{"id":529113,"date":"2024-03-15T16:35:54","date_gmt":"2024-03-15T14:35:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=529113"},"modified":"2024-03-17T07:36:24","modified_gmt":"2024-03-17T05:36:24","slug":"roadworks-blunder-may-have-caused-massive-internet-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/529113-roadworks-blunder-may-have-caused-massive-internet-problems.html","title":{"rendered":"Cable repair ship mobilised as massive Internet outage continues"},"content":{"rendered":"

MTN Group\u2019s Bayobab network services provider has said<\/a><\/strong> that the WACS and ACE consortiums have jointly mobilised a cable ship for repair while investigations into the cause of the outage continue.<\/p>\n

The West Africa Cable System (WACS), the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), MainOne, and SAT\u20133 all experienced outages at around 12:30 on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cMTN Group\u2019s Bayobab is working with its partners on the coordination of repair work to damaged underwater digital communication cables along the West Coast of Africa,\u201d the company stated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile investigation and repair efforts are underway, Bayobab\u2019s strategy focuses on successfully rerouting traffic, leveraging our extensive network, and collaborating with industry partners.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bayobab said it was also working with the cable consortiums and partners to enhance interconnection along the west and east coasts of Africa.<\/p>\n

It aims to do this with further interconnections between WACS and Google\u2019s Equiano cable, and by introducing an end-to-end connection between WACS on the west coast and EASSy on the east coast.<\/p>\n

Bayobab\u2019s announcement comes after news emerged that a roadworks mishap near the Abidjan airport in C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire could be why the four undersea telecommunications cables went offline around the same time.<\/p>\n

Citing a source who asked not to be identified, the African Press Agency reported<\/a><\/strong> that a roadworks company was performing construction along Boulevard Val\u00e9ry Giscard d\u2019Estaing \u2014 the main road connecting Abidjan\u2019s airport to the city proper.<\/p>\n

According to the report, the cable cut happened along the road in the direction of Port-Bou\u00ebt, a seaside suburb of Abidjan.<\/p>\n

Network operators declined to confirm or deny whether a roadworks mishap was the root cause of the issue, stating that investigations were still ongoing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Map highlighting Boulevard Vale\u0301ry Giscard d’Estaing in Abidjan, Co\u0302te d’Ivoire \/ Google Maps<\/p><\/div>\n

The outage caused severe knock-on effects, with Microsoft\u2019s cloud region in South Africa going offline and Vodacom\u2019s data network becoming unavailable for many subscribers.<\/p>\n

In South Africa, Vodacom was able to restore services within an hour or so on Thursday, while Microsoft\u2019s cloud platforms only started coming back online at around midnight.<\/p>\n

The Microsoft outage caused severe disruptions as many organisations were unable to access their e-mail or conduct meetings over Teams.<\/p>\n

Those relying on Microsoft\u2019s cloud region in South Africa were also severely impacted.<\/p>\n

Payments provider Yoco uses Microsoft Azure and said its services were disrupted<\/strong><\/a> as a result of the outage.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Microsoft has mitigated the issue by rerouting traffic and expanding its capacity in South Africa.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Long-distance cable map \/ Bayobab<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cMany of the Azure Services that were affected by this issue earlier have now returned to normal functionality,\u201d Microsoft has stated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are validating for any remaining impacted services, however customers should notice considerable improvements.\u201d<\/p>\n

Microsoft said it had hoped to have fully mitigated the issue by 16:00 on Friday, but experienced delays.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are currently facing technical issues with capacity activation, and these need to be resolved before we can safely pull this into the network,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

Microsoft said it expects to complete the mitigation by 20:00 on Friday.<\/p>\n

The outage in West Africa was compounded by ongoing cable cuts in the Red Sea on Seacom, EIG, and AAE\u20131.<\/p>\n

A Houthi attack was blamed<\/a><\/strong> for the cable breaks, as rebels shot Belizian fertiliser ship The Rubymar with ballistic missiles off the west coast of Yemen in mid-February.<\/p>\n

It is believed the ship dropped an anchor, which was dragged along the seafloor as it drifted after the crew abandoned the vessel.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese incidents together had reduced the total network capacity for most of Africa\u2019s regions,\u201d Microsoft said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A cable repair ship has been dispatched, although the actual cause of the four simultaneous subsea cable disruptions remains unconfirmed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":447954,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[31898,91333,35,83297,123,24957,42,6350,317,41,20395,71108],"class_list":["post-529113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-africa-coast-to-europe-ace","tag-bayobab","tag-headline","tag-mainone","tag-microsoft","tag-microsoft-azure","tag-mtn","tag-sat-3","tag-seacom","tag-vodacom","tag-west-africa-cable-system-wacs","tag-yoco"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529113"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":529119,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529113\/revisions\/529119"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}