Frogfoot explains flurry of network outages

South African fibre network operator Frogfoot says that fibre-to-the-home outages and slowdowns experienced by customers in several provinces over the past few weeks were nothing out of the ordinary.

MyBroadband recently received several emails from disgruntled Frogfoot Fibre customers, primarily from the Western Cape and Eastern Cape, complaining about frequent, sometimes days-long network outages.

One of these customers referred us to a Facebook group called “Frogfoot needs to up their game”, where numerous others added to the complaints list.

In the past week, MyBroadband counted 39 reports of outages or degraded network performance from the 2,300 members on the group.

Most of the complaints seemed to be from customers in Mossel Bay, Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth), Somerset West, Strand, Gordon’s Bay, and Kempton Park.

“Frogfoot, can you please inform why the fibre is down in Mossel Bay?” one member posted. “Been having issues for five days now, please update your website and inform your clients why you are down.”

A Kempton Park resident listed seven dates on which their Internet connection was disrupted since 18 December 2023,

Another member who did not identify their location said they had experienced seven outages since the start of February 2024.

A fourth member likened Frogfoot’s service levels to that of the government.

“Seems like Frogfoot does not work on weekends and takes forever to fix something,” they complained.

A recent MyBroadband Forum thread created to highlight latency spikes and packet loss experienced by some Frogfoot customers in the Cape Town area also received a flood of complaints from users in other regions experiencing various network issues in recent weeks.

Frogfoot: Only 1% of network affected

Frogfoot said although it noted the issues, the outages remained within expected parameters for a network of its scale and compared favourably to historical data and industry standards.

“Each identified outage was due to unrelated issues, which were promptly identified and addressed,” Frogfoot said.

“Although these recent issues affected only 1% of our network, we acknowledge their impact and prioritise swift resolution and communication with all stakeholders until full restoration.”

Frogfoot provided specific causes for outages in some of the hotspots highlighted in the complaints:

• Western Cape — Firmware upgrades caused downtime in specific areas.
• Mossel Bay and George — Teething problems occurred during a network transition. Possibly linked to Frogfoot acquiring Garden Route Networks in October 2023.
• Gqeberha — Isolated hardware failure affected the network
• Kempton Park — Vandalism caused outages
• Ramsgate — Unstable power supply led to a two-hour outage

Frogfoot said each of the issues received dedicated attention from its 24/7 standby teams.

“Our proactive outage management process ensures consistent communication across various channels, including social media, until full resolution,” Frogfoot said.

“We have also implemented transparent communication practices since 2023, alerting stakeholders to potential issues or downtime.”

Frogfoot also said that its backup systems maintained an average uptime of 99%, supplemented by contingency measures during rare outages.

“With an average resolution time of four hours, our preventive maintenance approach minimises disruptions and ensures optimal network performance,” the company said.

The FNO added that it responded to approximately 4,000 unique tickets logged by customers every month, which represented only 5% of its customer base.