World class connectivity delivered during World Cup

During the World Cup, Vodacom Business doubled the last mile bandwidth to Southern Sun FIFA-accredited hotels across the country to provide world-class connectivity for guests.

Southern Sun Hotels had 39 Official FIFA Hotels that hosted a wide range of guests from teams to officials to media and football fans over a two month period.

‚Southern Sun Hotels has been a fully converged customer of Vodacom Business since we cut them over from their previous provider in November 2009,‚ says Vodacom Business Managing Executive Ermano Quartero. ‚It was clear they would need special facilities and support during the World Cup period due to the expected influx of tourists and the teams and their entourages. We agreed to double the access capacity to all hotels at no charge and to provide them with 24×7 on-site support.‚

During the two months of the World Cup (two weeks before and after) the following statistics were utilized on the Southern Sun Hotels Guest Internet Service:

• Time spent online : 255, 384 hours

• Number of Sessions : 194,856

• Traffic Downloaded: 8313984 MB = 8119 GB = 8TB Data

• The traffic Downloaded equates to 354 million emails

• Southern Sun/Vodacom Business supplied in excess of 150MB bandwidth

• Availability for the period was 99.999% across all hotels.

Southern Sun Hotels is a Top 5 customer for Vodacom Business, with a full featured MPLS VPN including hosting, security and internet access, with wireless connectivity in the guest rooms, and wireless hot spots in the public areas. Vodacom Business uses its own fibre and microwave infrastructure to the hotels, thus ensuring maximum up time.

Sandi Macfie, Director of IT: Southern Sun Hotels, says, ‚Vodacom Business provided Southern Sun with onsite support during the World Cup which was invaluable in assisting with our support strategy over this time period. The ability of Vodacom Business to double our guest internet bandwidth for the World Cup period was of immense value to Southern Sun Hotels and our guests and truly displayed the capabilities of both companies to compete with the best internationally. It is really refreshing to work with a partner like Vodacom Business who really understands our business and is more than willing to go the extra mile to ensure we provide superior guest experiences.‚