Local mobile operators handled booming traffic volumes during the 2010 soccer World Cup.
Vodacom enjoyed a 40% increase in SMS traffic over the month, with 600m text messages sent.
“In some cases, the traffic on a single base station increased by more than 500% compared to just prior to the start of the tournament,” says Vodacom’s executive director of network and information technology, Andries Delport.
He says Vodacom dedicated more than 15 000 manhours to operational support to keep the company’s networks running efficiently.
“Once the fans started arriving, in addition to our normal 24/7 monitoring of the network, a dedicated network operations centre was set up and manned from 8am to 1am on match days,” says Delport.
Cell C boosted traffic to three times the normal levels on in-bound roaming calls. “Before and after each of the games call volumes were very high,” says Cell C CEO Lars Reichelt.
He says in the same period last year the traffic levels were 70% lower than during this month, and SMS traffic increased by more than 15% while the World Cup was on.
The first African sponsor of the event, MTN did not have readily available figures at the time of publication, However, its traffic volumes are likely to show a similar increase as its rivals’.
Through its partnership with Match, MTN sold 600 000 specialised tourist Sim cards. MTN has not yet confirmed how many of these Sims were activated. — Staff reporter, TechCentral
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