Companies

Back-up Internet cables avert outages as repairs commence

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Internet users were expected to experience low speeds in the first phase of the maintenance. PHOTO | FILE

Major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) reported minimal interruptions as one of the major high capacity undersea fiber optic cables entered the second day of repairs.
Safaricom, Telkom Kenya and Jamii Telecoms said they have migrated their international Internet traffic to other undersea cables, averting interruptions that were anticipated with the ongoing TEAMs cable maintenance work at Fujahira port in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).   

The East African Marine System-TEAMS- that is jointly owned by the government and the private sector connects Kenya to the international network via Fujairah in the UAE and is currently undergoing a ten-day maintenance work from Wednesday.

The diversion of international Internet traffic to other cables also highlights the significance of investments in multiple undersea fibre optic cables that link the country to the rest of the world.

Besides TEAMs, the country is linked to three other undersea cables, Seacom, Eassy and LION2.

Safaricom has for example migrated its international traffic to Seacom while Jamii Telecom and Telkom Kenya are using the EASSy cable for its international traffic. 

“Safaricom made early preparations for the TEAMS outage between 20-28 July 2016. We anticipate little to no disruption for our customers during the period. All our network traffic has been migrated to the SEACOM undersea cable during the maintenance period,” said the Safaricom director for corporate affairs Stephen Chege.

READ: Internet outage to hit businesses for next two weeks

Joshua Chepkwony, chief executive Jamii telecoms said the company’s network had not experienced any downtime.

“Our primary link is TEAMs but we took a proactive measure by signing an agreement with Eassy where we have an equal capacity of international bandwidth and this offers us a restoration link,” said Mr Chepkwony. 

Besides Safaricom, Jamii telecoms and Telkom Kenya; other TEAMS consortium members include the government of Kenya, Liquid Telecoms, Wananchi Group, Access Kenya Group and Bandwidth & Cloud Services Group.

The cable reinforcement works is designed to increase security of the TEAMS cable against anchoring ships and external aggression following the proposed expansion of the UAE Port of Fujairah.