It has been a rough couple of days for South African internet users, especially gamers. Users have been reporting major disconnection issues, failed to load errors and problems connecting to online lobbies after a series of undersea cable breaks took place on Thursday. It seems the fix is going to take longer than expected as the ship loaded with the equipment to fix one of them has been stuck in Cape Town harbour due to bad weather.
RELATED: 21 Studio Ghibli Movies Are Headed to The South African Netflix
As of this morning, the ship is still stuck according to the REN Alerts account which tweeted out the latest update on the situation;
Unfortunately there is nothing new to report right now on the WACS/SAT-3 remediation.
— REN Alerts (@RENAlerts) January 20, 2020
The ship is meant to sail to the coast of Congo where the breakage has been reported. It has been on standby at the Cape Town harbour since Friday last week after the incident occurred. Winds of up to 30km/h with gusts of up to 70km/h have been reported in Cape Town not only hindering the repairs but also damaging property and uprooting trees.
The bad weather is said to subside today or tomorrow in which the vessel will then depart the harbour en route to the coast of Congo to begin repairs of the undersea cable. According to the REN Alerts account, these repairs could take a few weeks to complete and might not be done until early February 2020.
The bad news is that there is another break on the UK side according to REN Alerts which they say will be attended to in late January. The Congo coast breakage will be fixed in early February (weather permitting).
So in the meantime, just try and be patient while the South African internet outage is being repaired. Some users have it bad including no access to Twitter and other services while others have not been affected by it at all.
Have you been affected by the South African internet outage? Let us know down below.
Header image: Marcelo Graciolli