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Johannesburg - The Seacom data cable needs to be lifted from the ocean bed – almost 5km below the surface of the sea – to repair the fault on the repeater.
A specialised repair ship has to come from the Middle East to Mombasa, Kenya on the African east coast to do the repair work.
There are only a couple of contractors in the world who are able to perform this type of work, said Martin Sanne, Seacom South Africa’s head of sales on Thursday. When the ship will sail or how long the repair work will take is unknown, as the work is in the hands of contractors.
Meanwhile, internet service providers like MWEB are relying on other providers for global internet access.
According to Sanne, the repeater lies at the deepest point along the route – about 4 700m below sea level. He said that at this stage it appears that the group will require robotics to cut the cable, after which it will have to be repaired on board ship, reattached and returned to the ocean floor.
Since Monday the fault has disrupted many users’ internet operations. Clients of internet service providers relying solely on Seacom have access only to internet services across Africa.
For the past four days, service provider MWEB has been in discussions to ensure supplementary international access capacity.
The Telkom-controlled Sat-3 cable has availed it of limited additional capacity, which MWEB is using mainly for email traffic. According to CEO Derek Hershaw MWEB also has access to an alternative international cable, but he has not identified this provider.
This does not totally satisfy demand but is sufficient for normal use on international websites like Gmail, Google and Yahoo, he noted.
About 30% of MWEB’s ADSL client traffic passes through Telkom’s SAIX network, and these have full internet access.
- Sake24.com
For business news in Afrikaans, go to www.sake24.com.
A specialised repair ship has to come from the Middle East to Mombasa, Kenya on the African east coast to do the repair work.
There are only a couple of contractors in the world who are able to perform this type of work, said Martin Sanne, Seacom South Africa’s head of sales on Thursday. When the ship will sail or how long the repair work will take is unknown, as the work is in the hands of contractors.
Meanwhile, internet service providers like MWEB are relying on other providers for global internet access.
According to Sanne, the repeater lies at the deepest point along the route – about 4 700m below sea level. He said that at this stage it appears that the group will require robotics to cut the cable, after which it will have to be repaired on board ship, reattached and returned to the ocean floor.
Since Monday the fault has disrupted many users’ internet operations. Clients of internet service providers relying solely on Seacom have access only to internet services across Africa.
For the past four days, service provider MWEB has been in discussions to ensure supplementary international access capacity.
The Telkom-controlled Sat-3 cable has availed it of limited additional capacity, which MWEB is using mainly for email traffic. According to CEO Derek Hershaw MWEB also has access to an alternative international cable, but he has not identified this provider.
This does not totally satisfy demand but is sufficient for normal use on international websites like Gmail, Google and Yahoo, he noted.
About 30% of MWEB’s ADSL client traffic passes through Telkom’s SAIX network, and these have full internet access.
- Sake24.com
For business news in Afrikaans, go to www.sake24.com.
