After more than a decade of load shedding, it still doesn’t seem that South Africans can look forward to a stable and reliable national power grid anytime soon.

While most large companies were able to use onsite generators to keep their employees productive and connected through the regular power cuts experienced during previous years’ load shedding periods, Covid-19 has made this a challenge for organisations whose staff members are now working from home.

Although most of these home-based employees have laptops that can operate on battery power during loadshedding, very few are able to keep their routers and fibre boxes powered up – so companies and their employees end up losing valuable productive time as a result of little or no connectivity during power cuts.

Fortunately, there’s a simple and affordable solution to the problem. It’s called the WiBOX and it’s a cleverly designed UPS built by South Africans who understand the challenges of load shedding — specifically to keep modems, routers and fibre boxes on when power outages strike.

WiBOX was the brainchild of a group of South African students that saw the important need for a way to keep their fellow students connected to the Internet during load shedding so that they could continue to do research, complete and submit assignments, and even attend online lectures and tutorials. Of course, keeping them connected to their online music and entertainment was equally important.

Replaceable battery

Their solution is a compact mini UPS with a replaceable 7.2Ah rechargeable battery to keep users connected through even the longest of load shedding periods. Equally importantly, WiBOX is highly affordable, quick and easy to install, and small enough to fit comfortably and unobtrusively next to most routers – and now, thanks to a partnership between Arion Power and Digital Generation (DG), this productivity-saving power device is readily available to organisations of all sizes across South Africa.

According to Zakiya Mohamed, national procurement manager for DG, the partnership with Arion Power to distribute the WiBOX was an obvious one for the leading South African ICT company. “DG has built its success on partnering with top global brands to deliver cost-efficient, top-quality and value-adding IT products and solutions to South African businesses,” Mohamed explains. “The WiBOX not only ticks all these boxes but is also a locally made product designed by a proudly South African company that shares our commitment to world-class quality, sustainability and social upliftment.”

Thembalethu Hadebe, sales and marketing director of Arion Power, agrees and points out that WiBOX has the potential to solve the significant problem of unreliable power supply that most businesses are grappling with today as they implement their remote working models. “Thanks to this support and partnership between DG and Arion Power, WiBOX is now available across DG’s extensive national distribution network,” he says, “giving all organisations easy access to an effective way of keeping their staff connected and productive during load shedding.”

The WiBOX UPS is available nationally from Digital Generation and can be procured as individual units or in bulk. For more information and pricing details, e-mail DG at [email protected], or visit www.dg.co.za and complete the contact form.