What is it with ships boldly going where they are not supposed to go?
Captain Kirk wasn't involved, but with these kind of shenanigans, it'd be easy to see how people could think it was his handiwork.
A ship was waiting to enter Mombasa – one of Africa's busiest ports – when it anchored in a restricted area. To add insult to injury, the achor severed one of the three critical undersea fiber-optic cables that links Eastern Africa to Teh Internets.
"It could take up to 14 days to repair” the cable owners, The East African Marine Systems (Teams), told the BBC. Teams is partly owned by the Kenyan government.
Several companies have been working to bring fast and reliable internet access to East Africa for several years. It is the only region in the world that has neither intra-African nor direct international cable network access. The region instead relies on expensive satellite communication.
Seacom was the first fiber optic undersea cable laying company to be up and running in the region. Their line links East Africa to Europe, India and South Africa. Teams links the East African region to the United Arab Emirates, and EASSy went went live in July 2010.
Needless to say, ANY loss of bandwidth will be greatly felt across the region.
The good news is, internet service providers and mobile phone operators have re-routed
to the Seacom link, which was not damaged by the dropped anchor.
The bad news is internet connections are expected to slow down by 20% in Kenya, Rwanda,
Burundi, Tanzania, Ethiopia and South Sudan's capital, Juba, according to BBC's Noel Mwakugu in Nairobi.
Officials estimate it will take at least two weeks to repair the damage.
Two weeks without internet? The Alliance would be proud.
[Source: BBC]