The deadline rush is a familiar and terrifying feeling for anyone who has ever worked at a newspaper. This weekend, however, the pressure took on a whole new dimension at Grocott's Mail when ADSL internet within the whole country ground to a halt.
The deadline rush is a familiar and terrifying feeling for anyone who has ever worked at a newspaper. This weekend, however, the pressure took on a whole new dimension at Grocott's Mail when ADSL internet within the whole country ground to a halt.
Breaks in two underwater cable networks caused a near-outage of all international browsing for several South African ADSL service providers, the largest of which is MWeb.
The anger and frustration elicited by the outage caused a sense of deja vu in the wake of the week-long water outage that hit nearly all of Grahamstown and from which many have yet to emerge.
The internet is fast becoming indispensable to its users. Without it, putting together Grocott's Mail would be all but impossible.
Grahamstown's water woes and the internet cable breaks are unfortunate incidents affecting thousands of lives – but how service providers deal with emergencies like these needs to change.
During the city-wide water crisis, one sentiment resounded: we need communication.
Why are the outages happening? For how long will they continue? What can we do in the meantime?
Keeping us informed shows at the very least a basic willingness to cooperate and concern for our well-being.
Both crises highlighted a second concern: the absolute inadequacy of back-up measures in place for these essential services.
"It's critical for South Africans to have a backup ISP for ADSL when MWeb gets sea-sick," tweeted Gus Silber, a journalist, author and social media educator.
Just like it is our municipality's responsibility to provide us with water, it is the responsibility of the service provider we are subscribed to to provide us with usable internet – no matter what happens.
Although MWeb has capacity on an alternative cable system, this only covers about 45% of the total requirement: it is a ridiculously feeble back-up plan for a service without which many people are stranded.
Enraged MWeb clients on Twitter called for refunds and threatened to cancel their accounts.
Users have to depend on the 3G internet on their cellphones at a great additional cost. Those who are still without water in Grahamstown have had to turn to the fire department for help.
Suburbs and schools that have been without water for months have implemented their own tanks and pumps.
It's not that hard, service providers.
Implement working back-up plans, and if they fail, be honest and forthcoming about the details and we can work together.
Whether it is water or web access, we need it and we pay for it. It's time to deliver!
