Vodacom denies outage Rica-related

Johannesburg - Mobile operator Vodacom Group [JSE:VOD] on Thursday denied that its network outage was related to the Regulation of Interception of Communication Act (Rica) deadline.

"The engineers are still working on the network outage - apologies to everyone affected. Just to confirm, this is not related to Rica," the group said on its Twitter account.

Vodacom earlier apologised via Twitter that "certain customers" were having difficulties calling or sending text messages on its network.

The group tweeted: "We're aware that certain customers are experiencing an inability to call or SMS. Sincere apologies, we're working on a fix."

In a press statement the group added: "We are currently experiencing network issues in some areas. Our engineering team is working hard to resolve the problem."

On Wednesday, the group also confirmed that it was having trouble with its network.

"We can confirm that a small percentage of our customers have experienced a delay in using our USSD recharge system. The airtime has been credited but in some cases it is not yet reflecting on the individual's balance. We would like to apologise to any affected customers and assure them that their recharge will be visible on their account shortly," Richard Boorman, Vodacom's executive head of media relations, told I-Net Bridge.

Sim cards not registered ahead of the deadline on Thursday midnight would be cut off, the operators stressed. Operators confirmed that they were expecting a last-minute rush to register as 2.7 million sim cards still need to be registered.

MTN’s South African unit said about 10 000 users were affected by network issues.

“At the moment, we are not aware of any prevalent network problems but have experienced data-related network issue earlier today,” MTN said.

The company said the glitch has since been resolved.