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Four of the nine subsea cables that connect South Africa to the world are currently damaged, as incidents on two different sides of the continent resulted in widespread internet outages in South Africa on 14 March.
Small subsea fibre-optic cables stretching along both sides of the continent act as information highways, allowing for the rapid transfer of information critical to the proper functioning of the internet.
"They are vulnerable systems," said Paul Colmer, an executive committee member at the Wireless Access Providers Association, who explained that anything from rock falls to stray anchors can snap or damage the cables.
