Kenya Initiates Restoration of Internet Services in East Africa After Cable Cuts

Kenya's telecommunications industry regulator, the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA), announced on Monday that efforts are underway to restore internet services disrupted across East Africa due to a deep-sea fiber cut. The incident occurred on Sunday at South Africa's Mtunzini teleport station and has affected several fiber cables serving Kenya, including the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy) and the Seacom cables.

"We wish to inform individual and corporate consumers that the recovery process has since commenced, but internet intermittency and slow speeds may remain in the coming few days before services are fully recovered," stated CA Director General David Mugonyi in a statement issued in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya.The disruption of these crucial underwater cables has had a significant impact on internet connectivity in the region, affecting both personal and business communications. The EASSy and Seacom cables are vital components of East Africa's digital infrastructure, supporting a wide range of internet services.

Efforts to repair the damage are currently in progress, with teams working to ensure that internet services are restored as swiftly as possible. However, during the recovery process, users may continue to experience intermittent connectivity and reduced internet speeds. The CA is actively monitoring the situation and coordinating with relevant stakeholders to expedite the repair process and minimize the impact on consumers.

This disruption underscores the importance of robust and resilient telecommunications infrastructure in ensuring uninterrupted internet services, which are critical for the economic and social activities of the region. The CA has assured the public that all necessary measures are being taken to restore full internet functionality and will continue to provide updates on the progress of the recovery efforts.

Mugonyi has instructed service providers to proactively seek alternative routes for their traffic and is closely monitoring the situation to ensure that both incoming and outbound internet connectivity remains available.

Ben Roberts, the group chief technology and innovation officer at Liquid Intelligent Technologies, a pan-African internet services provider, highlighted that the outages on the two submarine fiber cables linking Kenya and South Africa have significantly disrupted internet services across East Africa.

Furthermore, Ben noted that three critical submarine cables in the Red Sea—the Seacom, Europe India Gateway (EIG), and Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE-1)—have also experienced cuts and are still awaiting repair, resulting in a widespread outage across the region.The immediate cause of the faults affecting the Eassy and Seacom cable systems along Africa's east coast remains unclear. However, the West Indian Ocean Cable Company (Wiocc), an investor in the Eassy cable system, reported that Eassy has experienced a cut between South Africa and Mozambique.

Kenyan operator Safaricom, which confirmed the outage on Sunday, assured that efforts are underway to restore a stable internet connection. "We have experienced an outage on one of the undersea cables that deliver internet traffic in and out of the country. We have since activated redundancy measures to minimize service interruption and keep you connected as we await the full restoration of the cable," Safaricom stated in a notice. The company also warned users that they might experience reduced internet speeds during this period.

Mugonyi highlighted that the East African Marine Systems (TEAMS) cable, which has not been affected by the fiber cut, is currently being utilized for local traffic flow. Additionally, redundancy on the South Africa route has been activated to minimize the impact of the outages.

This marks the second major fiber cut affecting Africa this year. In March, a suspected underwater rock slide off the coast of Cote d'Ivoire caused several submarine cables to go offline. This outage impacted 13 African countries along the West African seaboard, resulting in either degraded services or near-total internet outages.

The recurring issues with undersea cables underscore the vulnerability of Africa's internet infrastructure and the need for robust contingency measures to ensure stable connectivity. The ongoing efforts to restore service and implement redundancy routes highlight the industry's proactive steps to mitigate the impact of such disruptions.