Prominent Internet service provider and fibre network suffers national outage in South Africa

Internet service provider and fibre network operator Cybersmart is experiencing a national outage.

Customers reported that Cybersmart and its Lightspeed fibre service appeared to go offline around 12:40 on Monday, 12 May 2025.

Fibre customers, web hosting clients, and Cybersmart’s own websites were all offline.

Web hosting provider Elitehost confirmed that its data showed the issue on Cybersmart’s network started at 12:40 with around 70% packet loss. 

One user said when Cybersmart’s website came back, its most recent network status notice initially said it would take four hours to repair the issue.

However, the estimated time to repair (ETR) soon increased to six hours.

By around 17:00, customers were reporting partial connectivity. Cybersmart’s website was loading, but its fibre sign-up system wasn’t working.

One customer told MyBroadband that they could access Facebook, YouTube, and Zoom, but speed tests would not run.

Another customer said that throughput was generally intermittent and slow.

Reports also indicated that the issue appeared to be on Cybersmart’s Internet service provider (ISP) side.

This was because customers on its physical Lightspeed fibre network infrastructure using other ISPs like Afrihost were still online.

By 22:30 on Monday, Cybersmart had adjusted the ETR to 12 hours, suggesting that it hoped to fix the problem by midnight.

However, on Tuesday morning, the ETR had been updated again and was now undetermined.

“Please be advised that we are currently aware of a network outage affecting connectivity for multiple clients nationally,” Cybersmart’s network status stated.

“Our engineering team is actively investigating the issue and working to restore services as quickly as possible. Currently we have no estimated time of resolution.”

Cybersmart promised to provide updates as more information becomes available.

“We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience during this time.”

Core switch problem

Data from Cloudflare Radar suggested that something had gone wrong on Cybersmart’s core network.

It showed that traffic from Cybersmart’s Autonomous System (AS36874) dropped suddenly at 12:40 on Monday.

Cloudflare’s data also shows that the number of IP addresses Cybersmart announced also suddenly dropped on Monday night before recovering.

A MyBroadband forum member said he received feedback from Cybersmart via its WhatsApp support channel confirming this on Tuesday morning.

“Please be advised that we are currently experiencing an issue with one of our core switches,” Cybersmart said.

“Our field technicians, together with our engineering team, are actively working on-site to replace the affected hardware.”

Cybersmart’s WhatsApp support also said that most of its hosting services were also affected.

The company assured that its team has been and continues to work frantically to resolve the outage.

“Additionally, some of our core customer communication tools were also affected by the outage, which has prevented a clear line of communication,” Cybersmart said.

It apologised for the lack of reliable communication and said it was working to ensure that it could provide regular updates throughout the day through its social media accounts, as well as SMS and email.

Spike in outage reports on multiple providers

Outage tracker Downdetector shows a surge in problem reports on multiple fibre networks and Internet service providers between 16:00 and 20:00 on Monday.

Vumatel and Vodacom both registered spikes in outage reports at around 16:00, whereas some Metrofibre customers reported network problems at 18:00.

Mweb also saw a surge in problem reports from around 20:00.

Openserve has experienced an elevated number of outage reports since 13:00 Monday, around the same time Cybersmart’s issues started.

It is unclear if these issues are related or whether they impacted Cybersmart’s work to restore its network.