SEACOM down, but not out!
The SEACOM problems, which started on Monday 5 July, are set to continue until next week, something which forced many ISPs – including MWEB and Internet Solutions – to find additional capacity on other cable systems like SAT-3/SAFE to serve their international bandwidth needs.
TENET, who has a capacity of 10 Gbps on the SEACOM cable, has also come to the rescue of local ISPs by offering them part of its bandwidth which curiously has not been as severely impacted as other providers’ services.
SEACOM stated in a press statement that “The deployment of restored capacity via other cable systems has progressed very well and SEACOM is pleased with the positive support received from clients and suppliers alike. In addition to the alternative capacity already in place, SEACOM will also continue to source and activate additional capacity to meet customer requirements for the duration of the repairs.”
The exact details of the solutions mentioned by SEACOM are not known, but at least one local service provider has found an innovative solution to ensure that it provides its clients with their full international bandwidth allocation.
The tier-1 service provider Neology has joined forces with Kenya Data Networks (KDN) to use the SEACOM and TEAMS undersea cables to bypass the need to use the SAT-3/SAFE cable to serve its international bandwidth needs during the SEACOM downtime.
Neology has revealed that they still use the South Africa – Mombasa leg on SEACOM (which has not been impacted by the repeater failure) to carry traffic from their Johannesburg point-of-presence (PoP) to Kenya, and from there they use the TEAMS cable to terminate their circuit in UAE from where its gets onward bandwidth to Europe.
The solution needed the cooperation of SEACOM and KDN to terminate the Neology circuit on SEACOM in Mombasa, and according to Neology CIO Regardt van de Vyver the companies went out of their way to make this possible.
According to Van de Vyver their full international bandwidth capacity has been restored as of the weekend, with full satellite backup capacity to ensure redundancy in the case of other problems on the SEACOM or TEAMS cable systems.
Using the TEAMS cable for redundancy on SEACOM << comments and views
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