South Africa’s internet cable repair delayed by Cape Town’s weather

Cape Town’s inclement weather this weekend has delayed repairs to the broken undersea cables that have affected South Africa’s international internet access since Thursday.

A cut-off low over the city this weekend, that resulted in heavy rain and gale force wind gusts in some parts, has forced a repair ship to remain docked in Cape Town’s harbour, according to the South African National Research and Education Network (TENET).

There are no new updates to the WACS break subsequent to below. The cable vessel hinted to attend still remains in Cape Town. For the reported WACS London side issues, the update still remains that this will be attended to at the end Jan/start Feb.

— REN Alerts (@RENAlerts) January 19, 2020

The ship was to assess a break in two cables connecting the UK and Europe to South Africa, namely the WACS and SAT3, which were discovered on Thursday.

Both cables land north of Cape Town but two breaks have been located off the coast of Gabon.

A third break was later found off the coast of the UK.

No estimated time for repair, says Afrihost

South African ISP Afrihost detailed the current repair efforts in a verbose Status Page update on Sunday afternoon.

“Our upstream providers report that adverse weather in the Western Cape has delayed the departure of the ship to effect repairs to international undersea cables. We currently do not have an ETR for final repairs to be completed,” it wrote.

Upstream providers report that adverse weather has delayed departure of the ship effecting repairs to undersea cables. We do not have an ETR. We are grateful to our clients for their continued patience. For more information and updates, visit https://t.co/yPVuSe0iHo

— Afrihost (@Afrihost) January 19, 2020

Both primary and secondary cables failed within a day of each other. We are using an alternate route which does not have sufficient capacity to accommodate all traffic rerouted to it. Our network team are working to provide the best experience possible. https://t.co/rFChe5UwHq

— Afrihost (@Afrihost) January 19, 2020

It explained that some services, like international gaming servers and Twitter — which was down across South Africa for most of the weekend — have been “optimised for best performance” as the ISP rerouted traffic via alternative cables.

TENET added that the alternative route is provided by the SEACOM and EASSy cables, which land on South Africa’s eastern coastline, but this will affect load times for those on the western areas of the country.

Current state of the SA NREN network backbone is as below illustrating the WACS/SAT-3 break on the West and SEACOM/EASSy capacity on the East Coast. pic.twitter.com/QO6F2Aqt1X

— REN Alerts (@RENAlerts) January 19, 2020

The alternative routes however do not have sufficient capacity to meet demand, Afrihost added, so it’s likely that South Africans will still experience slow internet access for quite some time.

There’s also no estimated time of repair, while it’s not clear when the ship will be dispatched.

Rain and windy weather is set to remain over Cape Town on Sunday, finally clearing by Monday.

Feature image: an ethernet cable, by Markus Spiske via Unsplash