“With the outbreak of COVID-19, we knew that we were going to have to move fast to get the additional needed capacity in place,” explains Conrad Minnaar, Head of Networks at ikeja Wireless. “As we entered the lockdown period, the company has had to react in real-time to bandwidth ceilings being hit. This has meant that our own teams have been under immense pressure to roll out last-minute installations and infrastructure upgrades.

“In fact, within one day, a single segment saw two significant upgrades take place within hours of one another.”

Since the start of the lockdown, ikeja has seen a 25 percent increase in its total national bandwidth utilisation. Firm in the belief that every South African deserves the right to easy access to the internet, ikeja has committed to a host of measures for the lockdown period, including offering its free users an additional 30 minutes of browsing time every day at no charge during this period, in certain instances scrapping arrears for home and business accounts, charging no late fees for the month of April, and lastly whitelisting all major government corona websites on its hotspot service to be accessed free 24/7.

“As a trusted solution provider to ikeja since 2017, eNetworks was brought in specifically to help us address metered connections within the Gauteng segments,” Minnaar says. “As a company that understands how our business operates, and the urgency of the situation, eNetworks pulled out all the stops to help us with the necessary upgrades.

“This would not have been possible had eNetworks operated as your run-of-the-mill service provider,” he adds. “The company has played a critical role in helping ikeja to keep our service offering agile and scalable during these unprecedented times.”

“Our relationship with ikeja has grown organically and there is a mutual understanding that exists between the two organisations. Our joint focus is on the underlying technology and the speed to market, ensuring that the services are delivered quickly and effectively to ikeja’s customers.” Says Chris Morgan, Senior Sales Executive: WAN and ISP Services, Cape Region at eNetworks. “This type of partnership lends itself well to smooth operations during times of urgency.”

About Datacentrix and eNetworks:

Datacentrix enables digitalisation success.

Our specialist teams leverage the combined power of information and communications technologies to connect, transform, improve and future-proof business, supporting clients throughout their digital journey.

Datacentrix offers deep technical expertise across a mature offering, providing proven execution capability that is endorsed by the world’s foremost technology partners. With a strong African footprint, the company is recognised for its agility, in-depth industry knowledge, ethical practices and strong overall performance.

The company is a Level One (AAA) B-BBEE Contributor, with 135 percent procurement recognition. For more information, please visit www.datacentrix.co.za.

eNetworks is a wholly-owned Datacentrix company and operational business unit within the Group. The Internet Service Provider (ISP) and network specialist is a holder of IECNS, IECS and ICASA licences and builds and deploys network infrastructure and delivers consumption-based, SLA-driven internet and network services via software-defined connectivity. Its core competencies are integrated into the Datacentrix service offering and include: Internet access, Enterprise Voice solutions, Hosted firewall solutions, Connectivity solutions and Cloud services.