The internet was down on Sunday! Did you notice?

Clarence Ford speaks to Barbara Friedman about trending online topics.  

According to Downdetector and MyBroadband, South African internet users reported issues with various online services from around 5pm on Sunday, 12 May.

Internet users in Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda have been complaining about poor connectivity as internet service providers across East Africa and some parts of South Africa were down.

Cloudflare Radar, which monitors internet connectivity, reports that Tanzania was of the worst-affected countries with traffic falling to 30% of expected levels.

Liquid Intelligent Technologies group, CTIO's Ben Roberts confirmed on Twitter that all subsea capacity between East Africa and South Africa was offline - hence streaming issues. 

A cable repair ship which is based in Cape Town has reportedly been mobilised and will sail on Tuesday morning, 14 May.

It's assumed that transit to the site will take three days while repair time is inconclusive based on the weather. 

Friedman notes that this connectivity issue is similar to the problem experienced around the same time last year. 

"In March last year around the 14th, we had major internet connectivity problems and a whole lot of repairs that had to be done to undersea cables so those were a big problem last year and it seems people were worried that this was happening again, it seems not quite as serious this time around."

- Barbara Friedman, Barb's Wire 

Scroll up to the audio player to listen to the full conversation.