Is microwave internet affected by weather conditions?

Yes, to a degree, but modern licensed microwave links are engineered specifically for South African conditions, and the practical impact is smaller than the reputation suggests.

What Actually Affects a Microwave Link

Radio frequency signals travelling through the air can be attenuated (weakened) by particles in that air, primarily heavy rain, and to a lesser degree dense fog or dust. The higher the frequency band a link operates on, the more sensitive it generally is to rain fade. Lower-frequency licensed bands are considerably more resilient to weather than higher-frequency short-range links.

How Links Are Engineered Around This

A properly designed microwave link accounts for expected rainfall intensity in the deployment region during the link budget calculation, the engineering process that determines transmit power, antenna size and frequency band before installation. This is precisely why a proper site survey and link design matters: an undersized or poorly specified link will show real performance drops during storms, while a correctly engineered one is built with enough margin to maintain service through all but the most extreme weather events.

What You Might Actually Notice

During heavy rainfall, a well-designed link may show a brief, minor reduction in throughput rather than a full outage. Extreme weather events (severe hailstorms, for instance) can cause temporary degradation on any wireless technology, this isn't unique to microwave, the same is true of satellite and, to some extent, LTE/5G signal quality.

Comparing to Other Weather-Sensitive Factors

It's worth keeping this in perspective: fibre lines can be physically damaged by construction, cable theft or flooding; LTE towers can lose power in extended load shedding without generator backup. No connectivity type is entirely weather or disaster-proof, which is exactly why redundancy across genuinely different technologies matters more than picking the single "most weatherproof" option.

Physical Maintenance Matters Too

Beyond weather during transmission, the physical dish and mounting hardware need to withstand wind loading and general exposure over years of service. Proper installation (correct mounting, weatherproofing of connectors, lightning protection) affects long-term reliability as much as the weather itself.

Our Approach

We size every microwave link with adequate rain fade margin for the specific site and region, not a generic spec sheet number. If a site's rainfall profile or link distance means microwave alone can't meet your uptime requirements, we'll tell you that upfront and recommend fibre, a hybrid approach, or LTE failover alongside it, rather than sell a link that will underperform in the exact conditions it needs to handle.