Widespread internet problems hit South Africa - TechCentral

Widespread problems were affecting the internet in South Africa on Thursday due to undersea cable breaks.

“Multiple undersea cable failures between South Africa and Europe are currently impacting South Africa’s network providers, including Vodacom,” Vodacom spokesman Byron Kennedy told TechCentral at 2.22pm on Thursday.

Multiple sources have told TechCentral that there has been an undersea cable incident, impacting multiple cables along Africa’s west coast — though the location is not yet confirmed.

One source said the break may have occurred off the coast of Abidjan, the capital of the Ivory Coast in West Africa — also unconfirmed at this stage. The main internet cables that connect South Africa to Europe run along the west coast of Africa, including the West Africa Cable System (Wacs) and Google’s Equiano cable.

This is the second time in seven months that a major cable break along Africa’s coastline has severely impacted internet services in South Africa.

And the latest outage could not have come at a worse time, given that the Seacom cable, which connects South Africa to Europe along Africa’s east coast, was recently severed in the Red Sea, possibly as the result of a ship’s anchor. Repairs to the Seacom cable will take time as a result of the geopolitical instability in the region.

Seacom confirmed to TechCentral on Thursday that the Wacs cable, on which it carries traffic, is down, but that traffic is still flowing across the Equiano system — and that is good news, as it means a lot of the west coast internet traffic on Wacs (and other affected cables) can be diverted.

Azure issues

A screenshot shared with TechCentral from Microsoft’s Azure status page, which the publication couldn’t access directly itself, stated: “We are currently investigating a networking event impacting Azure Services in South Africa North and South Africa West.”

South Africa North and West refer to Microsoft’s two data centre regions in South Africa, one located in Gauteng, and the other in the Western Cape. “We will provide further updates as information becomes available,” the notice stated.

These issues affecting the Microsoft data centres are likely related to the uncable outage.

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Downdetector has reported a spike in reports of inaccessible websites across the board

A spokeswoman for Microsoft South Africa could not immediately be reached by phone for comment.  – © 2024 NewsCentral Media

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