{"id":538311,"date":"2024-05-24T07:01:16","date_gmt":"2024-05-24T05:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=538311"},"modified":"2024-05-24T07:03:15","modified_gmt":"2024-05-24T05:03:15","slug":"big-internet-cable-break-repairs-almost-finished","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/538311-big-internet-cable-break-repairs-almost-finished.html","title":{"rendered":"Big Internet cable break repairs almost finished"},"content":{"rendered":"

Repairs on the Eastern Africa Submarine System (EASSy) cable are underway, and traffic is expected to return by the morning of Friday, 24 May 2024.<\/p>\n

This is according to the West Indian Ocean Cable Company (Wiocc), which also said that while no clear cause has been identified regarding the break, the damage was consistent with a heavy object being dragged over it.<\/p>\n

Orange Marine’s L\u00e9on Th\u00e9venin was tasked with repairing the cable break. It departed Cape Town Harbour<\/a><\/strong> on Tuesday, 14 May, for the site of the faults on the EASSy cable.<\/p>\n

The ship was operating just off the East coast of South Africa, close to the Mtunzini cable landing station between Durban and Richard’s Bay.<\/p>\n

The L\u00e9on Th\u00e9venin can tackle repairs in water as shallow as 10 metres or as deep as 7km.<\/p>\n

It is equipped with various tools, including grapnels, buoys, ropes, and dead weights, designed to assist with cable work.<\/p>\n

It also has a remotely operated vehicle that is used to detect, cut, recover, join, and test undersea fibre cables.<\/p>\n

Faults on the EASSy and Seacom subsea cables off the east coast of Africa were reported<\/a><\/strong> on Tuesday, 14 May 2024. The incident knocked out all subsea capacity between East Africa and South Africa.<\/p>\n

The EASSy cable is 10,000km long and connects Eastern Africa to the rest of the world. It serves as a critical telecommunications component, carrying the region’s voice, data, video, and Internet traffic.<\/p>\n

Companies like Netblock and Cloudflare noticed that Internet connectivity in the region had taken a hit.<\/p>\n

Netblock, a watchdog organisation monitoring cybersecurity and Internet governance, observed disruptions to Internet connectivity in and around East Africa.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Cloudflare reported that the faults had impacted connectivity to Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania.<\/p>\n

It observed traffic drops of between 30% and 75% in affected countries.<\/p>\n

Seacom is still suffering from a cable break in the Red Sea that can’t be repaired due to Houthi rebel activity in the region.<\/p>\n

Following the cable faults, South African users complained about buffering on Netflix and trouble connecting to other online services.<\/p>\n

However, the submarine cable breaks appear to have been only part of the problem.<\/p>\n

INX-ZA chair Edrich de Lange told MyBroadband that several terrestrial cable failures also occurred, reducing capacity between Johannesburg and Cape Town.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Repairs to the EASSy cable are underway and traffic is expected to return soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341076,"featured_media":529577,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[18736,35,62846,18738],"class_list":["post-538311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-eastern-africa-submarine-cable-system-eassy","tag-headline","tag-leon-thevenin","tag-west-indian-ocean-cable-company-wiocc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538311"}],"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\/341076"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538311"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":538331,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538311\/revisions\/538331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}