Undersea cable operator Seacom has restored services for most of its customers across southern and eastern Africa.
In an update issued late last night, the company says it has been able to augment the IP network to relieve congestion. "All customers whose services are restored are being contacted directly to advise them of the circuits now in service."
Seacom, which launched the first undersea fibre-optic cable to connect Southern and Eastern Africa with Europe and Asia, in July 2009, suffered a physical cable cut some kilometres north of the coast of Egypt in the Mediterranean Sea.
Work on restoring services continued through the night to add further capacity to the network in a bid to complete restoration as soon as is possible, it said in a statement. "We will update further as information becomes available."
MWeb, which has capacity on the cable, has secured additional international capacity from Seacom through an alternative route and was running at almost 90% of its total requirement yesterday afternoon.
Internet Solutions also experienced problems as a result of the outage, with its Twitter account indicating it had rerouted traffic and added bandwidth, but some people may experience latency. It has not posted further updates since yesterday.
Seacom suspects, based on its experience with sub-sea systems and the nature of the sea area where the cut has occurred, that "the most likely cause is external aggression to the cable, most probably caused by a larger vessel dragging its anchor across the seabed".
This is a common cause of damage to cable systems globally, despite continued efforts to protect the cable with armour, burying, notifications to ships of cable location and exclusion zones, CEO Mark Simpson has said.
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