A downed peering point between Verizon and Telkom disrupted services to thousands of Internet users for nearly three hours today.
According to Lulu Letlape, group executive for corporate communications at Telkom: "A SAIX (South African Internet Exchange) link between Telkom and Verizon in Cape Town failed this morning at 11:00."
Says Lethlape: "The fault was isolated to Verizon equipment in Cape Town. Verizon's technicians had the fault cleared and restored service to the link at approximately 13:40 this afternoon."
Edwin Thompson, senior executive for operations and regulatory and legal affairs at Verizon, says this is not the case, however.
"Telkom was not announcing any routes to us," says Thompson, who adds that it started doing so again at around 13:15.
According to Thompson, technicians in Cape Town did replace some equipment about 20 minutes before peering resumed, but this had nothing to do with the downtime experienced.
The problem affected "anyone trying to access Verizon's network using the Telkom infrastructure". Verizon was not willing to say how many of its customers were affected.
Last week, the link between Verizon and Telkom in Johannesburg went down after a cable was damaged by a subcontractor.
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