What is a Telecommunications Outage?
A telecommunications outage refers to loss or degradation of connectivity — including mobile signal loss, internet down-time, or loss of service for data, voice or cloud-based applications. Outages can happen locally (e.g. last mile issues) or more broadly (e.g. undersea cable breaks). For businesses, even small disruptions in connectivity can have outsized consequences.
Key Causes of Telecommunications Outages in South Africa
Power Outages / Load Shedding
South Africa has had frequent load shedding (scheduled power cuts) due to supply shortages and aging infrastructure. AP News+3MyBroadband+3The African Spectator+3
Telecommunications infrastructure such as base stations, cell towers, fibre‐nodes, and last-mile equipment need electricity. When power is cut, these go offline unless backed up. Backup solutions (batteries, generators) are expensive, need maintenance, and may not always cover fully. The African Spectator+2MyBroadband+2
Undersea / Long-Distance Cable Failures
Breaks in undersea cables (e.g. the West Africa Cable System, ACE, SAT-3 etc.) have caused large-scale outages. For example, on 14 March 2024, breaks in multiple undersea cables off the coast of Côte d’Ivoire led to substantial connectivity loss affecting ISPs, Microsoft Azure services and cloud access in South Africa. MyBroadband+2HeadTopics+2
When these backbone links fail, international traffic is rerouted, capacity is reduced, latency increases, and some services may become unavailable. MyBroadband+1
Infrastructure Damage / Theft / Vandalism
Protests, riots, or criminal activity have led to damage of network infrastructure (cell towers, fibre lines). For example, mobile network towers have been vandalised, which has caused network outages in regions of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng. MyBroadband
Theft of copper cables and damage to last mile physical infrastructure is also a recurring problem.
Aging Infrastructure & Lack of Redundancy
- Many service providers and SMEs rely on single connectivity pathways, or ageing equipment with minimal redundancy. A router or backhaul failure in one link may lead to downtime because there is no automatic and seamless fail-over path. MyBroadband+2Hub and Spoke+2
Operational / Human Errors, Software Glitches
- Misconfigurations, delayed updates, delayed maintenance or management errors can lead to systems being brought down or being vulnerable. BusinessTech+1
Impacts on Businesses
The costs and risks for businesses when telecommunications outages occur are substantial and multidimensional:
Financial Losses: Sales get lost, online transactions fail, service-level agreements (SLAs) might be breached. For example, during load shedding or major outage, businesses dependent on cloud applications or online sales lose revenue. MWCom+2MyBroadband+2
Operational Disruption: Internal systems, communications (emails, VoIP, remote work), supply-chain coordination, point-of-sale systems etc. may stop working or perform poorly. Logistics, customer service, last-mile delivery etc. are especially sensitive. ITWeb+2MyBroadband+2
Reputation & Customer Trust: Repeated or prolonged outages erode customer confidence. In competitive markets, businesses can lose customers to more reliable competitors. MyBroadband
Compliance & Legal Risk: For some industries, downtime may lead to breach of regulatory obligations or data protection laws. Business continuity requirements may mandate certain levels of availability. MyBroadband
Extra Costs: Backup power, redundant infrastructure, emergency repairs, dealing with customer complaints, etc. These often increase OPEX significantly. For example, telecommunications operators (MTN, Vodacom, Telkom) incur high incremental costs for batteries, generators, repairs and security. The African Mirror - For Africa - Always+2The African Spectator+2
Mitigations & what businesses / telecommunication providers are doing
To reduce the frequency, severity, or business impact of outages, several strategies and technologies are being adopted:
Backup Power Systems
Use of generators, uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), batteries at cell towers and network nodes. MTN, for example, has invested in both batteries and generators to ensure tower availability during power downtime. The African Spectator+1
Some sites are also looking into renewable energy sources or hybrid power solutions to reduce dependence on the grid.
Redundancy in Connectivity
Multiple links (e.g. fibre + microwave + wireless backup) so that if one last-mile link fails, traffic can shift to another.
Diversified paths: both for backhaul and international connectivity (using multiple undersea cables or terrestrial links) to avoid single points of failure.
