Weather, vandalism blamed for connection issues

On Thursday, 14 May 2009, the Independent Communications Authority of SouthAfrica (Icasa) and representatives of Cell C, Vodacom and MTN met to discuss consumer complaints about technical problems, including dropped calls and delayed SMSs.

The authority's spokesman Sekgoela Sekgoela said reasons the operators gave included "the leased transmission lines, copper wire or fibre optic, are from time to time subjected to vandalism".

"This resulted in the downtime of base stations due to lack of transmission links."

He said delays in the approval of environmental impact studies also affected the setting up of additional base stations.

Network unavailability was also caused by "a number of factors including weather and topography amongst others".

Operators had indicated that illegal and sub-standard cellphone handsets caused interference.

The most recent illustration of the problem caused a rumpus when the talent contest Idols had to redeclare its winner after it emerged that many of the sms votes had been delayed.

On Thursday, Sekgoela said: "With regard to the Idols matter, the problem could be attributed to the limited capacity of the transmission line connecting the SMS Centre and the service provider database."

Sekgoela said some of the areas that had experienced problems were Germiston, parts of Sandton, Randburg, the East Rand as well as the North West, Mpumalanga and Limpopo provinces.

He said the three cellphone companies had been instructed to find a solution to the problem as soon as possible.

"Failing which, the complaints raised by consumers would be referred to the Complaints and Compliance Committee (CCC) for adjudication and possible penalties."

Chaired by a judge, the CCC is an independent adjudication body which receives and hears complaints raised against licensees.

Sekgoela said that in June, Icasa would be holding a second round of hearings on a charter for end user and subscriber service.

"We believe once promulgated [the charter] as a regulation will go a long way towards ensuring quality services for consumers."

He said the three licensees had also agreed, along with Icasa, to publish quarterly reports about the availability, performance and parameters of networks, including reports about dropped calls and delayed text messages, as well as information about active subscribers.

Source: Sapa

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