DURBAN - Vodacom said yesterday that its data traffic has surged by 40 percent following the implementation of the lockdown regulations in South Africa, boosted by the increased demand from people working from home.
The country’s largest mobile operator said it has noted increased traffic across its operations driven by increased working from home initiatives and entertainment.
“Following the implementation of lock down regulations in South Africa we noted a surge in data traffic on the network of up to 40 percent in comparison to pre-lock down implementation due to increased traffic as people work and entertain from home, but also due to zero-rating certain education, government and health sites to assist during the crisis,” the group said.
President Cyril Ramaphose increased the initial 21-day lockdown period for a further two weeks until the end of April.
“We are expecting this trend to continue in the short to medium term as more customers work from home and people using technology to remain connected, educated and entertained,” Vodacom said.
The group has ensured that its engineers are working on the network to cater for additional demand.
“Where necessary we have the opportunity to offload more of our capacity to the Rain network in terms of our existing 4G roaming agreement with this partner,” the group said.
The group has thrown its weight behind the government by supporting the initiatives in containing this pandemic and is working under strict conditions across all its operations to limit and minimise the potential for Covid-19 transmission.
Vodacom has ensured that it is in a position to meet its short-term liquidity and has a strong balance sheet despite the Covid-19 outbreak.
“In order to ensure that short-term liquidity can be met and volatility absorbed, existing committed facilities with banks have been doubled by converting shadow facilities to committed facilities resulting in a total of R8 billion committed facilities,” the group said.
Vodacom will release its results for the year to end March on May 11.