It seems that year after year we keep seeing just how poor our cell phone network operators are at handling mass volume SMS systems like the South African Idol’s voting system. Since last night’s Idol’s show sending votes through has been a tiresome task, every try results in a nasty “Network Out Of Order” message and this requires you the voter to keep retrying. Not only is the Idol’s voting system unable to accept the plethora of votes coming in but it has also dragged down the regular SMS system.
Last night the first vote I tried to send went through after 7 tries, the second vote went through after 15 tries and my third vote I only managed to send this morning as I just gave up last night. This morning however I again had to send the vote about 3 times to get it through and a regular SMS to my friend over the Vodacom network took me 5 retries. This just once again proves how our cellular operators charge us an arm and a leg for a service and are unable to spend the money increasing the size of their network to actually handle the load, a simple show like Idol’s drags a cellular network to it’s knees year after year and I doubt we’ll see much change when Idols 2011 comes along either. Why? Because the network operators quite simply will remain profteering without putting enough of that cash back to good use. I hope ICASA is listening.
Now the question? Just how fair is such a poorly managed voting system to the contestants? The voting lines are open until 10pm tonight to allow for people to vote (with all the network errors) BUT the onus is on you the voter to remember to vote. Most people now get busy on Monday morning and can easily get carried away with their regular work week and forget to vote but if they had had the chance to get their votes through last night while it was fresh in their minds they would be able to carry on with their week knowing it’s already done. So how many contestants lose valuable votes as a result of this and see themselves out next week just because their friends could not vote?
I think until South African mobile operators can offer world class service to such shows, the producers should look at alternative solutions for such shows. When we get our next SA Idol, think to yourself just how accurate of a reflection that is from the voting public. Boo to shoddy cellular network services.
Related posts:
- I have renewed faith in the South African Justice System – aka. Jackie Selebi gets 15 years !!
- South African Customs – TaxPayers Money Hard at Work
- South African Internet STILL SUCKS !!!
- How many South African Millionaire’s did the 2010 World Cup Produce?
