Some internet users in Botswana and other countries in Africa have been having issues with unavailable and sometimes extremely slow internet speeds over the last few days. Other users reported outages with Microsoft 365 services. According to available information, this is caused by damaged submarine cables in the Red Sea and along Africa’s west coast. The cause of damage to the cables is currently speculative.
The main internet cables that connect South Africa and other countries like Botswana to Europe run along the west coast of Africa, including the West Africa Cable System (Wacs) and Google’s Equiano cable.
The latest outage could not have come at a worse time, given that the Seacom cable, which connects Southern Africa to Europe along Africa’s east coast, was recently severed in the Red Sea, possibly as the result of a ship’s anchor. Repairs to the Seacom cable will take time as a result of the geopolitical instability in the region.
According to Microsoft, the affected cables are Wacs, MainOne, Sat-3 and Ace.According to Microsoft, the cable breaks have reduced total capacity supporting its Azure data centre regions in South Africa, namely South Africa North and South Africa West. Many organisations reported problems accessing Microsoft services, including Teams, on Thursday.
South Africa North and West refer to Microsoft’s two data centre regions in South Africa, one of which is located in Gauteng, and the other in the Western Cape.
Information source: TechCentral