The bomb attacks in London caused panic among South Africans on Thursday, resulting in stiff congestion on major phone routes between South Africa and London.
ITWeb reported on Friday that most networks coped with the increase in traffic and only some delays were reported, according to local telecoms providers.
Xolisa Vapi, media-relations senior specialist from Telkom, released a statement that said: “The traffic congestion is no indication of network failure. In fact, all other Telkom international routes are working as usual, with congestion only affecting links to the United Kingdom.”
Telkom said its network successfully routed 500Â 000 calls to the UK between noon and 2pm on Thursday and that the South African Telkom international infrastructure was not affected by the attacks.
Mthobi Tyamzashe, Vodacom executive director of corporate communications, told the Mail & Guardian Online on Friday: “We did not see any abnormal congestion on our Telkom interconnect links, even though the outgoing call volume doubled.
“The total successful outgoing calls to the UK between 12pm and 2pm yesterday [Thursday] were 11Â 680. This figure is based on billing data. The total outgoing calls to the UK for yesterday was 60Â 343. The daily average of the period July 1 to 6 is 28Â 093,” he said.
Ravin Maharaj, MTN’s media relations manager, told ITWeb that calls from MTN subscribers to the UK had doubled in the hours after the blasts.
Cell C also experienced an increase in its network traffic, but Nathi Sukazi, Cell C media relations manager, told ITWeb that this had not impacted Cell C’s service levels.
“Any difficulties that subscribers may have experienced in calling London are likely to be due to congestion reported by UK operators,” he said.