Vodacom suffers serious damage to infrastructure as floods wreak havoc in KZN

Vodacom says widespread flooding in KwaZulu-Natal has damaged its network infrastructure in the province, including over 400 towers.

Its spokesperson, Byron Kennedy, explained that damage to its towers was primarily due to disruptions in electricity supply.

As a result, several coastal regions have intermittent connections for the time being.

“Certain customers in a number of coastal areas — from Ballito in the north to Amanzimtoti in the south — are currently experiencing intermittent mobile services,” Kennedy said.

He also said that some of Vodacom’s fibre customers are experiencing intermittent connectivity caused by waterlogged fibre ducts, adding that Vodacom had contingency plans to manage such situations.

“Vodacom has scalable contingency plans in place to deal with scenarios of this nature and is working hard to restore connectivity in impacted areas as quickly and as safely as possible,” Kennedy said.

“While efforts to restore sites are being hampered by severe damage to roads and certain facilities not being accessible due to the risk of electrical shocks, Vodacom assures impacted customers that restoring connectivity is its utmost priority.”

Vodacom is not the only mobile network operator to suffer extensive damage to its infrastructure in KwaZulu-Natal.

Earlier today, MTN announced that more than 500 of its towers were offline because of the flooding.

Main Image: SowetanLive