TelOne responds on extent of internet disruption from EASSy cable break

Earlier this week we reported that the TelOne had been affected by the EASSy cable problem between Djibouti and Port Sudan almost 3 weeks ago. We sent TelOne some questions on the extent of disruption that the EASSy issue has caused them. We also asked them if some recent ADSL issues were related to the EASSy cable break.

We received a response yesterday. It basically says that though TelOne has been affected by the EASSy problem, the extent is minimal as both EASSy and TelOne have managed to arrange alternative routes to carry their internet traffic.

The response also says that problems with the TelOne ADSL occurring at the same time with the EASSy issues were just pure coincidence and that the two are not ‘directly’ related.

Here is the full text of the responses:

TelOne was affected to the extent that a small part of our International bandwidth is currently unavailable.

Any disruption of services causes problems to networks because you have to find alternative routes. No serious disruptions were experienced because a restoration path was established by our service provider.

Although EASSy is the primary source of international bandwidth, TelOne also gets international bandwidth from other sources that were not affected by the cable cut in the Red Sea.

Traffic rearrangement has been employed both by TelOne and our upstream providers. TelOne IP traffic has been spread out over existing alternative routes. Reasonable traffic re-routing has been achieved to ensure service continues to be normal.

The ADSL problems that affected Tel•One customers recently were not directly emanating from the cut undersea cable but were a result of some technical problem within our network. The problem has since been resolved and our customers can continue to enjoy the Real broadband.

TelOne is Zimbabwe’s soled fixed line operator and is owned by the government. The company is part of the WIOCC consortium, a majority shareholder in the EASSy cable. TelOne connected to the EASSy cable through Mozambique in March 2011, adding a total lit capacity of 2.48 Gbps to the country’s international bandwidth.