Friday, April 25, 2025

February 12, 2019

How To Stay Connected When Load Shedding Strikes

Load shedding is here in full force, which means it's time to take a look at some tech-savvy devices that'll keep you connected when the lights go out.

It’s happening again.

Load shedding is upon us.

This means that South Africans everywhere are buying candles and working out survival methods for those long hours when we go back to the dark ages.

Cooking can still be relatively simple, because you can just fire up the braai. You can also get by with a few bags of ice to keep your drinks cold.

If you’re looking for ways to keep the kids busy, you could always break out the board games and get some peace by reading using a solar lamp or camping head torch.

There’s one thing, though, that until now has remained elusive -the WiFi that would allow you to keep working and keep connected when there’s no power.

Enter LTE, or long-term evolution, which is a standard for wireless broadband communication. All you really need to know, though, is that an LTE device allows you to stay connected when the lights go out.

The benefits of this are pretty obvious, but let me lay down a few scenarios where this might be useful.

  1. Small businesses, and all businesses, that need to stay connected to function.
  2. Freelancers who can’t afford to drive all over town looking for a WiFi hotspot when they’re working to a deadline.
  3. People (so everyone) who need to keep their smartphones connected without haemorrhaging data.

If you match any of the above criteria, you should probably get going on getting an LTE device.

RSAWEB offers a wide range of connectivity and hosting products for both businesses and individuals, with a solution to suit your needs and budget, so they’re the people you want to speak to about staying connected.

Here’s their selection of LTEs:

The Huawei E5885, in particular, is a fast and compact LTE mobile WiFi, that provides outstanding LTE network download speeds of up to 150 Mbps and a battery lasting up to 12 hours.

In other words, it’s your first line of defence against load shedding.

Take that, Eskom.

If you want to get your hands on one of these beauties, it’s quite easy. Simply go to the RSAWEB website and choose how many gigs you want, and tailor the package to your exact needs:

Then you pick out your device and you’re connected within five days – no setup costs, no connection fees, no fuss.

If you run out of data, you can top up for only R99 a GB. If you’ve ever used your smartphone as a WiFi hotspot during a blackout, you’ll understand how much of a data saving that is.

Don’t let the dark get you down.

Go to RSAWEB for more info.