An undersea cable repair ship,
the "Léon Thévenin", owned by Orange's Marine, is sailing towards the
location where four undersea cables broke last week causing widespread internet
outages in most West African countries and slowdowns in South Africa.
The ship according report, was
loaded with fibre optic cables in Cape Town harbour and set off to the coastal
waters of Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire on Tuesday evening. Its estimated arrival time
in Abidjan is 06:00 on Friday, 29 March 2024. The ship is equipped with general
cable works tools and a remotely operated vehicle for detecting, cutting,
recovering, jointing and testing undersea fibre cables. It can handle repairs
in waters as shallow as 10 meters and as deep as 7 km.
A second ship, Global Marine’s
CS Sovereign, is also expected to attend to the cable breaks, but it is still
moored in Portland, England, as of 08:15 on Wednesday, 20 March 2024.
On Thursday, 14 March 2024,
four submarine telecommunications cables connecting African countries to Europe
and other parts of the world went offline around 12:30. The cables that broke
were the West Africa Cable System (WACS), Africa Coast to Europe (ACE),
MainOne, and SAT–3 cables. Earlier breaks on the Seacom, EIG, and AAE–1 cables suspected
to have been caused by Houthi terrorists sinking a fertilizer ship in the Red
Sea in late February have also led to lowered capacity on the east coast of
Africa.
The cause of the cable breaks remains to be confirmed, but preliminary analysis
by submarine fibre cable operator MainOne indicates that seismic activity on
the seabed caused its submarine fibre cable to break. MainOne said that the
distance from land and the cable depth of about 3 km at the point of the fault
ruled out any kind of human activity, including damage from ship anchors,
fishing, drilling, or sabotage.
By: Nana Appiah Acquaye
