Last evening two fiber optic cables were affected after being hit by a ship’s anchor that docked at Mombasa port in Kenya, technicians say that the impact will likely cause internet disruptions in six countries including, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi,Tanzania, Ethiopia and part of South Sudan.
While waiting for access to a port in Mombasa, a ship dropped a larger anchor in a restricted area off the coast.
The anchor barreled towards the sea floor, as anchors tried to hold it up and upon contact damaged two of three undersea fiber-optic cables responsible for delivering high-speed Internet access to a large portion of Africa.
They link the eastern costal region of Africa to the United Arab Emirates and connect countries in the affected region to each other.
The remaining cable maintains a link between the affected region to Europe, India, and South Africa.
East African Marine Systems, the owners of one of the cables, have passed a communiqué saying that repairs may take up to 14 days after which the average Internet speed of users in the affected counties is expected to drop by 20%.
However, Eassy the owners of the second affected cable have diverted some of their clients to their satellite bandwidth but the internet addition wouldn’t be advantageous to the majority yet.
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