Cable fault affects Internet services in east Africa

NAIROBI: A fibre-optic undersea cable cut has severely disrupted east Africa's high-speed internet services after a ship dropped its anchor onto the cables off the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa.

The incident happened Saturday when the shipped illegally anchored at the point where both The East African Marine System (TEAMS) and the Eastern African Submarine Cable System (EASSY) land in the country, Xinhua reported.

The cut saw Internet in the country through most providers inaccessible for several hours while the few providers that had access to the net saw their traffic slowing to almost a crawl.

TEAMS' General Manager Joel Tanui said in a statement issued in Nairobi Monday that the undersea cable maintenance company E- Marine will commence repair work on the damaged cable to reduce the downtime and its impact.

"The cable should be fully operational within the next three weeks," Tanui said.

He said the cut occurred when a ship that was docking, dragged its anchor on the cable, four km from the Mombasa landing station Saturday, affecting a significant proportion of the international fibre capacity in and out of the country.

Tanui said TEAMS had already notified its shareholders and the undersea cable maintenance company E-Marine to commence repair work on the damaged cable.

A landmark public-private partnership, TEAMS is the premier undersea cable system serving the entire East African region.

Besides the government of Kenya, the other shareholders in the TEAMS consortium include Safaricom, Jamii Telecom, Wananchi, Essar, Kenya Data Networks, Access Kenya, Telkom Orange and Bandwidth & Cloud Services.

Kenya's largest mobile operator Safaricom which serves about 80 percent of the Internet in the country and Wananchi connects to the TEAMS cable while Orange connects via EASSY.

Mobile operators Airtel Kenya and Safaricom Sunday announced that they are working to rectify the situation, by re-routing their Internet traffic to alternative capacities.

About eight data operators have been affected and have also been looking at redundant routes. Affected operators include Safaricom, Airtel and Wananchi's Zuku.

Safaricom indicates that they have re-routed their connection to SEACOM cable and satellite to keep its customers connected. This is the time the cable has been cut in the sea since it was laid three years ago.

TEAMS was a project initiated by the Kenyan government and implemented as a public private partnership consisting mostly of Kenyan network operators.