EFFORTPOST South African Cellphone Tower Backup-Battery Theft Drama

Greetings Dramatards

Today I wanna talk about Mobi Towers, or mobile data Cellphone Towers in South Africa - you know those 4G metal poles which the british for some reason think is giving you autism. Well for those of you who have been following the ESKOM shitshow in which the National South African energy provider has systemically failed to provide sufficient electricity for the nation, to the extent that we need to literally ration out electricity between cities in what is basically a turn based electricity time-share system called Loadshedding. https://www.joburg.org.za/departments_/Pages/MOEs/city%20power/What-is-load-shedding.aspx

Well as you guys may have deduced, internet and cellphone towers can't exactly function without a power supply, so about 10 years ago, many of the foresightful CEOs of RSA's Cellphone provider companies saw the disaster looming on the horizon, and decided to invest in everything from backup generators, to high capacity Inverters and batteries installed in their servers and antenna towers.

You guys might think these guys to be Nostrodamus soothsayers, but the reality is that even way back then the warning signs of our energy grid collapse was like a fricking WW2 night search light. ESKOM engineers screamed annually that all the power stations were old and under-maintained, that our coal power-generators were running on fumes, that the massive ANC induced corruption of the entire ESKOM leadership hobbled everything, that our commie overlords were selling all our high quality coal to China, and keeping the low quality to domestic stations to a far greater degree than they were designed for. Ect ect. The point is you had to live under a rock or be turbo wingcucked to not see this infrastructural collapse looming on the horizon, so when 2021 rolled in with Loadshedding becoming a permanent fixture of South African life, the only people whom were surprised were black South africans too wingcucked with their heads into the ANC's butt, or too spiteful in their delight to see mayos b-word and cry about disaster, to realize that they also would suffer under the coming disasters.

Point is even as far back as 2013 Loadshedding would be implemented, but at a much much smaller scale and much rarer. They would happen maybe for like 3 weeks every 6 months. With 2020 COVID shutting down so much economy it gave our dipshit ANC leaders a false sense of reprieve as the national electricity grid would function under far less than pre-COVID levels, so when the straggling economy rolled in 2021, signs were all over the wall. The loadshedding would become more and more frequent, until the average South African couldn't remember a time without it

Anyways, point is the backup batteries for Mobi towers existed for as far back as a decade for like half of all towers, and in 2020 a very rapid installation for the rest would take place. And they worked spectacularly well! They provided electricity for South Africans all over the country, so that when even if the shit hit the fans, and electricity was down - there would at least always be internet and phone coverage. Or it worked pretty while for a short while....

You see 2 things happened

1. with the internet not disappearing during loadshedding, the greater RSA public became aware that the cellphone towers were somehow functioning during Loadshedding, and that there must be batteries.

2. A series of applications came out on Smartphones which helped the public catalogue the Loadshedding times, so that they might plan their days accordingly, and act as alarm clocks for when loadshedding was imminent, so that office workers could save their files before power out or whatever. My favorite is the application called EskomSePush - because it's an afrikaans wordplay on the english, to translate from "Eskom se Poes", meaning ESKOM's c*nt, or ESKOM is a c*nt. https://esp.info/ What's hilarious about the politically incorrect name of EskomSePush is that the vulgarity propelled them to fame above their competitors, so when they had to go all corporate squeky clean, they tried to rebrand as the initials ESP, but their monthly downloads tanked immediately cuz all the r-slurred afrikaners would search for that infamous name and not find it lmoa

These two things allowed thieves to go full galaxy brain , and come to the conclusion that they could time their attempts at theft to coincide when loadshedding was active in the target Mobi Tower's area, without being electricuted The result was nationwide theft on a collosally grand scale

https://www.news24.com/news24/bi-archive/no-cell-phone-signal-during-load-shedding-due-to-battery-theft-2021-11

POLICE SUX:

The South African police is corrupt, inept and unmotivated to solve this type of grand larceny. In a functioning country like america, there'd be FBI trucks rolling downtown, in RSA there doesn't even exist a detective division in Pretoria/Tswane. The policing standard is so inept that for many RSA police stations there is required private security companies to safeguard their gunsafes over the weekend, cuz the cops all get too drunk and dont wanna put in over time. https://www.iol.co.za/weekend-argus/news/five-police-stations-are-protected-by-private-security-91c13b8a-4e7d-4e96-b291-8e042f44727e

I mention this to demonstrate why nothing has been done by the police, they are too corrupt, and the black market for Batteries too lucrative.

