For a lot of South Africans, the past week was spent having flashbacks to when dial-up internet was still around, and everything took forever to load.

The problem was traced back to a West Africa Cable System (WACS) fault between Limbe (Cameroon) and DRC (Muanda). The South Atlantic 3/West Africa (SAT-3/Wasc) submarine cable was also experiencing problems.

Unfortunately, while identifying the problem might be the first step towards solving it, it’s not that easy, and it looks like we’re going to have to suffer through slow internet speeds a while longer.

BusinessLIVE with an update on the situation:

The date by when the cables will be repaired is not known at present and is subject to when the ship sets sail, weather conditions at the cable-break location and conditions on the seabed.

Africa’s largest mobile operator, MTN, said it has begun to restore traffic through other channels and will continue to find optional routes of connectivity until the situation is resolved.

Telkom has also been liaising with the West Africa Cable System and the South Atlantic 3/West Africa Submarine Cable consortia to find a solution.

For now, no one knows what caused the disruption.

Suveer Ramdhani, chief strategy officer at Seacom, which was launched in 2009, said there are many reasons why cables break — from sharks chewing on cables to cables being disrupted by boat anchors; trawling by fishing vessels; natural disasters such as earthquakes and various forms of accidental damage.

“Fibre breaks heavily affect local internet service providers’ operations and it is these guys that take the most heat as they face the end users. However, it is completely out of their control,” Ramdhani said.

Cable repair ship, Leon Thevenin, is preparing to leave the Cape Town harbour to go in search of the problem. You can map its progress by visiting Marine Traffic.

It could take up to two weeks to resolve this, so set some extra time aside if you need to surf the web.

[source:businesslive]