Vodacom is prepared for Lim holiday influx

POLOKWANE  – EACH summer brings an influx of people to Limpopo, with tourists and people who have come home to spend the holidays with their families and friends.

This holiday rush results in a major increase in demand on Vodacom’s mobile network, and due to this, Vodacom’s regional team is prepared for the holiday rush.

Earlier this month, Vodacom chief executive officer, Shameel Joosub, presented the company’s interim results and specifically highlighted Vodacom’s network investment activities.

“We invested R4,1 billion in the network in South Africa over the past six months. We added over 1 000 new LTE (a 4G mobile communications standard) base stations and 745 new 3G sites.

“This additional capacity supported the 18% increase in outgoing voice traffic and 75% increase in data traffic. We also completed a six-year project to replace all of our base station radio equipment across the country, meaning that we are 4G-ready countrywide and just need access to sufficient spectrum to make it operational,” Joosub explained.

Vodacom Limpopo managing executive, Junaid Munshi, explained that mobile traffic – both voice and data – increased significantly this time of year in key areas across the region. “We have been ramping up investment to make sure that we can cater for this and are spending R235 million this year rolling out 338 new base stations across the province to increase data capacity by 60%.

“As part of our goal to make sure we have 3G data coverage and capacity wherever we have voice, we have put additional resources into townships and rural locations in among other areas including Tzaneen, Musina, Thohoyandou, and Jane Furse,” he further explained.

Munshi added that as part of this investment, Vodacom had deployed 19 LTE sites. He said this brought super-fast connectivity to Polokwane, Louis Trichardt and Lephalale. “Vodacom’s preparation for the holiday rush does not end with investment in new base stations and fibre-optic transmission. While everyone else relaxes with their families or visit our tourism hotspots, our engineers are going to be hard at work optimising traffic and scanning for potential issues.

“We have to be even more vigilant at this time of the year to make sure our services run smoothly,” Munshi said.

A key focus for Vodacom this year was also the launch and roll out of the Vodacom m-pesa mobile money service across all provinces. The Vodacom m-pesa service addresses a gap in the informal market, which facilitates financial inclusion to the unbanked and makes money transfer cheap and convenient.

The service also enables Vodacom m-pesa customers to link a debit card to their accounts, making it convenient to use.

Munshi further said the people of Limpopo had had to migrate to other economic hubs in the country to seek job opportunities. This invariably meant that they had dependents back home in various towns and villages. “Not only does Vodacom m-pesa make it convenient and cost effective to send money back home, but more importantly it makes it equally easy for the beneficiary to redeem funds at their nearest spaza shop that supports m-pesa.