As per usual the country's media and journ*lists started to complain and screetch impotently, however it was the inconvenience that the lack of internet and basic cellphone coverage that finally lighted a fire under the asses of the usual corrupt and impotent ministers to make a vague gesture of an attempt to try and solve the problem.

https://www.news24.com/news24/bi-archive/cell-phone-reception-down-during-load-shedding-due-to-battery-theft-2021-6

For as much as I disparage the police there are lone departments trying their best, and actually catching thieves.

https://businesstech.co.za/news/telecommunications/374992/criminals-get-10-years-in-jail-for-mtn-cell-tower-battery-theft/

https://www.saps.gov.za/newsroom/msspeechdetail.php?nid=34853

https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2022-04-30-northern-cape-police-recover-cellphone-tower-batteries-stolen-in-gqeberha/

Although much of the most important thief catching is done by the HAWKs -the south african police special forces, not local fatass lardbucket police departments.

https://businesstech.co.za/news/telecommunications/371356/thieves-caught-with-more-than-24-vodacom-cellphone-tower-batteries/

CRIMINAL SYNDICATES:

https://mybroadband.co.za/news/cellular/480973-criminal-syndicates-targeting-south-africas-cellphone-towers.html

The real issue is that criminal syndicates which specialize exclusively in stealing these extremely expensive batteries, are the ones targeting the towers. Similar to car thieves, they band together, and bribe their way to key insider information, and threaten anyone standing in their way. The Cellphone companies have to go to great lengths to beef up security, or to find alternative methods of power supply that cuts out batteries entirely since the batteries themselves are the easily resellable portion worth stealing.

CELLPHONE PROVODERS STRUGGLE FINACIALLY:

The big issue is that these massive batteries are immensely expensive. One alone could cost as much a R100 000 per unit. And companies like Vodacom are bleeding cash left and right. They struggle between constantly having to replace batteries, repairing the damage to the towers the thieves caused, and trying to convert these towers to stuff like Solar panels, but none of it can outmatch the pace at which Tower batteries are stolen on a monthly basis. https://mybroadband.co.za/news/telecoms/444972-vodacom-spending-over-a-billion-rand-each-year-to-tackle-its-biggest-problem.html

The worst part (for the cellphone providers), is that a large amount of local fibre companies have started to lay down their fibreglass wires all over the country from 2020 onwards, and are having a massive competition effect against Cellphone providers like Vodacom, MTN & Telkom. https://www.itweb.co.za/content/mYZRXM9a6QxMOgA8

AS you can imagine this perpetual theft in unsustainable, so Cellphone companies have opted to just not replace batteries in non key districts, leading to many places having dogshit internet speeds and reception during loadshedding. You can actively see the internet speed slowing to a crawl the longer the loadshedding progresses. Worse is that the lack of reception during loadshedding has moved from being annoying to being actvely industry disrupting, because if you call from a place that does NOT have loadshedding, then there isn't garentee that the person you're calling is currently under a good reception, if their power is cut in a current loadshedding zone.

Even other Southern African countries like Namibia and Mozambique which have deceisively less infrastructure than RSA but stable power, and does business with RSA regularly, have started to joke they need to plan their conference calls according to RSA ineptitude.

Even the ever staunch black media personalities have started to admit that the loadshedding have moved from obnoxious to downright destabilizing. https://www.iol.co.za/the-star/news/sa-personalities-lament-impact-of-load-shedding-on-their-businesses-and-personal-lives-7b51768e-d1f5-47b3-bc4b-a0d6972029ed. And it's always a treat watching black RSA twatter and trying to find a roundabout way of blaming apartheid, but knowing it's their own choices that's now eating them from the inside out. https://www.news24.com/news24/bi-archive/sa-reacts-to-possible-stage-6-load-shedding-2022-6

Anyways that's it Good Night!