SEACOM bandwidth rock solid
A few industry players recently complained about the stability of their SEACOM network, saying that downtime on the system is not uncommon. These complaints escalated after a three hour downtime this week caused by two cable breaks on the Neotel/Transnet network.
Redundancy has often been singled out as one of the concerns with SEACOM bandwidth, but Neotel explained that the downtime was caused by an uncommon turn of events. “There are three routes available to protect the SEACOM service, but this morning two of them were down. There was a fiber break on the Transnet infrastructure on the main route between Stanger and Empangeni, as a result of vandalism,” said Wandile Zote, executive head of communications at Neotel.
“It automatically shifted to the second route, but there was a second break on the alternative route between Port Elizabeth and Cape Town, therefore we have now had to manually shift to the 3rd route which runs through Durban, Pietermaritzburg and Bloemfontein.”
SEACOM confirmed the cause of the recent downtime. “We established that a 2hr40min downtime on the land-based network managed by Neotel was experienced on 20 October 2009 between 06:20 and 09:00. It is important to note that the SEACOM network was not responsible for the loss of connectivity and that customers using other land networks would not have experienced any problems.”
“The feedback received from Neotel indicates that the downtime was caused by the theft of a pole along the primary route which resulted in a cut in the fibre. The second route was immediately automatically activated but also suffered from multiple breaks due to theft and vandalism,” said SEACOM’s Suveer Ramdhani.
Feedback from various role players suggest that the instability related to SEACOM is mainly to blame on terrestrial backhaul networks rather than the cable system itself.
“It is important to note that the SEACOM Cable Systems was not at fault and has been fully operational since inception with no failure. We need to be mindful of who is accountable for failures,” said Ramdhani. “The SEACOM Cable is but one link in the complete service that customers purchase in parts to their door steps.”
Ramdhani added that some companies which operate on SEACOM capacity have access and national links which were not purchased as a bundle from SEACOM, which means that SEACOM cannot be held accountable for many of the instability issues which are experienced.
The stability of SEACOM itself has been confirmed by one of SEACOM’s largest bandwidth users, TENET. TENET CTO Andrew Alston said that they have experienced absolutely no problems from the SEACOM landing station onwards, and that the submarine cable system itself has been rock solid. Alston said that terrestrial cable breaks were typically to blame for any SEACOM downtime.
Loading ...