Windy Cape Town is holding back undersea internet cable repairs

Yes, this has been the topic for the past week as some South African internet users have been struggling with slow connections since Thursday as a series of undersea cable breaks take down crucial links. A ship is ready to go out with all the equipment we need to fix one of those breaks, however due to the wind we have its stuck in Cape Town harbor!

Reports have been coming in that some SA users have lost total access to twitter as of Saturday, and yes we know exactly how we all need social media going right? As for some of us that is our business.

Repairs on one break in an important undersea internet cable will have to wait until the weather in Cape Town improves. The winds we are having are of more than 30KM/H – with gusts reaching 70KM/H have been ripping off roofs and trees let alone people have been holding on for dear life as they try and take on the CBD.

With the cable repair vessel “wind bound” some internet users in South Africa on Saturday found they had no access to twitter, in an outage that seems connected with the sub-sea cable outages. As some stated that they could find no way to connect to twitter from South Africa, while users in the likes of Gaborone in Botswana also complained they could not reach the service.

In Nabibia they said that they have been reconnected to the global internet on Saturday after a widespread outage in the country and as you can imagine lots of people are jumping for joy! Yes the question remains how long will the repairs take? Well with or without a windy cape town is not yet clear. On Saturday Telkoms open serve said in a statement it appreciates the patience of all affected clients and their customers as undersea cable infrastructure repairs are complex and can be time consuming.