If there was a good day for a bad internet connection day, then yesterday could have been one of those, given that it was a day after a public holiday and the day before a weekend, meaning that fewer people were at the office to send e-mails and to Facebook, Tweet, or Blog.
Early yesterday morning the first Tweets complained about the slow internet connection, especially to international websites such as Facebook, WordPress, Twitter, and Google. E-mail sending and receiving were also affected.
A call to M-Web was answered by an automated message, informing its users that a SEACOM cable had broken under the ocean alongside Egypt, that TELKOM engineers are working on the problem, and that M-Web would try to divert communication traffic to alternate cables. It also promised that the communication would gradually improve over the course of the day. However, it seemed to get worse, and by last night there was no visible improvement in e-mail downloads (all gmail and hotmail addresses would have been affected as well as e-mail addresses linked to websites hosted on American or other foreign servers).
In Tweets last night M-Web apologised for not having the service up and running again, but promised to have it fixed by today! The company was criticised for its poor communication of the problem, only reacting to Tweets once asked, but not sending regular Tweets proactively to explain the problem, which would have affected almost every internet user in the country. M-Web could have also e-mailed its clients about the problem, its @mweb and @iafrica e-mails not having been affected.
We apologise to all guests and other e-mail senders who did not receive a same-day reply from us – we did not receive any e-mails yesterday as a result of the cable breakdown. We will try to catch up as quickly as possible today.
POSTCRIPT 25/3: We have just received the very disturbing e-mail from M-Web, the first since the cable broke on Friday morning, stating that it could take another two weeks for the cable to be repaired! :
‘Dear MWEB Customer
The Seacom cable, which provides a significant portion of our international capacity, has been damaged off the coast of Egypt in the Mediterranean Sea. Early indications are that it may take up to two weeks to repair the break and restore full capacity. We also have capacity on the WACS cable, which runs up the west coast of Africa, and this is currently able to meet about 45% of our total needs. As a result, most international services will be degraded. We are in ongoing discussions with various operators to secure additional capacity to meet our total requirements until such time as the Seacom cable is fully operational again. We will keep you updated of any changes to this situation via e-mail, our Facebook page and twitter’.
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter: @WhaleCottage
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What a mess. I am still trying to clean up my inbox!
Even worse is the bad news that it could continue like this for another two weeks Lolla!
Chris
2 WEEKS,………… HELL ARE WE LIVING IN THE MIDDLE AGES?
IT IS TIME WE GET MORE PROVIDERS.
SECONDLY WE SHOULD NOT BE PAYING FOR SOMETHING WE ARE NOT GETTING.
It does appear to be a monopoly Rassie – TELKOM more than M-Web!
Someone asked on Twitter whether M-Web clients would receive a refund, and was laughed at, as the M-Web contract protects the company from liability for outages!
Chris
What is wrong with the internet nowadays and cell reception.
Everything is slow , E Mails are getting lost. Systems can not operate because of there is slow internet or sometimes no internet ????? Is this a global problem or just in South Africa??? And we are paying for this poor service delivery ???? Mweb , Telkom Can you deliver ????