Telkom’s SAT3 cable goes down

Telkom’s SAT3 cable system that connects South Africa to the rest of the world is experiencing a loss of connectivity today, causing breaks in traffic and slow response until late this evening, according to Business Day sources.

Luckily there are backup systems such as SAT2 and Seacom and satellite uplinks to ensure connectivity in the country. The poor connectivity of SAT3 is supposedly linked to a power outage between Abidjan and Lagos in Nigeria.

In September last year, SAT3 outage led to bankers warning traders of possible losses amounting to tens of millions of US dollars in tradings.

Neotel reported no connectivity problems, saying it had already put in place a 3 phase system to deal with cable failure.

Telkom reported a similar problem earlier this week.