Experiencing slow internet connectivity? This is why
South Africans have been experiencing slow internet connectivity following repairs to the West Africa Cable System (WACS).
Maintenance on Wacs started at 2am on Sunday, 1 June, and is scheduled to be completed by 8am on June 16, 2025.
Wacs
The Wacs is a 1 4530km submarine cable system carrying internet traffic and connecting 15 countries, starting from South Africa and ending in London.
It is also a key link between South Africa and the South Atlantic Cable System (SACS), which lands in Angola.
The cable system runs from Portugal to a landing station at Yzerfontein, in the Western Cape. It has a design capacity of 14.5Tbps.
ALSO READ: Undersea cables in Baltic Sea cut, Germany and Finland fear sabotage
Repairs
During maintenance and repairs, the affected stretch of WACS is offline, meaning no data traffic can flow through it, resulting in lethargic internet connectivity.
While many Internet providers in South Africa have sufficient backup capacity for their customers to mitigate the impact of the outage, some have been severely affected, according to My Broadband.
'WACS emergency maintenance activity is planned to resolve a low voltage issue affecting both Power Supply Units on the Swakopmund Power Feeding Equipment,' a recent status notice said.
'The issue has been traced to a faulty Branching Unit in Namibia. As a result, the replacement of the faulty Branching Unit in Namibia is required to restore normal operation.'
Offline
WACS will be offline for the duration of the maintenance, and the dates are subject to change depending on weather conditions.
Openserve global carrier business development and operations specialist Robert Kraai reported that a repair ship recovered the faulty branching unit off the coast of Namibia.
'WACS repairs are currently underway as I closely monitor the progress. The faulty Branching Unit(BU)is now recovered. Confirmation of good cable condition is received through Wacs Rep on board, this then confirms the BU to be the faulty equipment.
Kraai said the next step was to replace the faulty unit with a new one and then test the replacement to confirm it was working.
ALSO READ: Study finds South Africa's 5G network lagging compared to other countries
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