Landline internet
Mobile Internet
TV StreamingMarket leader in mobile and expanding home internet
Vodacom is one of the largest telecom operators in the country, providing mobile voice, data services, and home broadband via LTE and fibre.
With tens of millions of active SIMs, Vodacom leads the market in mobile coverage and has expanded its offering to include fixed home internet using open-access fibre networks. The company focuses on reliability, urban coverage and digital innovation, offering flexible plans for both prepaid and contract users.
Infrastructure strength and service coverage
Vodacom operates its own nationwide mobile network that includes 4G and 5G coverage, reaching most of the population.
Its fixed services, however, rely on partner fibre networks (like Vumatel or Openserve). Because Vodacom owns the mobile network but not the fibre infrastructure, service outages may result from:
- Mobile network disruptions caused by power issues or tower maintenance
- Fibre network incidents affecting partner ISPs
- Backbone or interconnection problems in the open-access ecosystem
Vodacom regularly updates customers about planned maintenance and publishes network reliability metrics on its official website.
How to get help and check current outages
Here’s how you can quickly verify Vodacom’s service status and get support:
- 🧭 Check planned maintenance: Vodacom Network Maintenance
- 📞 Customer care: Dial 135 from a Vodacom mobile or 082 135 from any phone
- 💬 Chat online via the Vodacom Help & Support portal
- 🔍 If your fibre or LTE connection is down, test your router first, then check whether your suburb is listed on the maintenance page
R4.5 billion spent on batteries, generators and solar since 2020
A decade of load shedding turned network resilience into one of Vodacom's biggest capex lines. Between 2020 and 2024 the operator invested more than R4.5 billion in batteries, mobile and static generators, solar systems and site security across its South African network. Vodacom reported it was able to keep customers connected 94% of the time during load shedding, and up to 97% network availability from stage 4.
More recent investments include the upgrade of over 1 700 sites in Gauteng with enhanced battery backup, announced in October 2025. Vodacom also runs a virtual wheeling pilot with Eskom: a programme that lets the operator buy electricity from independent renewable power producers and wheel it across the grid to its base stations, reducing reliance on diesel generators during outages.
Despite this, mobile sites remain the weakest link in the home connectivity chain. Once batteries are depleted (typically after four to twelve hours of continuous outage), the cell goes off air and so does mobile data. For a real-time view of where reports are concentrated and to check if neighbours are affected, see the South Africa power outage map. To check whether a wider event is load shedding rather than a Vodacom fault, see the load shedding page.