No, it’s not just you. There’s an internet outage in South Africa
A major internet outage has hit South Africa after multiple subsea cables were damaged.
Picture: © ryanking999/123rf.com
Bongani Bingwa speaks to Stuff.co.za editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak.
Listen below.
Mzansi was plunged into internet darkness on Thursday after multiple undersea cables were damaged. Mobile and fibre internet access was affected.
The issue is ongoing, and service providers have provided no estimated duration of repairs.
Nine undersea cables connect South Africa to the rest of the world, says Shapshak.
“Four of these cables which go down the west coast of the Continent were severed yesterday… that had a major impact on the internet, not just in South Africa, but for the whole Continent.”
- Toby Shapshak, Editor-in-chief – Stuff.co.za
Various network providers, including Vodacom, were impacted.
Several services including FNB, LinkedIn, Microsoft 365, WhatsApp, X (Twitter) and Xbox also experienced problems.
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Shapshak says the infrastructure that plays such a big role in the lives of millions is vulnerable.
In February, a cable running along the East Coast was damaged by a ship, causing a similar outage.
“They are tough cables, quite solid, and it’s going to take a repair ship quite a while to get there.”
- Toby Shapshak, Editor-in-chief – Stuff.co.za
Scroll up to the audio player to listen to the interview.