Fixed LTE During Loadshedding And Your Business
Loadshedding is a permanent feature of our lives. It’s unfortunate, but it’s the hand we’ve been dealt and the only thing left to do is understand how it affects your company so that you can be prepared to continue with business as usual – even when the signal drops.
Initially, businesses invested in backup generators in the hopes that this would resolve all their issues brought about by the scheduled (and sometimes unplanned) power outages. A handy solution indeed, albeit a noisy one.
What’s come up more recently, though, is that in spite of having access to this backup power, loadshedding is still negatively impacting many businesses’ abilities to work. During some of our personal interactions with our SME clients, it’s become clear that the drop in LTE coverage during loadshedding is hindering their ability to connect and operate.
In this article, we want to shed some light onto:
- How the mobile networks are affected during loadshedding
- How this impacts your business’ connectivity
- Solutions to help your business stay connected
What Happens To Mobile Networks During Loadshedding
While we understand all too well that power outages are frustrating, making it difficult or impossible to handle daily operations, it’s not just about being without power.
Loadshedding also has a direct impact on mobile network infrastructure, resulting in poor mobile Internet coverage and speeds. Essentially, during loadshedding mobile operators rely on base station generators and backup batteries to power the cell towers.
These batteries generally have 6-12 hours capacity (depending on the site category) and generally require 12-18 hours to recharge.
If the outage goes beyond this capacity and power is fully depleted, the tower stops working entirely. Depending on the configuration of nearby towers, this may cause customers to experience an intermittent service or an area to black out entirely.
The problems don’t stop there.
With the more frequent nature of loadshedding, mobile operators are dealing with multiple issues. For instance, the constant outages can cause the batteries to overheat and take longer to cool down, affecting the efficiency of the signal transmission and directly impacting the performance of the batteries by compromising battery integrity.
Additionally, electricity surges occur when the power returns, which may mean that equipment at base stations is affected and will need to be replaced or rebooted before those sites can be restored.
How This Affects your Business
When the cellphone tower with the strongest signal that your connectivity is reliant on goes down, you would be connected through ‘signal spillage’ from a secondary cell. If you’re in close enough reach to this second cell, you should be fine.
But if more people connect to this cell or you’re on the edge of that cell, your network service will deteriorate and experience intermittent service.
Of course, if both cells go down, then there’ll be no signal at all.
This example demonstrates the impact of loadshedding on your business. Essentially, when the power goes out, you will be unable to connect to your online ordering system, security system, stock and inventory systems, and your point-of-sale (POS) system. These are just three functions which highlight how losing your connection hinders your ability to operate.
This can lead to a major loss of productivity, and with loadshedding featuring as a permanent fixture, this could mean that your business won’t be able to reach its full potential.
Stay Connected With Huge Connect
Realistically speaking, mobile performance is impacted by a number of factors. In addition to loadshedding, your business connectivity can also be impacted by your access to fibre backhaul and reliable power supply, spectrum availability, as well as end-user devices.
If anything does happen to impact your connectivity, having your data backed up and available means that you can keep your business connected and avoid a loss of productivity.
For this reason, it’s critical to invest in a full backup Internet connection, such as a Fixed LTE failover service. This solution involves using an LTE data service and rechargeable MiFi router to detect when your fixed Internet connection has failed and the primary service has been disconnected.
The modem will then automatically switch over to the fixed LTE backup service to keep you online. This enables the router to re-establish your connection and support the key processes of your business.
The Huge Connect Fixed LTE Solution
The Huge Connect Fixed LTE solution offers a vital lifeline when loadshedding threatens the viability of small-to-medium businesses across a variety of industries.
Importantly, our service includes a proactive monitoring on the status of your Primary and Fixed LTE Backup Link, the ability to aggregate backup data usage across your multiple sites, and seamlessly connect over to the Huge Connect Fixed LTE network as a backup link when your Primary Broadband Access Link fails or is temporarily unavailable.
This backup benefit is in addition to our improved pricing model, which allows you to only pay for data when you use it, not forgetting the convenience of having your service delivered from one contract, one price, and just one call to us in case anything goes wrong.
If you need help choosing the right connectivity solution for your business that will help you combat risks like loadshedding, talk to us.
