Phone Networks Using Battery Backups During South Africa's Electricity Black-outs

South Africa is facing an electricity shortage, and the local dominant power company, Eskom had had to issue another of its semi-regular warnings about power failures this weekend. The company is engaging in a rolling series of power cuts all around the country, which cuts the supply to different areas for up to 2 hours at a time.

This naturally is affecting South African businesses - and the mobile phone networks are no exception as they require electricity to power their base stations. After all, a black out is a good time for people to sit down and make phone calls while they wait for the electricity to be restored.

Asked to comment on how the company is dealing with the power supply problems, Dot Field, the Chief Communications Officer of local mobile operator, Vodacom said: "All Vodacom's macro outdoor, as opposed to indoor microcell base station sites, have battery backup. Furthermore most other key core infrastructure sites (switches, radio controllers and the like) have standby generators and battery backup and Vodacom continually evaluates this position for possible improvement."

"In general base stations' battery backups can last up to 8 hours, depending on the frequency of outages in an area and therefore the time available to recharge. Therefore, due to the cyclical nature of Eskom's power restoration Vodacom does not generally expect major disruptions, except with regards to its Microcells which provides mainly indoor coverage and do not necessarily have battery backup or where power outages are especially long."

Typically, Eskom's website went offline right in the middle of compiling this article.

Posted to the site on 18th January 2008