Submarine cable fault causes internet 'blackout' in Dar es Salaam -
Tanzania faced a breakdown in Internet connections for the better part
of Thursday afternoon after two submarine cables linking the country to
the outside world experienced technical problems.
In an interview with the 'Daily News' on Thursday, the Acting CEO
of the Tanzania Telecommunication Company Limited (TTCL), Dr Kamugisha
Kazaura, said the hitches occurred at Alexandria in Egypt where the
cables are connected to others linking the continent to Europe.
"Our
two submarine cables Easy and Seacom are connected to other cables to
Europe, the problem occurred in a stretch of eight kilometres off shore
the city of Alexandria. "Easy was the first to experience the problem at
about 1:30pm and it was followed by Seacom an hour later," Dr Kamugisha
said in a telephone interview.
He was, however, optimistic that
the problem would have been solved by yesterday evening. And in indeed,
internet connection resumed after 6pm. Dr Kamugisha had hinted that if
the hitches were not solved by yesterday evening other alternatives
would be considered.
These would include re-routing the cables to
South Africa or Asia. In order to safeguard from such occurrences in
the future, he said the country is considering renewing a contract with
other operators of another submarine cable Teams which is linked through
the United Arab Emirates.
While most East African countries were
affected by the Internet breakdown, Kenya was least affected as it uses
the Teams, according to Dr Kamugisha. With a capacity of 1.2 gigabits
per second, the submarine cables are almost 20 times superior to
satellite connections which have a capacity of just 50 megabits per
second (mbps).
By Alvar Mwakyusa
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