Don't shout at your ISP or Disney+ too much over WACS cable break problems

Jan

Jan

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Slow Internet in South Africa — Who to blame

Although it seems logical to blame Internet service providers and platform operators like Disney+ for badly performing online services in South Africa, they aren’t the main culprits for the country’s current connectivity problems.

Internet users in South Africa are still experiencing poor performance on their broadband connections after a rock fall in the Congo Canyon caused a break in the WACS and SAT–3 undersea fibre cables.
 
I would imagine WACS and SAT-3 owners will want to sweat the assets as much as possible since the expensive part is done the wet leg, and its been a few years they may be very much be in the profit phase of the cable. and going to offer as low as possible price to keep as much business as possible going.
So they are using full capacity, low pricing, for transit providers and owners win win till something goes wrong.
just like any other business they will offer great prices for longer term contracts, which will trickle down the supply chain.
 
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DStvNothingOn said:
I would imagine WACS and SAT-3 owners will want to sweat the assets as much as possible since the expensive part is done the wet leg, and its been a few years they may be very much profit phase of the cable. and going to offer as low as possible price to keep as much busy as possible going.
so they are using full capacity, low pricing, for transit providers and owners win win till something goes wrong.
just like any other business they will offer great prices for longer term contracts, which will trickle down the supply chain.
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Huh ?

ELI5
 
No but you can blame them for not having redundancy on the other cables since this is a recurring issue on the west coast...
 
marhsava said:
Huh ?

ELI5
Click to expand...
Me to chatgpt:

Can you fix this


I would imagine WACS and SAT-3 owners will want to sweat the assets as much as possible since the expensive part is done the wet leg, and its been a few years they may be very much profit phase of the cable. and going to offer as low as possible price to keep as much busy as possible going.
so they are using full capacity, low pricing, for transit providers and owners win win till something goes wrong.
just like any other business they will offer great prices for longer term contracts, which will trickle down the supply chain.

Chatgpt

Sure, here's a revised version of your text:

"I anticipate that WACS and SAT-3 owners will aim to maximize their asset utilization, especially considering the costly wet leg has already been completed. With several years having passed, they could be well into the profit phase of the cable's operation. Consequently, they might strive to offer competitive pricing to maintain high levels of utilization. This involves leveraging full capacity at lower prices, benefiting both transit providers and cable owners. However, like any business, they will likely extend attractive pricing for longer-term contracts, ultimately benefiting the entire supply chain."


:ROFL: :ROFL:
 
What they said, @Speedster
Thank you, you are now a MyBB Journalist.

I would say a prefaces to the "ultimately benefiting the entire supply chain." yes its benefits the supply chain in reduced cost, but at the cost of redundancy and slow responses to crisis like this as it needs to work through the supply chain in response.
It's stability rather than agility.



marhsava said:
Huh ?

ELI5
Click to expand...

Speedster said:
Me to chatgpt:

Can you fix this


I would imagine WACS and SAT-3 owners will want to sweat the assets as much as possible since the expensive part is done the wet leg, and its been a few years they may be very much profit phase of the cable. and going to offer as low as possible price to keep as much busy as possible going.
so they are using full capacity, low pricing, for transit providers and owners win win till something goes wrong.
just like any other business they will offer great prices for longer term contracts, which will trickle down the supply chain.

Chatgpt

Sure, here's a revised version of your text:

"I anticipate that WACS and SAT-3 owners will aim to maximize their asset utilization, especially considering the costly wet leg has already been completed. With several years having passed, they could be well into the profit phase of the cable's operation. Consequently, they might strive to offer competitive pricing to maintain high levels of utilization. This involves leveraging full capacity at lower prices, benefiting both transit providers and cable owners. However, like any business, they will likely extend attractive pricing for longer-term contracts, ultimately benefiting the entire supply chain."


:ROFL: :ROFL:
Click to expand...
 
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D said:
Didn't @Gordon_R mention that it was one of the largest [underwater] rock slides ever captured?
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I would imagine it's all scale we don't think of rock slides under water because we don't see it. When there is rock slide on land it can take out power lines etc. or take out cars on Chapmans Peak.
The cable also changes depending on the sea bed, location so as they get deeper and further away from hazards, fisherman etc the armour gets lighter, and changes over the length of the cable.


"The deeper the better," Clatterbuck said. "When you can lay the cable down in deep water you rarely have any problems. It goes down on the bottom of the seabed and just stays there." Things become more difficult the closer you get to shore. A cable that is only a few centimetres thick on the bottom of the ocean must be armoured from its environment as reaches the landing station that links it with the country's internet backbone."

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Now we just need a detailed explanation as to why local sites break or are not accessible. Thanks to the likes of Cloud Flare and other networks not correctly routing traffic. And how this can be allowed.
 
Nah, I cancelled Disney+ last month already. Just never worked right. Got Amazon Prime Video again. Just works great even with the country’s current connectivity problems.
 
Jan said:
Although it seems logical to blame Internet service providers and platform operators like Disney+ for badly performing online services in South Africa, they aren’t the main culprits for the country’s current connectivity problems.
Click to expand...
Are we getting a refund from either?
 
AfriNatic said:
They are not the only one.

Right now Facebook has withdrawn prefixes from NAP. They are essentially saying come fetch the traffic in Kenya or Europe.
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Wat. What did they blow all that money on 2Africa for then?
 
Jan said:
Wat. What did they blow all that money on 2Africa for then?
Click to expand...

It's not the first night this is happening but tonight at 19:19 Meta withdrew prefixes from NAP JHB and CPT and traffic moved over to our transit where we had to fetch it in Kenya. Other ISP's depending on their transit providers would have fetched traffic from different regions most probably France but I saw that Cloudflare JHB had to get traffic from Hong Kong.

102.132.96.35 edge-star-mini-shv-01-mba1.facebook.com

Traffic shifted back to JHB at ~21:16
 
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