodacom subscribers have taken to social media to complain about having bad reception, dropped calls, or no signal at all.<\/p>\n

Customers have complained from all over the country, and have said that they are experiencing problems with Wi-Fi routers and phones alike.<\/p>\n

The volume of complaints caused Downdetector<\/a><\/strong> to state on at least two separate occasions \u2014 Friday, 5 February and again on Thursday, 11 February \u2014 that there are “possible problems at Vodacom”.<\/p>\n

With the return of load-shedding, there are many new complaints over the loss of signal during power outages.<\/p>\n

It should be noted that Vodacom subscribers have complained regardless of the presence of load-shedding.<\/p>\n

Between 3 and 5 February 2021, subscribers from Johannesburg, Cape Town, Pretoria, Midrand, Nelspruit, Margate, East London, Pacaltsdorp (George), Krugersdorp, and Felixton (near Richardsbay) complained about poor signal on Downdetector.<\/p>\n

There were many more such complaints on Twitter.<\/p>\n

Johannesburg community radio station ChaiFM also reported receiving an influx of complaints about poor signal on the Vodacom network last week.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

No general issue or outage on Vodacom network<\/h3>\n

When asked about the complaints about poor signal, Vodacom told MyBroadband that there is no general issue or outage impacting its network.<\/p>\n

Vodacom also assured that any issues customers are experiencing have nothing to do with Cell C migrating its contract and broadband subscribers<\/strong><\/a> onto the Vodacom network.<\/p>\n

“It is well known that we have had a roaming agreement in place with Cell C over many years. Our latest agreement has had no material impact on our network performance,” Vodacom stated.<\/p>\n

“We would like to encourage any individual customers who may be experiencing issues with dropped calls or data to contact our customer service centre on 082 135,” said Vodacom.<\/p>\n

Load-shedding, vandalism, and theft to blame<\/h3>\n

The company explained that dropped calls and reception problems could be a result of load-shedding, base station vandalism, or battery theft.<\/p>\n

“When load-shedding occurs, a cellphone tower remains fully functional for as long as the batteries last or the back-up generator keeps running,” Vodacom said.<\/p>\n

“Once power is fully depleted, the tower stops working entirely and, depending on the configuration of nearby towers, may cause a coverage area to black out entirely or for customers to experience intermittent service.”<\/p>\n

Aside from load-shedding, Vodacom said that the base stations of local network providers are increasingly being targeted for theft and vandalism.<\/p>\n

“On a daily basis, local network providers experience multiple incidents of break-ins at our base stations sites. It is estimated that local cellphone network providers lose hundreds of millions of rands worth of damage to its base stations annually as a result of theft and vandalism which ultimately impacts the cost of mobile services.”<\/p>\n

Now read: Vodacom gunning for top spot with big network investment<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the past few weeks, several Vodacom subscribers have taken to social media to complain about having bad reception, dropped calls, or no signal at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":383046,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[355,59487,35,41],"class_list":["post-386164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-cell-c","tag-downdetector","tag-headline","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386164"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":386406,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386164\/revisions\/386406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}