Leon Thevenin vessel
Infrastructure provider Openserve has advised that repairs on undersea cables off the coast of Angola will take longer than initially expected.
The repair ship Leon Thevinin departed the Cape Town harbour last week and would have sailed to offshore Angola where the first steps of the physical repair on the damaged undersea cables would begin.
“Contrary to what was initially advised, regarding the joint repair mission of the South Atlantic 3/West Africa Submarine Cable (SAT3/WASC), a change in the sequence of restoration processes has altered the Leon Thevenin vessel’s course,” Openserve stated on Wednesday.
The company confirmed that the West African Cable System (WACS) restoration would be attended to first and should be complete by February 8, should weather conditions permit.
The vessel arrived at the WACS cable ground, off the coast of Congo–Brazzaville in the late hours of January 28, and repair work started shortly after, Openserve said.
The SAT3/WASC repair is scheduled to start on February 8, with an expected completion date of February 19.
Openserve said it would continue to maintain interface with the consortiums and the Leon Thevenin’s chief of mission until both cable systems were up and running again.
The cable breaks had resulted in South African Internet users, whose Internet service providers are connected to international connectivity on both or either of these cable systems, experiencing reduced speed on international browsing and, in some cases, increased latency.
International voice calling and mobile roaming have also been affected.