SEACOM outage affects Africa Europe connection

SEACOM outage affects Africa Europe connection

Over the weekend, internet users experienced slow connections to certain websites due to the ongoing SEACOM outage affecting the connection between Africa and Europe.

Since Saturday, ISPs using the fibre cable could not access some sites hosted in Europe due to the outage. Previously the company asserted that the outage was between Mombasa (Kenya) and Zafarana (Egypt), but have since established the pain point.

The company said in a statement, "SEACOM is experiencing a service-affecting outage on Segment 15 of the SEACOM Subsea Cable System. The marine fault is located slightly west of Djibouti in the Red Sea and occurred on the 8th April 19:00 GMT."

They added that, "The impact of the incident is that all linear transmission traffic on the east coast of Africa to and from Europe will be affected. Customers with IP or other managed network services will remain unaffected but could experience higher latencies with possible degradation of service."

SEACOM is currently redirecting its transmission over WACS (West African Cable System) links in the west coast of Africa, as well as its Asia gateways. This will affect traffic latency to access many servers in Europe.

The company said that they are monitoring the situation and have dispatched their repair vessels to the affected area.

The 15,000 kilometre cable, East of Africa, has a capacity of 1280 gigabits and serves major ISPs in the region.

Read more