Repair Ship Bound for Cut Cables Off Africa's West Coast as Internet Interrupted

Fiber-optic cables that were damaged by a rockfall in an undersea canyon, resulting in slow internet connections in some parts of Africa, should be repaired next month by a specialized vessel, according to telecommunication companies. From a report: The West Africa Cable System that runs about 16,000 kilometers (9,950 miles) along the sea floor from Europe to southern Africa was damaged with other lines earlier this month. The 40-year-old cable-layer vessel Leon Thevenin, named after a French telegraph engineer, was moored in Cape Town this week, according to tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. It's capable of working in extreme conditions and in shallow or deep water, according to owner Orange Marine, a submarine telecommunications company. All South African networks are currently experiencing disruptions due to the damaged lines, said Anne-Caroline Tanguy, a spokeswoman at Cloudflare, a company that provides load balancing and analysis. The repairs are expected to be finished in September.

sig figs

[Anonymous Coward]

9,950 miles huh. just leave out imperial measurements if the original is metric, americans understand both and this kind of shit is just embarassing.

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[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the ones that invented the transistor in the American designed microprocessor you're using to post to a website created by Americans on the Internet invented by America? Those Americans?

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[KiloByte]

American designed microprocessor you're using

British base design, Chinese details and manufacture (and no, not a phone).

Re:sig figs

[burtosis]

You mean the ones that invented the transistor in the American designed microprocessor you're using to post to a website created by Americans on the Internet invented by America? Those Americans?

You’re darn tootin’! Course it’s in miles cause we only use real American units like the BTU and Fahrenheit, not some farcical communist unit system.

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[_merlin]

If you're using an Intel CPU, it's an Israeli design.

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[alvinrod]

The average American probably doesn't know the conversion offhand, but I suspect that most Slashdot readers are familiar with or often work with metric units and would be fine.

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[techno-vampire]

I have a calculator app that includes unit conversions if I need them. For an approximation of short distances, 1 meter = 10 feet, 3 inches is close enough.

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[smooth wombat]

For an approximation of short distances, 1 meter = 10 feet, 3 inches is close enough.

It is? You're off by an orders of magnitude if you think a meter is remotely close to 10 feet. 1 meter is 39.3 inches.

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[techno-vampire]

Thank you; I sit corrected. That was supposed to be three meters, not one.

Re:sig figs

[93 Escort Wagon]

Feet? Meters? I measure everything in Angstroms.

It's hard to find a useble tape measure, though...

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[christoban]

Angstroms? Nooordstroom!! :D

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[KiloByte]

Thanks to ^^ and ^ to illustrate my point so well :)

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[Xenx]

Readers here might be more familiar, but I wouldn't be surprised if a decent chunk don't know it well enough. There is a lot of what would be covered here that is less reliant on metric, or people that are just interested and less involved themselves. I know some conversions well enough for casual use. For example, I wasn't certain about the conversion from km to mi, but I have dealt with it and roughly remembered 1.6km to mile. I would still have had to verify.

Re: sig figs

[spinitch]

I met Rick, still on a roll

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[RockDoctor]

Something like 1/3 of the Americans I worked with could do the miles-km conversion in their heads (oil work, but largely for Shell, with everything in metres ; you use those numbers every day). But that's a self-selected sub-set of Americans who both have a passport and can handle the idea of working abroad, which is probably only 10% of the population.

Common Problem

[nealric]

I work for a company that does business in West Africa (mostly Equatorial Guinea). It seems like internet cables in that area are very commonly cut. When it happens, they mostly have to rely on old satellite systems (not newer Starlink) which makes for an abysmally bad experience.

Anyhow, glad to hear they are working on it.

Is this why I'm getting less trash hang-up calls?

[pecosdave]

I can usually get between four and 10 trash calls a days, ranging from a robot voice to dead silence. I've been getting few if any lately.

Is this cut cable why?

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[antdude]

I thought it was because schools started again.

Fix it quick!

[fuzznutz]

I am in the middle negotiating of a large financial transaction from a certain prince from the region and I don't want to miss the wire of my deposit.

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[NoWayNoShapeNoForm]

I am in the middle negotiating of a large financial transaction from a certain prince from the region and I don't want to miss the wire of my deposit.

Ask a nice Nigerian Prince to handle it for you!

How about...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ship Bound for Africa's West Coast to Repair Internet Cables Affecting Service

A bit more info

[HornyBastard]

As a South African who is affected by this, I have been following the story closely for the last few weeks.
The 2 cables involved are WACS (West African Cable System) and SAT-3 (South Atlantic 3), and they were damaged in an underwater rockfall in the Congo canyon off the western coast of Africa.
It happened when the Leon Thevenin (The boat that was sent) was anchored in Mombasa, All the way over on the other side of the continent.

This is the 3rd major cable break we have had in the last few years. One

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[RockDoctor]

It is (or should be) slightly worrying that .ZA has so few network connections that the loss of 2 cables has a significant impact.

Is anyone proposing, say, a link to South America - Argentina or Brazil-ish - because that could be a profitable investment. Ditto one going directly to South (West) Australia, which would pretty much have to be Durban to Perth.

Vietnam too

[bill_mcgonigle]

I heard on a podcast that Vietnam has had five severed cables in 14 months.

One has a cause the others are a "mystery". But apparently SCS disputes may be involved.

Wondered where my Nigerian prince didn't answer

[thesjaakspoiler]

I presume his internet was down as well.
Still looking forward to those millions after helping him out paying for the bank transfer to get that money out of the country.