With the current unresolved repeater problem on the SEACOM submarine fibre cable, South African internet service providers (ISP) have scrambled to respond.

One of the first out of the blocks was local ISP Afrihost who has setup a proxy server that will offer international access through its hosting infrastructure until the system is back online.

Now MWEB, one of SA's largest ISPs, has responded to this local internet crises with this directly from their statement:

Seacom cable fault: MWEB Status as at 15.30 on Thursday 8 July 2010 

Seacom has not yet confirmed by when they expect a complete recovery on the recent failure on the international bandwidth links, but it is understood that it could take at least a week. Since the Seacom cable fault was reported on Monday, MWEB has been in discussions to secure additional capacity.  Telkom’s SAT3 cable has ensured some redundancy, which is used primarily to re-route email traffic. Other negotiations have resulted in access to an alternative international cable. While this does not meet our full demand, it is sufficient to cater for normal browsing to international sites including G-Mail, Google, Yahoo, etc. Peer-2-Peer traffic remains heavily shaped for now.   

About 30% of our ADSL customers are connecting via the SAIX Wholesale network and have full internet access. Unfortunately Telkom cannot allow MWEB to move more customers onto its network because of their commitments to FIFA for the duration of the Soccer World Cup. Access to local sites, internet banking and e-mail is working as per normal, as has been the case since the cable fault was reported.

MWEB will continue to focus on sourcing additional capacity while this situation continues.  MWEB customers interested in updates can visit the Update block on the MWEB Home Page (www.mweb.co.za) or visit our ‘Free The Web’ page on Facebook.