Ship's anchor cuts Internet access to six East African countries

[marmar]

A ship dropped anchor off Mombasa, Kenya, and cut the Internet to six African countries earlier this week.

It will take three weeks to repair the damage. In the meantime, the Internet in Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Juba, the capital of South Sudan, is functioning at a reduced speed. It will impede the normal flow by about 20 percent, according to the BBC's Nairobi correspondent, Noel Mwakugu.

The Indian Ocean East Africa Marine Systems (TEAMS) cable, which connects East Africa to the United Arab Emirates, was severed when a ship dropped anchor in a restricted area – restricted because of the presence of the sea cabling. (See here for an interactive cable map.) The Teams cable was carrying redirected traffic from the earlier cutting of three other cables in the Red Sea, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The outage comes at a time when Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, has assumed a much greater profile as a center of technological innovation and entrepreneurship, largely due to the recent availability of fast, reliable broadband connections. These undersea fiber-optic cables, laid in 2009 and which connect Africa to the world, have kicked off Kenya's high-tech industry and prompted an increase in Kenyan Internet users from 1.8 million to 3.1 million in the first year. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://news.yahoo.com/ships-anchor-cuts-internet-access-six-east-african-150000191.html

[Swede]

1. Oops.

Some big fines are in order.

[2QT2BSTR8]

2. Here is the cable map mentioned in the article.

http://www.telegeography.com/telecom-resources/telegeography-infographics/submarine-cable-map/index.html

[FarCenter]

3. One off Mobasa may be accidental; the three in the Red Sea? Maybe not

I don't think that they've determined the cause of the cutting of 3 cables 650 feet down in the Red Sea.

[denverbill]

4. Damn! I was in the middle of helping some guy transfer his millions to the US.n/t

[liberal N proud]

5. That could explain why a someone cannot log into the database

I have been working since yesterday afternoon trying to solve a connection problem with a user in Egypt. It could be that traffic being routed could overload connections in that area as well.

[Javaman]

6. Didn't this happen several years ago? nt

[regnaD kciN]

7. Let me guess...another Costa ship, right?