Telkom has confirmed that the severe weather that battered the Cape provinces this week disrupted parts of its network, with the impact falling primarily on internet services rather than voice calls.

In a statement, Telkom said the operator had experienced service disruptions affecting parts of the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape due to the inclement weather.

It said the incidents mainly affected Telkom internet access, while core voice services remained largely operational – which is why calls continued to go through during the outage. Some services have since been restored, she added, and Telkom is continuing to monitor the network.

The disruption coincides with one of the most punishing stretches of inclement weather to hit the southern half of the country in years. A cut-off low-pressure weather system first lashed the Eastern Cape and Garden Route from the start of last week before driving across parts of the Western Cape on Monday. The Garden Route district municipality has described the resulting flooding in its eastern districts as the worst in 30 years, with at least 45 roads closed and several inland communities cut off. Aerial reconnaissance flights were deployed to assess damage and locate stranded residents over the weekend.

The South African Weather Service then issued a level-8 warning for the Western Cape as a second frontal system made landfall in Cape Town and the Winelands on Monday. The Provincial Disaster Management Centre confirmed three storm-related deaths, schools across the province were closed on Tuesday, and the City of Cape Town said its teams could not safely carry out electricity work in the heavy rain and gale-force winds.

Down

That kind of weather inevitably translates into pain for telecoms operators. Mobile base stations fall back to battery backup when grid power fails, and extended outages can drain those reserves before generators arrive or technicians can get to site. Fibre cabinets and distribution nodes are similarly exposed, while flooded roads and fallen trees slow repair crews. The Overstrand municipality on the Cape south coast said on Tuesday that most cellphone networks were down and communication was limited.

Downdetector also logged spikes in user-reported outages on Tuesday evening across Telkom, Openserve, Vumatel, Vodacom and Vox, suggesting the connectivity hit was not confined to a single operator.