Seacom says network is restored

After having experienced another outage on its terrestrial network across Egypt this morning, Seacom has confirmed that the network was repaired at 10.08 (GMT).

At 07.45 (GMT) the company released a notification of "multiple outages on the terrestrial network across Egypt" and said all international connectivity through this region had been affected since 0600 (GMT), adding that repair teams were on site and the situation would be monitored.

Seacom added that internet protocol and multiprotocol label switching customers could experience increased latency with that traffic being re-routed to alternative network paths.

Notifications ran during the course of the day and culminated in a final notification of successful repairs, in which the company thanked its customers, partners and peers for collaboration and support during the outages.

This is the second outage to have impacted on the company's network in two weeks. Last week the company experienced outages which impacted on internet services in Africa, and said it was the result of construction activity in Egypt.

Byron Clatterbuck, CEO of Seacom, said, “The terrestrial segments of the SEACOM network that cross Egypt have been impacted by civil construction works that have disrupted the fibre networks.  The disruptions have occurred in areas where civil works are most intense.  While SEACOM and its operational partner in Egypt do mark the fibre network so as to highlight the potential danger to our network from construction, often construction companies will proceed with road or other digging work without regard to these warnings or regulatory guidelines for road works.  While we can repair our network after the fact, it is hard to prevent disruption in these areas of intense construction activity."

"To decrease the likelihood of these cuts happening in the future, we are trying to temporarily re-route our fibre terrestrial network to by-pass these areas of intense construction activity.  We will update on these efforts to our customers and partners as we make progress,” he added.