Johannesburg - Load shedding, equipment upgrades and even theft have affected mobile operator MTN’s network quality over the last two weeks.
This is according to a statement released on Tuesday by MTN South Africa in which the mobile network publicly apologised to its customers for network disruptions.
The mobile operator said upgrades to its network - designed to meet increasing quality and capacity demands - have disrupted its services, especially in and around metropolitan areas.
However, MTN further said that “load shedding also exacerbated our disruptions”.
“It must be noted that in the event of a power failure, MTN base stations are powered by batteries or generators,” said MTN.
“The majority of the network sites use batteries for backup. These batteries have a limited backup time, and recharging them takes time,” said the operator in its statement.
Furthermore, MTN said “several hundred sites have been vandalised and batteries have been stolen in recent months”.
“Where possible, MTN has been deploying these batteries to all sites to alleviate the impact of power outages. However, MTN has not been able to cover 100% of its sites yet,” the operator said.
MTN has also apologised to customers who migrated from Nashua Mobile on 25 November.
Nashua Mobile closed all its retail stores in October. As a result, all MTN subscribers on Nashua mobile now deal directly with the network.
“These customers were inadvertently disconnected, however services were restored on the same day,” said MTN.
“MTN apologises to its customers for any inconvenience caused during this time,” said Eben Albertyn, Chief Technology Officer at MTN SA, in the statement.