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Internet Services Almost Stall in East Africa

Faults in the SEACOM undersea cable is affecting many services based in the infrastracture in East Africa. Websites and ISPs in India and East Africa are reporting poor connection or unavailability as the maintanance of the SEACOM undersea cable which was expected to complete by 28th April is still ongoing and is now due for completion on 30th April.

This process is being carried by a repair ship which has been deployed to the location of the fault where it will pick up the cable, cut it and bring it onboard to undergo the repair on the optic fibre before the cable is put back in the water. This has  resulted in the power being shut down on the cable for the duration of the repair.

“Whilst the disruptive portion of the repair process is expected to be minimal, the precise chronology and actual duration is unpredictable due to exogenous factors such as weather conditions,” SEACOM said.

India is reporting massive outages because of faults in an undersea cable (SEA-ME-WE 4) which has been cut in three places off the Coast of Pallermo, Italy.

Telkom Kenya and other ISPs in the region alerted their clients that there might be disruption or reduction in quality of service due to the ongoing maintenance. AccessKenya retired its satellite capacity and has now to depend on other routes.

It seems that many ISP s did not renew satellite redundancy services contracts and that seems to be affecting their business now since they didn’t expect the cable to start experiencing problems that early.

Safaricom claims that that the maintenance will not affect them as they had provided redundancy through Satellite and re-routed some traffic through Asia. The PR and Communication Manager, Mr Washington Akumu says that “infact we have got a few major clients migrating to us because teh delay in return to normal is getting longer”.

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