Load shedding
Load shedding has become an unfortunate feature of life in South Africa. The consequences affect everyone - Telkom included.
Despite an investment of more than R655m in 2023 to create additional power storage capacity at base stations, the outages during some stages do not allow enough time for the systems to recharge fully.
This can result in a drop in mobile internet speeds, and users could experience a loss of connectivity or poor quality calls.
Openserve, which provides the largest open-access network across South Africa, has proactively deployed smart power backup technology at 310 sites and plans to deploy double that number in 2024.
Sustainability ambitions
The anticipated reduction in diesel usage also supports Telkom's sustainability ambitions for Net-zero emissions by the year 2050.
As part of Telkom’s mobile network infrastructure, most Base Stations are equipped with backup batteries, which ensures that the Base Station remains up-and-running and functional when the supply power is disrupted, for example, during power outages or load shedding events.
This allows the reception of voice and data services to function and continue uninterrupted, which means that subscribers can enjoy services even during such events.
During a power outage or load shedding event, the Base Station will remain up-and-running for as long as there is sufficient backup power in the batteries. The backup time is dependent on the number of batteries deployed in the Base Station, how many services are configured in the Base Station and how busy the Base Station is. If the power outage remains longer than what the capacity of the batteries can support, the Base Station will shut itself down once the backup power in the batteries has been depleted, and voice and data services will no longer be available.
However, if batteries were illegally damaged or removed from the Base Station, there will be no backup power whatsoever, and the Base Station will shut off immediately when the power outage occurs. Once the power outage or load shedding event has ended and the supply power has been restored, the backup batteries will automatically be recharged so that the Base Station is ready for the next power outage or load shedding event.