Internet users in the country will experience slow connections over the next two weeks as maintenance work begins on The East African Marine Systems (TEAMS) cable.
In a statement, TEAMS said the cable would undergo preventive maintenance works between January and April to reduce chances of cable damage by external aggressors.
Early last year, there were a number of cable cuts experienced at Mombasa.
Slack period
“The planned cable reinforcement works are designed to increase resilience of the cable against external aggression by ships and fishing boats. The timing — first week of January 2013 — coincides with the slack period at the beginning of the year to minimise the impact on live traffic,” TEAMS general manager Joel Tanui said.
The maintenance is expected to cost about Sh480 million, including costs for temporary traffic restoration via other cables.
However, the overall cost of business interruption as a result of heavily constrained bandwidth supply to contracted customers could make the exercise more expensive.
Internet service providers have had to use alternative routes to reduce disruption of services.
Mobile service provider Safaricom said it had already channelled all its Internet traffic to other networks to prevent interruption during the period.
Source: Daily Nation