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Severed West African submarine cables repaired

The West African Cable System (WACS) cable, which was severed off the west coast of Africa in mid-March — along with three other submarine internet cables — is expected to be repaired by Tuesday.

WACS and the other cables – Sat-3, Ace and MainOne – were cut in a suspected subsea seismic event near Ivory Coast on March 14, causing internet chaos across the region, including as far south as South Africa.

Much of the traffic was, however, quickly rerouted along other cables, including Google’s recently launched Equiano system between Cape Town and Europe and the South Atlantic Cable System (SACS) cable, which carries traffic from Angola across the Atlantic Ocean to Latin America and on to the US.

The repairs have taken some time as repair ships had to set sail from thousands of kilometres away.

A spokesman for Openserve, Telkom’s wholesale networks subsidiary and an investor in both Sat-3 and WACS, told TechCentral that repairs to WACS are expected to be completed. Internet traffic should start flowing across the system soon thereafter.

This follows the repair of the older and lower-capacity SAT-3 cable system, which was repaired and came back into service on 7 April, Openserve confirmed to TechCentral. West Indian Ocean Cable Company (WIOCC), an investor in the Ace, cable, confirmed that the Ace system has also been repaired and is again operational.

The repairs have taken some time as repair ships had to set sail from thousands of kilometres away to attend to the severed cables. The repair process involves lifting the cables off the ocean floor, making repairs on board the ship and then lowing the cables carefully back down to the ocean floor.

Seismic events are a common cause of cable faults along Africa’s west coast, with previous disruptions occurring in the deep Congo Canyon off the coast of the Democratic Republic of Congo. In other parts of the world, such as in the busy Red Sea shipping corridor, cable cuts are often the result of ships dropping anchor on them.

The status of the MainOne cable repair could not immediately be ascertained.

The CS Sovereign, a cable repair ship that repaired the Ace and WACS cables has also reportedly been assigned to the MainOne cable repair. Ship-tracking website marinetraffic.com shows the UK-registered vessel was stationed offshore near Ivory Coast at the time of writing.

While the Ace, WACS and Sat-3 cables all have landing stations in South Africa, MainOne – which connects Nigeria with Europe – does not.