Kenya restores internet services after undersea cable outages

NAIROBI, May 16 (Xinhua) -- Kenya's telecom industry regulator and service providers confirmed on Thursday the restoration of internet services four days after disruptions due to multiple outages on the undersea cable.

The Communication Authority of Kenya (CA) and Safaricom, the country's largest mobile phone operator, announced that internet service has been restored to full capacity and stability after users experienced slow speeds caused by multiple cuts on the undersea cable at South Africa's Mtunzini teleport station on Sunday.

"We are happy to inform our customers and stakeholders that we have now resumed full network capacity and stability following last Sunday's undersea cable cuts that affected some of our services," Safaricom said in a statement issued in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya.

The cuts affected a number of fibre cables serving Kenya, including the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy) and the Seacom cables.

"We have achieved this by acquiring additional capacity from our undersea cable providers. We sincerely thank our engineers for working around the clock to keep the country connected through optimization and quickly onboarding additional capacity from the undersea cables," Safaricom said, addeding that it will continue monitoring its network to ensure the stability of services as it works closely with impacted undersea cable suppliers for speedy resolution on the repair works.

However, the Communication Authority of Kenya warned that clearing the backlog caused by the outage might take some time. "While this has led to near-normal services, the backlog generated by the outage might take some time to clear. We thank industry players for their hard work in ensuring the country remains connected to data services and all consumers for their patience," CA Director-General David Mugonyi said in a statement.

The outages impacted users on major networks and internet service providers, including Safaricom and Telkom Kenya. Mobile and fixed-broadband users alike were impacted.

This is the second time Africa has experienced a major fibre cut since the beginning of this year. In March, a suspected underwater rock slid off the coast of Cote d'Ivoire, resulting in several submarine cables going offline. The outage impacted 13 African countries located on the West African seaboard, causing either degraded services or near-total internet outages.