Undersea cable failures leave South Africa with slow internet

slow internet

If you are struggling with slow internet, apparently you are not alone as the whole of South Africa has reportedly been slowed down due to freak failures with two undersea cables that connect South Africa to the global internet.

Internet service provider, Axxess, reported on Friday morning that the South Atlantic 3/West Africa (SAT-3/Wasc) submarine cable, which links Portugal and Spain to South Africa suffered a breakdown near Libreville, Gabon.

“UPDATE:  Engineers have ascertained that the SAT3/WACS break is in the Libreville, Gabon, Vicinity and the WACS cable break has been isolated to the Congo between two repeater sites. Further tests are being conducted by the upstream provider along with the cable consortium’s,” Axxess advised its customers on Twitter.

Afrihost also Tweeted; “Network status update: Openserve earlier ascertained that the SAT3/WACS break is in the Libreville, Gabon, Vicinity and the WACS cable break has been isolated to the Congo between two repeater sites. Further tests are being conducted by the upstream provider. Updates to follow.”

The same cable also connects several West African countries along the way to the internet.

Meanwhile, the West Africa Cable System (Wacs), which links South Africa with the United Kingdom, and also winds down the west coast of Africa, also saw an outage off the coast of Congo.

The WACS system lands in South Africa at Yzerfontein, in the Western Cape, while the SAT3/WASC cable enters South Africa at Melkbosstrand, again in the Western Cape.

The result has been very slow internet speeds for some users since Thursday with the problem seemingly persisting into Friday.

Most users can still access social media (several social media sites have servers in South Africa) as well as websites hosted locally. However, accessing websites and online services hosted abroad has proven a huge challenge.

On Friday morning, internet service provider, Afrihost, told users that connections are being re-routed, but that it still had no estimate on when normal service would resume.

The outage has also affected several countries in west and southern Africa that rely on these cables for their internet.

Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on google
Google+
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on linkedin
LinkedIn
Share on pinterest
Pinterest