By Peter Ochieng
The Communications Authority (CA) on Monday issued a statement pertaining to the slow internet being experienced in the country.
On Sunday, internet users in Kenya and other East African counties were hit by slow internet speeds after a major sub-sea fibre cut that caused an outage in the region.
CA Director General David MMugonyi in a statement said the irregular outage is due to a deep-sea fibre cut on the Mtunzini teleport station.
“Upon engaging the relevant industry players, the Authority has established that a deep-sea fibre cut occurred at Mtunzini teleport station, affecting a number of submarine cables serving Kenya, including Seacom and the East African Submarine System (Eassy).”
Mugonyi said the recovered process has since commenced, but urged Kenyans to brace for a longer period of slow internet connectivity.
“We wish to inform individual and corporate consumers that the recovery process has since commenced, but Internet intermittency and slow speeds may remain in the coming few days before services are fully restored.”
“The East Africa Marine System (TEAMS) cable, which has not been affected by the cut, is currently being utilised for local traffic flow while redundancy on the South Africa route has been activated to minimize the impact,” he added.
On Sunday, various network providers said they were working on restoring a stable internet connection, among them Safaricom, whose wi-fi and cellular internet users complained of unusually slow speeds on social media.
“We have experienced an outage on one of the undersea cables that deliver internet traffic in and out of the country. We have since activated redundancy measures to minimise service interruption and keep you connected as we await the full restoration of the cable,” Safaricom said in a notice.
“All sub-sea capacity between East Africa and South Africa is down. EASSY Cable – fault confirmed. Seacom Cable – observing fault that occurred at the same time,” Liquid Telecom’s Group Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, Ben Roberts said in a social media post.