A SAT-3 cable break has caused international connectivity problems for numerous Internet users in South Africa. According to a SAIX network notice a problem – caused by a major SAT-3 cable break – on the London-Bellville link at 02:51 today caused slow international connectivity.<\/p>\n
An updated notice from MTN Business informed users that Telkom SA was conducting “major maintenance on the shunt fault on Segment 14 of SAT-3, about 627 km from the ACC Beach Manhole. This maintenance will run from the 20-22 January 2010 and resume again on the 29 January to 01 February 2010 within the maintenance window.” Users were informed that the maintenance will cause intermittent high latency to London UK and Paris for the duration of this maintenance. <\/p>\n
In an official statement Telkom said: “In preparation for planned work by the Sat-3 consortium, customers were informed that there would be a 4 to 6 hour downtime today. However, while this preparatory work was being conducted between Accra and Abijan, failure in the branching units resulted in a longer than anticipated downtime.”<\/p>\n
Numerous broadband users complained about a loss of international connectivity and high latency to international destinations. “Only international website that will load for me is Gmail. All the other international websites I try to access all give me a time out,” said one user.<\/p>\n
Telkom engineers are attending to the problem, and according to an updated notice the Estimated Time to Repair for the current outage is 19:00.<\/p>\n