{"id":391351,"date":"2021-03-29T18:10:47","date_gmt":"2021-03-29T16:10:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=391351"},"modified":"2021-03-29T18:10:47","modified_gmt":"2021-03-29T16:10:47","slug":"rains-biggest-problem-network-quality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/391351-rains-biggest-problem-network-quality.html","title":{"rendered":"Rain’s biggest problem – network quality"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rain subscribers continue to struggle with poor network speeds and a lack of support which can cost the operator dearly unless it fixes the problem soon.<\/p>\n

Rain launched its first commercial fixed-LTE products in June 2017 and followed that up with numerous uncapped data products between 2018 and 2020.<\/p>\n

The operator positioned itself as a consumer champion which offered affordable, uncapped mobile and fixed data products.<\/p>\n

Consumers initially praised Rain for its innovative offerings, but things started to turn sour after network problems struck.<\/p>\n

Rain stopped the sale of its fixed-LTE products<\/strong><\/a> in November 2018 to protect the network against congestion, but this solution was short-lived.<\/p>\n

Rain\u2019s network performance continued to deteriorate as more clients signed up for uncapped products and consumed large amounts of data.<\/p>\n

And then the lockdown hit.<\/p>\n

Rain experienced a spike in new subscriptions as people had to find a quick way to get a fast and affordable broadband service.<\/p>\n

Rain was not prepared for this sudden increase in users, and both its support systems and network buckled under the load.<\/p>\n

Load-shedding added to Rain\u2019s woes. Its 5G network was not equipped with batteries to protect against load-shedding which resulted in serious connectivity problems.<\/p>\n

Rain users\u2019 complaints fell on deaf ears. The operator could not cope with the influx of traffic and it failed to respond adequately to the problems.<\/p>\n

The company put up a brave face \u2013 and even claimed its network was performing well \u2013 but all data pointed to serious issues.<\/p>\n

MyBroadband\u2019s mobile network performance tests showed that speeds on Rain\u2019s network plummeted after the lockdown came into effect.<\/p>\n

Rain also dropped to last place in MyBroadband\u2019s Internet service provider and mobile operator customer satisfaction indexes.<\/p>\n

These findings were substantiated by BrandsEye and Deloitte Africa\u2019s Telco Sentiment Index which showed<\/strong><\/a> Rain was the worst mobile operator in South Africa.<\/p>\n

The index revealed that Rain\u2019s support and network quality plummeted when the lockdown hit. It resulted in the largest ever month-on-month Net Sentiment decline.<\/p>\n

The graph below shows the decline in Rain\u2019s network speed over the last three years.<\/p>\n

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

Rain\u2019s claim that its network was performing well – apart from a few isolated incidents \u2013 was clearly not true.<\/p>\n

All evidence pointed to widespread problems affecting thousands of subscribers. A cursory glance at article comments and social media posts is all that was needed to see what was really happening.<\/p>\n

African Rainbow Capital Investments (ARC) co-CEO Johan van Zyl has now admitted<\/strong><\/a> that Rain\u2019s network quality is not good enough and that coverage is lacking in some areas.<\/p>\n

Rain has developed a three-pronged approach to address the problems – improve coverage, protect against load-shedding outages, and employ more support staff.<\/p>\n

It is expanding its 4G and 5G networks to ensure good coverage in areas where it sells services and improve service levels to subscribers.<\/p>\n

Rain is also investing in high-end batteries to ensure the network stays up during load-shedding.<\/p>\n

The company has further increased its staff complement from 120 to 800 to address poor customer support.<\/p>\n

These measures are desperately needed to ensure Rain\u2019s performance does not deteriorate further and leave it with a permanent perception of a \u201ccheap and nasty\u201d provider.<\/p>\n

\"Johan<\/a>

Johan van Zyl, ARC co-CEO<\/p><\/div>\n

The next phase in Rain\u2019s journey will be extremely important. It will need to prove its business case that offering uncapped mobile data using licensed spectrum is possible.<\/p>\n

It has been tried in the past, but to date no South African company was successful.<\/p>\n

A good example is Sentech MyWireless. It launched uncapped wireless products in 2005 which were an instant hit.<\/p>\n

MyWireless enjoyed rapid uptake, but it soon ran into network congestion problems which required a large network investment to resolve.<\/p>\n

Sentech did not have enough money and suffered severe reputational damage. It pulled the plug on MyWireless in 2009.<\/p>\n

Rain has far deeper pockets than Sentech, but the same challenge is emerging. It was even warned it would happen.<\/p>\n

Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub predicted that Rain would face network capacity constraints if it continued to offer large data bundles.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is easy when you have an empty network, but when you offer aggressive deals it quickly fills up,\u201d Joosub said.<\/p>\n

\"Shameel<\/a>

Shameel Joosub, Vodacom CEO<\/p><\/div>\n

To create additional capacity is expensive. You either need more spectrum \u2013 which is not easy to come by \u2013 or need to roll out more sites.<\/p>\n

Rain\u2019s network will be severely tested as it signs up more subscribers in its quest to meet financial targets.<\/p>\n

The company plans to increase its LTE subscribers to 2 million SIMs and grow its 5G subscriber base to 350,000.<\/p>\n

This is a big increase from its 260,000 4G SIMs and 25,000 5G customers reported in June 2020.<\/p>\n

It is not difficult sell more SIMs. Rain has a unique uncapped offering which consumers love.<\/p>\n

Rain also has low churn rates \u2013 people rather complain than leave because of the exceptional value proposition.<\/p>\n

This can, however, change quickly.<\/p>\n

If a competitor launches a similar offering and Rain\u2019s network quality is not up to scratch, subscribers will quickly jump ship.<\/p>\n

At this stage Rain\u2019s only value proposition is price. It is therefore vulnerable to affordable fibre products like Vuma Reach or new 5G products from Vodacom, MTN, or Telkom.<\/p>\n

Rain has raised R500 million from shareholders and increased its debt facilities from banks to R1.5 billion to support its network growth.<\/p>\n

Whether this will be enough to address its network problems and support its rapid growth remains to be seen.<\/p>\n

This is an opinion piece.<\/em><\/p>\n

Now read: Rain\u2019s plan to make money<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rain subscribers struggle with poor network speeds and a lack of support \u2013 a problem the mobile operator needs to fix urgently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[44951,67534,69197,35,43716],"class_list":["post-391351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-african-rainbow-capital-arc","tag-brandseye","tag-deloitte-africa","tag-headline","tag-rain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391351"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391351"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":391369,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391351\/revisions\/391369"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}