Restoration of damage to African undersea broadband network SEACOM may only be completed in a “week or two”.

This is according to SEACOM chief executive officer Mark Simpson who has said in a statement that a physical cable cut “some kilometres north of the coast of Egypt in the Mediterranean Sea” has disrupted services on the sub-sea broadband network. The cut occurred on the morning of March 22, says SEACOM.

The cause of damage to the SEACOM cable system, though, is unknown. But Simpson says it could be as a result of a ship dragging its anchor across the sea floor.

The undersea broadband cable, which started operating in 2009, stretches 17,000km and connects South Africa and Eastern Africa with Europe and Southern Asia.

Internet service providers, such as South Africa’s Mweb use SEACOM.

Mweb has said it is rerouting its traffic, especially as complaints from its customers emerge of internet disruptions.

“We also have capacity on the WACS cable, which runs up the west coast of Africa, and this is currently able to meet about 45% of our total needs. As a result, most international services will be degraded,” Mweb has said on its network status notice website.

“We are in ongoing discussions with various operators to secure additional capacity to meet our total requirements until such time as the SEACOM cable is fully operational again,” the company added.

SEACOM chief executive Simpson has said his firm is working on fixing the problem.

“The SEACOM team’s first focus at this time remains getting restoration services turned up and our resources are committed to that work.

“However, this process is proving much more complex and taking longer than we were initially told by our suppliers and would have expected,” he said.

Simpson says SEACOM had secured “adequate restoration capacity” between Egypt and Europe on Friday, but that the capability to connect this capacity to the company’s services in Europe was “neither adequate nor stable enough.”

The SEACOM chief executive says his firm is therefore seeking further restoration solutions.

The cable cut in the Mediterranean affecting SEACOM services comes a month after fire damage to a terrestrial network in Egypt also resulted in disruptions on the sub-sea broadband network.

The fire, which occurred 15 km outside of Alexandria in Egypt, caused disruptions to the network. But repair teams were sent to the affected area and within three hours had fixed the damage.