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Energy crisis buckling South African telecoms services

Tony Chan | February 13, 2008 | 0 Comments

Severe power shortages in South Africa are threatening to disrupt telecommunications services in the country. Africa’s biggest economy is currently in a nationwide emergency as demand for electricity has outstripped supply and generation capacity.

The country’s power utility, Eskom has had to implement load shedding measures that have resulted in widespread blackouts – even on a daily basis. The outages have led to a five-day shut down of the country’s lucrative platinum and gold mines, and prompted economists to revise downwards the country’s GDP growth forecasts to between 3% and 4%, from a previous government target of 6%. The energy crisis has even raised speculation that FIFA may move the 2010 Soccer World Cup elsewhere to avoid potential power issues.

While all three telecommunications providers have reaffirmed that their infrastructure is insulated from the power shortages by on site generators and UPS (uninterrupted power supply) systems, the impacts of the outages are expected to be far and wide.
South African online news agency, ITWeb reports that the power outages are causing havoc with end-users, whose computers, modems and other electronic devices do not have battery backup.

Computer Society of South Africa executive director Tony Parry told ITWeb that larger corporations will also feel the pinch as they must now spend more on maintaining their own UPS and on-site generation systems. Small and medium sized business are expected to be the hardest hit as they cannot typically afford to purchase backup systems, and are seeing their CPEs and PABXs go offline with the power.

In addition to the extra costs of maintaining service through generators, the country’s ICT industry is also expected to experience a drop in sales because IT budgets are now going towards purchasing and maintaining power generation and backup systems. However, sales of laptop computers and 3G data cards may rise as they offer the ability to function without a power connection for short periods and to connect to the Internet without the local power grid.

The situation has led to a heighten interest in more energy-efficient ICT systems, as well as energy generation using renewable energy sources. According to online reports, Eskom expects the country’s power problems to last another five to seven years.

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