INTERNET DISRUPTION CAUSED BY SNAPPING OF UNDERSEA CABLES
A rockfall in the Congo Canyon caused two undersea communication cables to snap and disrupt the internet in South Africa.
The West Africa Cable System and the South Atlantic Telecommunications Cable number three broke on the same day.
The effect is that some websites might take very long to load while other might not load at all.
Both of these cables are critical for network operators in South Africa.
A consortium of partners is reportedly working to restore these cables.
David Belson from Cloudfare said that the company noticed severe degradation from the cut.
“As all South African networks are currently experiencing a crunch in capacity due to this cut, we saw an increase in traffic, which took some time to mitigate.”
News24 reports while invisible and unknown to most, the network of fiber optic cables under the water are crucial in enabling the global internet by allowing for the high-speed transfer of high volumes of telecommunications signals across the world.
Image credit: Airtel