Telkom’s services have been fully restored after a temporary outage that impacted its network nationwide, causing disruptions in internet access, calling, and SMS services for its customers.
The outage was first reported by customers who experienced a complete lack of signal on the Telkom network. This issue prevented them from accessing the internet, making phone calls, and sending text messages.
According to reports from Downdetector.co.za, a website monitoring user complaints about network availability, there was a significant spike in reported problems related to the Telkom network. The issues started around 2pm, though the exact cause of the widespread outage remains unclear.
Telkom confirmed the temporary network outage and assured customers that their technical teams were actively addressing the issue to ensure a swift resolution. They stated, “Our team is actively addressing the issue to ensure it is resolved as a matter of urgency. The network is now restored but some parts of the network are still synchronizing, and we expect the entire network to be fully online in an hour.”
The company added, “Our technical teams are investigating the cause of the outage. We will continue to monitor the network. We regret the inconvenience this has caused.”
Interestingly, the outage came a day after two subsea cables were severed north of Durban, impacting connectivity along Africa’s east coast. However, Telkom stated it’s unlikely that these events were linked.
Previous Outages
Previously, there were widespread internet outages when four cables snapped on the west coast simultaneously, seemingly due to seismic activity. However, the damage to the east coast cables and the west coast incidents are not directly related.
As a gesture to its customers, Telkom announced that it will credit users on its network with 1GB of data valid for two days.
Reports of issues with Telkom started surfacing on Downdetector around 2:00 pm on Monday, May 13, 2024. At the height of the outage, over 8,000 network outage reports were submitted about Telkom. Of these reports, 40% were related to internet problems, 36% to phone problems, and 24% described a total service blackout.
