Internet users in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, and Rwanda Sunday experienced intermittent connectivity with internet service providers across the region acknowledging the problem that is expected to last for a number of days due to an undersea cable cut.
The disruption is said to have affected several undersea cables providing critical connection to systems and companies that provide internet and telecoms infrastructure in the region leaving over 100 million internet users in despair.
Cloudflare Radar, which monitors internet connectivity, said that Tanzania was of the worst-affected countries with traffic falling to 30% of expected levels.
Tanzania’s Citizen newspaper described what has happened as an “internet blackout [that] has affected major network channels”.
MTN Uganda Speaks out
MTN Uganda which shares the largest percentage of telecom subscribers in Uganda said it was aware of the “intermittent internet service” and assured customers everything was being done in their capacity to resolve the issue.
“MTN informs its esteemed customers and the public that connectivity and the internet services to much of the East African Region of Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and South Sudan, have been impacted due to an undersea cable cut. This may result in our esteemed customers experiencing slower internet speeds, and a general degraded service when accessing online services like Microsoft 365, Twitter, WhatsApp, Microsoft Teams, among others,” MTN’s Holding Statement read on Sunday evening.
“MTN Uganda is working with its partners to resolve the issue as soon as possible.”
The Outage and how long it will take
Tech paper “TechWeez” reported Sunday that the cable break 42kms from Mtunzini Cable Landing Station, the landing point in South Africa for SAFE and EASSy.
The publication further reports that repair teams have been mobilized with optimisations ongoing for services that are disrupted, with repair estimated to start later in the week. Wiocc, an investor in the Eassy cable system, also confirmed that Eassy has experienced a cut between South African and Mozambique.
The Mtunzini CLS is owned and operated by Telkom South Africa. There is another cable landing station in Mtunzini owned by Liquid Telecom (Neotel), as landing point for SEACOM.
According to Ben Roberts, the Chief Technology and Information Officer at Liquid Telecom, the major Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy) has suffered a confirmed fault.
The EASSy cable is a vital 10,000km undersea line running along the eastern coastline of Africa, with landing stations in Sudan, Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Comoros, Madagascar, Mozambique and South Africa. This system acts as the backbone for internet connectivity for at least 12 landlocked nations, enabling wide coverage across East Africa.
Ben Roberts, the Chief Technology and Information Officer at Liquid Telecom confirmed the outage via his Twitter account. He indicated that the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy) had suffered a confirmed fault.
Eastern Africa Submarine System (EASSy) is a 10,000km submarine cable system along the east coast of Africa, with 9 landing stations in Sudan, Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Comoros, Madagascar, Mozambique and South Africa, provides a backhaul system for at least 12 landlocked countries, enabling wide coverage in the East African region
Further, he indicated the outage had also been caused by damage to SEACOM, a 17,000 km (11,000 mi) submarine cable connecting South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Djibouti, France and India.
Users had been reporting slow speeds and downtime for most of the day. The outage indicates the vulnerability of the region that majorly relies on undersea cables for connectivity. The high-capacity cables have allowed the region to be a premier internet superhighway for the region.
The sweeping outage is undoubtedly causing widespread disruption and economic impacts until the critical cable systems can be restored to operation.
Other cables linking East Africa to Europe are also available and gradually the service should improve as data is re-routed. But as a lot of big companies have data centres in South Africa the damage to the vital link that Eassy provides had a big impact.
In March, widespread outages were reported in countries including South Africa, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Benin, Ghana and Burkina Faso.
This was also put down to cable failures. The cause was not clear but led to the frustration of millions of customers around the continent.
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