Two important undersea cables that connect South Africa to the global internet have been hit by a breakdown.
The South Atlantic 3/West Africa (SAT-3) and the West Africa Cable System (WACS) have been hit by a breakdown causing outages first occurred on January 16th. Botch cables run from Africa to Europe. According to the reports, a total of 13 countries were impacted by the issue. Cases of slow internet speeds and outages took place in South Africa, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Gabon, and Cameroon.
Repair ship has been sent
According to Business Insider South Africa, over the weekend, a repair ship has been sent to the location to fix the problem. The WACS system is currently owned by a consortium of telecom companies. South Africa’s largest telco MTN Group apologized to its customers about the outages. Afrihost also announced that connections are being re-routed but it is still unclear when services can resume normally.
South Africa’s largest telecommunications infrastructure provider OpenServe commented,
“The unusual and simultaneous dual cable break has resulted in customers, that are connected to Openserve’s global capacity clients, experiencing reduced speed on international browsing. International voice calling and mobile roaming has also been impacted. Openserve appreciates the patience of all affected clients and their customers as undersea cable infrastructure repairs are complex and can be time consuming.”
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