COVID-19: What Vodacom is doing to help

Vodacom has taken a number of steps to help during the COVID-19 pandemic, including:

• Partnering with Discovery Bank to offer an online platform where all South Africans can check their level of risk, book online consultations with medical staff and get referrals to hospital if needed.
• Partnering with the National Department of Health to send awareness raising text messages to over 44 million subscribers in South Africa. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Vodacom is implementing a zero-rated COVID-19 information short code for the Ministry of Health which will enable the public to get advice on the virus.  It has also zero rated all government websites and applications that inform the public about the pandemic. A regular SMS broadcast is sent to Vodacom DRC’s customers with information and updates from the government.
• Ensuring the network is resilient and remains able to service the increased demands upon it. Vodacom will invest R500 million over two months to upgrade network capacity and ensure resilience in South Africa. It applied to the country’s regulator, ICASA, to use presently unused spectrum which has been temporarily assigned to help during the pandemic. ICASA approved the request, enabling Vodacom to ease network congestion.
• Increase server capacity to its e-School platform, to ensure that students can access it when needed. The platform is free to use for all Vodacom customers in South Africa. Vodacom operations in Tanzania, Lesotho, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique have made similar offerings available to their customers.
• Providing free access to South Africa’s COVID-19 health information website.
• Publicising its Gender-Based Violence Command Center, launched in 2014, as experts predicted a rise in the number of Gender-Based Violence incidents during the national lockdown.
• Partnered with Samsung to donate 20,000 smartphones, 100 terrabytes of data and 10 million voice minutes to the National Department of Health, for workers to use for resource planning related to the Government’s national testing campaign in South Africa. Vodacom Lesotho has donated 1,000 devices to monitor the outbreak.
• Partnered with the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) to allow Vodacom South Africa customers to access UIF services for free, including when applying for benefits.

For the latest information about what Vodacom is doing to help click here.