SD-WAN (Software-Defined WAN)
Technologies like SD WAN can help by intelligently routing traffic over multiple connections, detecting link failures, and failing over automatically with minimal disruption.
For instance, there are cases (like in South Africa) where businesses or service providers have adopted SD-WAN where both fibre and microwave links are used, or dual fibre providers, so that when one last-mile link fails the other continues carrying traffic. One report (“The Overlooked Last Mile in SD-WAN | A Practical Approach to Resilience & Reliability”) emphasises that many SD-WAN solutions overpromise, but real resilience requires addressing last-mile failures explicitly. Hub and Spoke+1
Hybrid internet connectivity with QoS (quality of service) guarantees and traffic prioritisation (e.g. for voice or critical applications) helps reduce the visible impact of disruptions.
Proactive Monitoring, Maintenance, & Incident Preparedness
Regular maintenance of infrastructure to minimize failures.
Monitoring of performance metrics to detect degradations in last-mile links before they fully fail.
Business continuity planning: having documented plans, backups, alternative ways of working during outages (e.g. remote work, offline mode etc.) BusinessTech+1
Policy, Regulatory & Investment Support
Government and regulators can help by ensuring that infrastructure is secure, power generation and grid reliability improves, and that telecommunications infrastructure is protected from vandalism and theft.
Encouraging investment in resilient infrastructure, incentives for providers to build backup and redundancy.
A Closer Look: “Last Mile” as the Achilles’ Heel
The “last mile” refers to the final stretch of delivering connectivity to end users — from the service provider’s node or backbone to a home, branch or mobile tower. It’s often where failures happen: fibre breaks, local ISP links fail, wireless/microwave links degrade, or power issues hit local equipment.
Even if the backbone (international cables, central routers, etc.) is working fine, if the last mile fails, the user loses connectivity.
SD-WAN solutions that do not explicitly account for last-mile challenges tend to under-deliver in reliability in the South African context. Features like session-preserving failover, multiple ISP links, automatic traffic steering, and redundancy become crucial. Hub and Spoke+1
Case Examples
MTN: To cope with load shedding and power instability, MTN has deployed over 1,000 batteries and hundreds of generators to keep its mobile network up. The African Spectator
Mobile networks during civil unrest: During unrest in KZN and Gauteng, infrastructure was damaged, leading to outages; but safety issues sometimes prevent rapid repairs. MyBroadband
Undersea cable outage in March 2024: Disruption of multiple cables (WACS, ACE, SAT-3) caused major connectivity issues, including for cloud services like Microsoft Azure. MyBroadband+1
Remaining Challenges & Recommendations
Despite mitigation efforts, there are still gaps and challenges:
Cost: Backup power, redundant links, and monitoring increase capital (CapEx) and operating expenses (OpEx). For smaller companies this can be a major burden.
Complexity: Managing multiple ISPs, multiple links, failover logic, and ensuring traffic gets rerouted properly isn’t trivial.
Scalability: Some solutions work for individual sites, but scaling resiliency (especially for remote, rural, or under-served areas) remains difficult.
Human/Physical Risks: Vandalism/theft, natural disasters, or delays in repairs during unrest or weather events add risk.
Power Grid Reliability: Until the broader electricity grid stabilises, telecommunications & internet providers will continue to bear the cost and risk of backup power.
Recommendations:
Businesses should audit their risk exposure — which systems will fail first, what losses those failures cause.
Build in multiple connectivity paths where possible, especially for mission-critical systems.
Adopt SD-WANs or similar resilient network architecture with intelligent failover and QoS.
Invest or require service providers to have better backup power, and make sure it's properly maintained.
Engage with regulators and industry bodies to improve protections of telecommunications infrastructure.
Wrap
Telecommunications outages in South Africa are not just occasional nuisances—they represent a real, ongoing risk for business continuity, revenues, customer trust, and competitiveness. Many of the root causes are well-known (power instability, last mile link failures, infrastructure damage), and some of the solutions (redundancy, SD-WAN, backup power) are being adopted, but there is still a lot of work to be done.
For businesses, understanding these risks and investing in mitigation is no longer optional—it’s increasingly essential.
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