Internet outages in many African countries due to malfunctioning undersea cables

Internet outages in many African countries due to malfunctioning undersea cables

MTN Group, a big network company in Africa, explained that the current internet problems happened because some important undersea cables stopped working. The South African company said they're trying to find other ways for internet traffic to go through. The cables affected include the West Africa Cable System (WACS), Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), SAT3, and MainOne.

On Thursday, many countries in Africa had a big problem with the internet. This happened because several undersea cables that help with telecommunications stopped working. Network operators and groups that watch the internet confirmed this issue.

In recent years, there have been internet problems in Africa due to damaged cables. But according to Isik Mater, who works at NetBlocks, a group that tracks internet issues globally, the current problem is more serious than usual.

NetBlocks stated that their data analysis shows a big problem with sending and receiving data internationally, probably happening close to where the undersea network cables connect to land.

It wasn't immediately obvious why the failure happened.

There were worries about important services being affected, especially in hard-hit countries like Ivory Coast where the problem was serious. Africa has the most web traffic from mobile devices globally, and many businesses in the continent depend on the internet to provide services to their customers.

Observers mentioned that several system cables including the West Africa Cable System (WACS), Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), SAT-3, and MainOne were affected during the internet outage on Thursday.

Cloudflare, an internet analysis company, noticed a consistent timing pattern in the disruptions which greatly affected at least 10 countries in West Africa, such as Ivory Coast, Liberia, Benin, Ghana, and Burkina Faso.

Vodacom, a mobile company in South Africa, said they were having occasional problems with connections because of several undersea cable failures. Namibia and Lesotho also experienced the effects of these issues.

Mater from NetBlocks explained that when networks try to find other ways to work around cable failures, it can make the situation worse. This might mean there's less capacity for other countries to use.

Mater mentioned that while the first problem might be a physical cut, the following issues could be technical in nature.