Seacom Connectivity

W

who.is.michael

Expert Member
Joined
Aug 4, 2006
Messages
2,928
Reaction score
1
Location
Cape Town CBD
Seacom Connectivity

Had enough of MWEB’s lousy support and so called “redundancy”; all they offer is to send you a SMS when connectivity has been restored - what is the point in that?

So I called Seacom in Mauritius +2306984000 (ask to speak with operations desk; if you speak French bonus)

Current sea conditions prevent the completion of repairs and the estimated time of completion is scheduled for end of April - However, weather forecast for Wednesday seems good so hold thumbs.

Regards

M
 
Wow, a lot of ISPs are pretty borked at the moment, seems we got too dependant too quick. Luckily I kept my 1GB Telkom account as a backup, I knew there was some reason I should.
 
wow - this is insane! That means that I will only be able to function via my Blackberry?!?! How the devil am I supposed to run my business like this!?
 
When next signing up at with an ISP, I will ask what are your contention ratios and please interpret the word redundancy as you understand it!
 
who.is.michael said:
Seacom Connectivity

Had enough of MWEB’s lousy support and so called “redundancy”; all they offer is to send you a SMS when connectivity has been restored - what is the point in that?

So I called Seacom in Mauritius +2306984000 (ask to speak with operations desk; if you speak French bonus)

Current sea conditions prevent the completion of repairs and the estimated time of completion is scheduled for end of April - However, weather forecast for Wednesday seems good so hold thumbs.

Regards

M
Click to expand...

Or you could have looked here at the thread started by the MWeb Rep.:

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?228116-MWEB-SEACOM-Update

or here:

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?227886-SEACOM-downtime-expected-over-the-weekend

or here:

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?228056-MWEB-Seacom-planned-maintenance-update

MWEB Operations said:
We’ve been notified by Seacom that due to adverse weather conditions the repairs to the undersea cable are going to take longer than originally expected. The work will only be completed some time tomorrow (27th of April). Our alternative international bandwidth is quite congested so we are shaping heavily on things like peer-to-peer. Thank you for your continued patience.

Regards
MWEB Ops
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Repair work on Mediterranean segment of SEA-ME-WE 4 cable may cause brief SEACOM network disturbance - 23 Apr 2010

SEACOM experienced an interruption in its network on 14 April 2010 which lasted around seven minutes as a result of a fault on the Mediterranean section of the SEA-ME-WE 4 submarine cable system, which SEACOM currently utilizes to connect to London.

SEA-ME-WE 4, which stretches from South East Asia to Europe via the Indian Sub-Continent and Middle East, is now scheduled to undergo repairs on Saturday 24 April 2010 to fix the affected fibre pair in the Mediterranean Sea. This process will be carried by a repair ship which has been deployed to the location of the fault where it will pick up the cable, cut it and bring it onboard to undergo the repair on the optic fibre before the cable is put back in the water. This will result in the power being shut down on the cable for the duration of the repair.

Whilst the disruptive portion of the repair process is expected to be minimal, the precise chronology and actual duration is unpredictable due to exogenous factors such as weather conditions.

SEACOM has been actively working with its clients to put in place suitable alternative channels that will ensure continuous availability during the planned repair work.

Enquiries:
Suveer Ramdhani
+27 83 680 1646
Click to expand...

Source: http://www.seacom.mu/news/news_details.asp?iID=129

Wonder what alternative channels they put in place?
 
SabreWolfy said:
Or you could have looked here at the thread started by the MWeb Rep.:

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?228116-MWEB-SEACOM-Update

or here:

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?227886-SEACOM-downtime-expected-over-the-weekend

or here:

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?228056-MWEB-Seacom-planned-maintenance-update
Click to expand...

Yes, but none was accurate at the time and I am paying through my nose for connectivity - why should I go scour the internet? Lousy service in my opinion, ISP's should realise should they want to extort money from users at least offer some service.
 
ISPs, like many businesses, rely on other providers for parts of their service. MWeb does not own Seacom; they buy bandwidth from Seacom. If repairs are needed, they are needed. It's not fair to accuse MWeb of lousy service and extortion because one of their service providers needs to repair a cable. Would you rather they didn't repair it? MWeb has arranged alternative bandwidth via SAT3. Of course that's congested now. And of course, if we had an oversupply of broadband into the country, downtime on one cable would be less of a problem. The issue is that with Seacom down, there just is not enough capacity. I'm quite sure that MWeb would like the repairs completed as soon as possible as well.
 
yawn...going to be a boring few days :p

cya guys when theyre done :D
 
SabreWolfy said:
ISPs, like many businesses, rely on other providers for parts of their service. MWeb does not own Seacom; they buy bandwidth from Seacom. If repairs are needed, they are needed. It's not fair to accuse MWeb of lousy service and extortion because one of their service providers needs to repair a cable. Would you rather they didn't repair it? MWeb has arranged alternative bandwidth via SAT3. Of course that's congested now. And of course, if we had an oversupply of broadband into the country, downtime on one cable would be less of a problem. The issue is that with Seacom down, there just is not enough capacity. I'm quite sure that MWeb would like the repairs completed as soon as possible as well.
Click to expand...
+1
 
With this Seacom problem, what happened to good ol' REDUNDANCY? Thinking about SAT3, WACS, satellite (Crowthorne Sat farm) ... sure as heck there must be alternative routes / methods, or is _all_ of it controlled by good old Telkom? How were we routed before Seacom, use that as fallback?
 
I don't get the problem. There was quite a bit of warning that there would be Seacom maintenance and that alternate bandwidth (less capacity though) had been acquired for the duration of the maintenance. We were also warned that it may be extended/delayed due to bad weather.

So its maintenance time, international still works but is pretty congested due to the lower capacity, I don't think they quite deserve to be crapped all over. There are ALOT of people sitting without any international at the moment because their ISPs quite frankly did no preparation at all.
 
abjater said:
With this Seacom problem, what happened to good ol' REDUNDANCY? Thinking about SAT3, WACS, satellite (Crowthorne Sat farm) ... sure as heck there must be alternative routes / methods, or is _all_ of it controlled by good old Telkom? How were we routed before Seacom, use that as fallback?
Click to expand...

Well think about it - SEACOM is cheaper, so IS puts big pipes into the SEACOM cable and keeps the good clean and semi-redundant SAT3/SAFE cable for its business customers. What irks me is that downstream ISPs (virtual ISPs in reality) simply resell IS product offerings and don't realize/get informed that changes to the backbone have occurred. So for example with Axxess now their Express and Express+ services used to be routed over satellite and SAT3 respectively, now they're both going over SEACOM - well when its working that is.

Axxess had to update their product pages after I pointed out that their product definition explicitly stated it was SAT3 bandwidth.
Before & After
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X