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- The only ship authorised to fix the undersea cables, which snapped off the coast of Congo, docked in Cape Town.
- It is stocking up with the resources it will need before it heads out to the cable-break.
- Internet disruptions are being experienced in South Africa due to the snapped cables.
- For more stories, visit the Tech and Trends homepage.
The only cable-laying ship authorised to fix the two undersea cables, which snapped off the coast of Congo, arrived in Cape Town on Monday - and is preparing to head out to fix the cables.
This is according to a spokesperson from the Orange Group, the owners of Orange Marine, the company which operates the Léon Thévenin.
News24 saw the ship in Cape Town.
"C/S Léon Thévenin arrived this morning in Cape Town after the successful completion of a cable repair off Kenya. She immediately started the preparation work for her next operations," said the spokesperson.
News24 understands the vessel is taking on-board the resources it will need to perform the repair, and will then set off for the Congo Canyon.
Earlier this month, while the Léon Thévenin was doing repair work off the coast of Kenya, two undersea cables broke on the other side of the continent - in the Congo Canyon - allegedly due to a rockfall.
The West Africa Cable System (WACS) and the South Atlantic Telecommunications Cable number three (SAT-3) are part of a network of thousands of kilometres of undersea cables, which enable the rapid transfer of information critical for the internet to function.
The cables that connect South Africa to the rest of the world allow for local access to information stored in other parts of the world, such as Europe or America.
Without this network of undersea fibre optic cables, which look a little bit like hose pipes, the internet would not function.
LISTEN | Between a rock and a slow place: Underwater rockfall disrupts internet in SA
While there are many cables that run to South Africa, companies do not necessarily have the capacity on other cables because it is expensive to rent such capacity.
South African network operators, including Vodacom, MTN and Openserve, have reported challenges to their operations due to the cable snaps, and said they have taken mitigation measures.
READ NOW | Vodacom, MTN, Openserve work to minimise impact of undersea cable breaks on operations
The mitigation measures entail re-routing the information, which used to be carried along the broken cables, through other cables until the snapped undersea cables are fixed.
One ship for Africa
The wait for the Léon Thévenin has been necessary because it is the only cable ship authorised to repair the portion of the cable network that snapped in the Congo Canyon.
Jess Auerbach, an associate professor at the University of Cape Town's Graduate School of Business, who is in the process of writing a book about fibre-optic cables, previously told News24 that the Léon Thévenin was the only ship authorised to tend to the subsea cables of Sub-Saharan Africa.
There are other cable-laying ships, which are capable of performing the repair, but legal arrangements and cost factors mean they are not authorised to fix the cable segments in Sub-Saharan Africa.
She said it was fair to say that Africa was "radically underserved” in terms of the equipment and expertise needed to repair the ever-growing network of undersea cables in South Africa.
"There is a lack of available infrastructure at the level of repair and maintenance," said Auerbach.
A spokesperson for Vodacom, Byron Kennedy, previously told News24 the repairs were expected to be completed on 8 September, "weather permitting".
Until the cables are fixed, South Africans can expect some online information to load slowly, and other sites not to load at all. The scale of the disruption is difficult to estimate.
