Fibre network operator Seacom is unsure when it will be able to fully repair a break in one of its undersea cable systems in the highly contentious Red Sea, with the damage having affected some businesses in East and Southern Africa.
Undersea cables periodically experience breaks or disruptions to service. However, companies such as Seacom tend to have mechanisms in place to route internet and other communication traffic to alternative cables to minimise disruption to service for consumers and businesses.
On Monday, the company reported it had encountered a “service-affecting outage” on its subsea cable system on February 24. It said the disruption was only on the segment of the cable that ran from Mombasa, Kenya, to Zafarana, Egypt.
“Initial assessments suggest that the disruption to the subsea cable occurred within the vicinity of the Red Sea, and other cables in the area appear to have also been affected.”
Seacom, one of Africa’s largest undersea cable providers, whose shareholders include Sanlam and Remgro, sells internet data capacity on its networks to businesses, internet service providers and mobile operators on a wholesale basis.
Founded in 2009, it connects SA’s internet traffic to Europe via its eastern African undersea cable and holds about 25% of the wholesale fibre market locally, competing with firms such as Telkom, Vodacom and Liquid Intelligent Technologies.
The company said it was unable to confirm the cause of the disruption but was working with its cable repair partner to assess the feasibility of a repair in the region.
“The location of the cable break is significant due to its geopolitical sensitivity and ongoing tension, making it a challenging environment for maintenance and repair operations,” the company said.
Attacks on vessels in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab strait by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis in support of the Palestinian people are posing a threat to commercial shipping and raising tension between Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other international powers.
Seacom said it continued to carry traffic on its own cable between Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and SA for both transmission and internet services.
All other internet-based services destined for Europe and other regions were automatically rerouted via Seacom’s alternatives on Google’s Equiano, the Pakistan & East Africa Connecting Europe (Peace) and the West Africa Cable System (Wacs) cable systems. Support was being provided “by diverse terrestrial infrastructure”, ensuring clients remained operational albeit with some latency in their internet communications”, Seacom said.
“Though the effect on some of our clients has an impact on their businesses across East and Southern Africa, Seacom has been working diligently to ensure the continuity of its services.”
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