Much of West and Central Africa Without Internet After Undersea Cable Failures

[Phitz]

.....

Much of west and central Africa without internet after undersea cable failures​

Ivory Coast, Liberia, Benin, Ghana and Burkina Faso among countries experiencing outages

Staff and agencies in Johannesburg
Thu 14 Mar 2024 17.51 GMT
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Much of west and central Africa has been left without internet service, as operators of several subsea cables reported failures.
The cause of the cable failures on Thursday was not immediately clear.

The African subsea cable operator Seacom confirmed that services on its west African cable system were down and that customers who relied on that cable were being redirected to the Google Equiano cable, which Seacom uses.
“The redirection happens automatically when a route is impacted,” it said by email.
Network disruptions caused by cable damage have occurred in Africa in recent years. However, today’s disruption “points to something larger [and] this is amongst the most severe,” said Isik Mater, director of research at NetBlocks, a group that documents internet disruptions around the world.

NetBlocks said data transmission and measurement showed a major disruption to international transits, “likely at or near the subsea network cable landing points”.
At least a dozen countries have been affected by the outage, and there were fears of disruption of essential services in worst-hit states such as Ivory Coast, where the disruption was severe.
Africa has a higher proportion of its internet traffic on mobile devices than any other continent, with many of its businesses relying on the internet to deliver services to their customers.
Liberia, Benin, Ghana and Burkina Faso were heavily affected, according to data from Netblocks, which monitors cybersecurity and the governance of the internet.
The internet infrastructure company Cloudflare said in a post on X that major internet disruption was continuing in the Gambia, Guinea, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Benin and Niger.
Namibia and Lesotho were also affected.
“There seems to be a pattern in the timing of the disruptions, impacting from the north to the south of Africa,” Cloudflare Radar said.
The South African telecoms operator Vodacom also blamed connectivity problems on undersea cable failures affecting South Africa’s network providers.
The impact from such cable failures worsens as networks attempt to route around the damage, potentially reducing the capacity available to other countries, said Mater.

“The initial disruption may be a physical cut, but subsequent issues could be of a technical nature,” she added.

 

[↓R↑LYB]

I wouldn't be shocked if this failure was to secretly install a tapping line.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/25/asia/internet-undersea-cables-intl-hnk/index.html

 

[Phitz]

I wouldn't be shocked if this failure was to secretly install a tapping line.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/25/asia/internet-undersea-cables-intl-hnk/index.html

I know, especially with the AES/ECOWAS drama going on.

Only problem I've ever heard about with the cables between US and Europe/UK is sharks biting the cables out of curiosity, nothing else.

 

[Richard Glidewell]

Ain't no coincidence b.......them cables don't fail

 

[Phitz]

Ain't no coincidence b.......them cables don't fail

yeah it's all happening coincidentally while West African countries are pushing back on Western "suggestions"

Should have punched our own cables. There's always Chinese internet lol. Kidding..

gotta punch our own cables.

 

[Richard Glidewell]

yeah it's all happening coincidentally while West African countries are pushing back on Western "suggestions"

Should have punched our own cables. There's always Chinese internet lol. Kidding..

gotta punch our own cables.

It's weird but not weird that the majority of people don't know that's part of how the internet works. They just think it does. I was an young adult before I knew about deep sea cables. Part of warfare is getting down there and clipping your adversaries deep sea cable connection

 

[Neo TheInsurrectionistONE]

Undersea cable running always fascinates me. Can you imagine the type of money a company like this is making?

 

[Richard Glidewell]

Undersea cable running always fascinates me. Can you imagine the type of money a company like this is making?

The planning and required materials some .......my goodness....... have to lay that long unbroken continuous line..........I imagine it's a big ass container so but it's just full of coiled line

 

[east]

Can you imagine the type of money a company like this is making?

i'm the party pooper

Multi-million rand losses and nosediving book value at Seacom analysed

Seacom has incurred large annual losses, and its valuation has plummeted since it was launched in 2009, but the company said there is more to its finances than profits and valuations.

mybroadband.co.za

 

[Neo TheInsurrectionistONE]

i'm the party pooper

Multi-million rand losses and nosediving book value at Seacom analysed

Seacom has incurred large annual losses, and its valuation has plummeted since it was launched in 2009, but the company said there is more to its finances than profits and valuations.

mybroadband.co.za

When I said "a company like this", I meant it literally. You can't tell me that companies aren't making good money running undersea cable. That was my main point. This company might be failing cause of bad decisions but I bet that contract was

 

[get these nets]

Repair works on damaged subsea cables completed – NCA

The National Communications Authority (NCA) has disclosed that repairs to the recently broken undersea cables, which caused the country's total internet outage last March, have been completed.

mobile.ghanaweb.com

May 20, 2024

 

[BlackJesus]

Africans with elons satellite internet probably feeling right now

 

[Voice of Reason]

Africans with elons satellite internet probably feeling right now

fukk Elon Musk he's probably working with Eric Prince to colonize Africa.

 

[skylove4]

Don’t they have like a 1000 folks who live on boats 24/7 who race to fix these shyts worldwide