Vodacom South Africa revealed a hefty investment in boosting its network capacity to cope with rising traffic resulting from the Covid-19 (coronavirus) pandemic.

In a statement, the operator said it had taken several actions in recent weeks to cope with heightened demand, including allocating ZAR500 million ($26.7 million) to beef-up network capacity over a two month period.

Demand has increased during a lockdown in the nation, with Vodacom reporting peak demand patterns now span entire days rather than specific periods. It expects further rises after cutting prices and launching free services on its zero-rated ConnectU platform.

In addition to the investment, it applied for temporary access to additional spectrum, which group CTO Andries Delport said was the “quickest and most cost-effective” way to boost capacity.

The company also secured permits to enable field teams to continue critical work covering infrastructure repairs and upgrades.

“Vodacom’s priority is ensuring that all possible measures are in place to support South Africa’s efforts to combat the outbreak of Covid-19. We will continue to increase our network investment spend to manage the extraordinary traffic increases in the short term. We remain ready to support governments through our various operations across the continent in whatever way we can”, said Delport.