which was severed off the west coast of Africa in mid-March — along with three other submarine internet cables — is expected to be repaired by today .Much of the traffic was, however, quickly rerouted along other cables, including Google’s recently launched Equiano system between Cape Town and Europe and the Sacs cable, which carries traffic from Angola across the Atlantic Ocean to Latin America and on to the US.
This follows the repair of the older and lower-capacity Sat-3 cable system, which was repaired and came back into service on 7 April, The repairs have taken some time as repair ships had to set sail from thousands of kilometres away to attend to the severed cables. The repair process involves lifting the cables off the ocean floor, making repairs on board the ship and then lowing the cables carefully back down to the ocean floor.
Seismic events are a common cause of cable faults along Africa’s west coast, with previous disruptions occurring in the deepoff the coast of the Democratic Republic of Congo. In other parts of the world, such as in the busy Red Sea shipping corridor, cable cuts are often the result of ships dropping anchor on them.
“Ace and Wacs have jointly initiated the repair process by mobilising a cable ship for a collaborative repair effort,” Bayobab said at the time. TechCentral has asked Bayobab for an update on the repair of the Ace cable and will update this article once feedback is received.While the Ace, Wacs and Sat-3 cables all have landing stations in South Africa, MainOne – which connects Nigeria with Europe – does not.