South African internet users may have experienced poor and disruptive internet connectivity over the last week due to a break in underwater cables. Picture: Pixabay
South Africans have been left frustrated and annoyed as they have been struggling with slow internet connectivity and problematic call services over the last week.
While most immediately blame their internet service provider or cell network provider, this time it was not their fault.
According to MyBroadband, internet users in South Africa would continue to experience poor performance on their broadband connections after a rock fall in the Congo Canyon caused a break in the WACS and SAT–3 undersea fibre cables.
The breaks occurred on August 6 and have wreaked havoc on internet connectivity in South Africa. Some websites might load slowly, and others not at all.
MyBroadband editor Jan Vermeulen explained in an interview that breaks occurred on two undersea cables, called West African Cable System (WACS) and the South Atlantic Telecommunications 3 (SAT–3) off the coast of Congo, 3,600 km north-west of South Africa.
While it may take up to a month for a cable repair ship to reach the site of a break in the WACS, since that cable is no longer the highest capacity link between South Africa and Europe, it meant that not all platforms which South Africans use would be affected. This is because the WACS and SAT-3 cables were not the only underwater cables that run to South Africa, and some service providers might have significant capacity on other cables.
MyBroadband reported that Disney+ users may have noticed a significant deterioration in service quality during the evenings, usually between 6pm and 10pm.
Vodacom said that some disruption in traffic flows were to be expected from the cable breaks.
While some service providers warned that there may still be websites that are hosted in the US or Europe that feel slow or don’t work at all, networks were actively working on bringing up new capacity to deal with the cut.
kailene.pillay@inl.co.za
IOL