EASSy downtime continues

The East Africa Submarine System (EASSy) continues to battle with uptime due to a cable break which occurred on Friday 17 February.

Chris Wood, chairman of the EASSy management committee, confirmed that EASSy has experienced a fibre cut between Djibouti and Port Sudan.

WIOCC Chief Operating Officer Ryan Sher in turn told MyBroadband that a cable cut on SMW3 in the Red Sea occurred yesterday which is to blame for EASSy service disruptions.

This may seem like WIOCC and EASSy got their wires crossed regarding the location of the fibre cut, but this is not the case.

Industry speculation suggests that there are actually multiple cable breaks (instead of a single cable break on EASSy) which are affecting services.  Whilst the exact extent of the damage is unknown the fibre cuts may be on EASSy, SMW3 and the Europe India Gateway (EIG).

According to unofficial feedback the initial readings and calculations indicate that the fault location is approximately 342 Km from Djibouti Station.  The SMW3 maintenance authority has mobilized the cable repair ship.

Wood highlighted that the impact on EASSy customers is very minimal due to the system’s collapsed loop ring protection.

“The only customers affected by the EASSy cut are those either originating or terminating traffic in Sudan or connecting to other systems in Port Sudan. The vast majority of EASSy traffic exits via Djibouti and is therefore not affected by the EASSy cut,” said Wood.

Neotel’s Angus Hay previously explained that Neotel’s own services are not affected because they carry traffic from Djibouti to international destinations (instead of from Port Sudan) which leaves their services unaffected.

Not everyone is however unaffected by the cable breaks.  “We have been without our EASSy based capacity since Friday morning and have been re-routing all of our customer traffic from our London PoP via SAT-3 and other cable systems. None of our customers have experienced an interruption in service,” says Graham Beneke from Neology.

EASSy did not provide details as to when they expect the problem to be resolved.