What Crew Members Say About Cs-Sovereign

The undersea cable repair vessel 'Léon Thévenin' has arrived at the scene of one of four significant undersea fibre cable disruptions, which were caused by a suspected submarine landslide on March 14, 2024. This event has led to extensive Internet outages in South Africa and across the Western African coast near Abidjan, impacting critical infrastructure such as the West Africa Cable System (WACS), Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), MainOne, and SAT-3. In response to the situation, Global Marine’s 'C.S. Sovereign' is also on its way to assist in the recovery efforts. Given the depth and remote location of the cable breaks, preliminary assessments by cable operators have ruled out scenarios such as sabotage or damage from fishing activities as the root cause. The breaks resulted in a substantial, approximately two-hour disruption of Vodacom’s services in South Africa, impacting Microsoft’s local cloud services as well. Users experienced difficulties accessing email, Microsoft Teams, and other Microsoft 365 applications, while the Microsoft Azure region faced downtime that incapacitated various businesses, including payment provider Yoco. To mitigate the disruption, companies pivoted to alternate undersea cables, including Google’s Equiano, to temporarily restore services. However, the exact reasons for connectivity issues on a local level due to a lack of international bandwidth remain unclear from both Vodacom and Microsoft. WIOCC, a network infrastructure entity and investor in WACS, provided updates on the ongoing repair operations. The 'Léon Thévenin' departed from Cape Town on March 19, undertaking repairs specifically focused on the SAT-3 cable, which it reached on March 29. The SAT-3 cable, under the management of Telkom, can accommodate significantly less capacity compared to WACS, which is crucial for most South African service providers. Repair crews anticipate completing work on the SAT-3 cable by the second week of April, assuming no unforeseen delays occur. Meanwhile, the 'C.S. Sovereign' has set sail to address the issues with MainOne, WACS, and ACE, with an estimated arrival date of April 8. The vessel started its journey from London on March 21 and made brief stops in Brest and Santa Cruz de Tenerife before continuing its mission on April 1. Tentative timelines for completing repairs to the remaining broken cables are as follows: ACE by April 17, WACS by April 28, and MainOne by May 9. While a submarine landslide is suspected to be the cause of these disruptions, WIOCC has indicated that a formal diagnosis has yet to be established.