Klerksdorp Record, Klerksdorp - The outage of internet cables touches everyone using the internet as the service is slow and videos buffers. Internet signals travel around the world, using undersea fibre cables. Ten undersea cables connect South Africa to the rest of the world and other parts of the continent, and play a critical role in providing stable connections to international servers.
As reported recently, four major cables are currently experiencing outages, and repairs can take weeks to months.
When cables like these break, it can result in severe service disruptions and force companies to re-route traffic to mitigate the effects: Seacom suffered an outage on its subsea cable system in the Red Sea region, disrupting the cable running from Mombasa, Kenya, to Zafarana, Egypt.
In early March, it was reported that a Houthi attack on a cargo ship in the Red Sea damaged three cables in the region, which likely included the Seacom/Tata EGN-Eurasia cable. “It’s generally accepted that the Rubymar dropped an anchor when fired upon and as a result, it damaged cables in proximity,” said Ryan Wopschall, general manager of the International Cable Protection Committee, the group representing subsea cable operators.
Then things got worse… On Thursday March 14, South African residents reported massive Internet problems across the country, including a lack of connectivity for some and the inability to use mission-critical services like Microsoft’s cloud platform.
Outages on the West Africa Cable System (WACS), Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), and SAT3 cables near Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire were to blame for the issues.
Microsoft services, including 365 and Teams, were heavily impacted by the disruptions and on March 15, the company warned its customers that cable repairs had been delayed.
In the meantime, it has re-routed traffic to restore cloud platform functionality in South Africa.
Equinix-owned submarine cable operator MainOne said its preliminary analysis points to seismic activity in the area.
The four cables that experienced breaks in the past month are among the longest that land in South Africa.
