NAIROBI – Repair works on the TEAMS (The East African Marine Systems) Cable that was damaged on 25th February 2012 have been successfully completed. The cut, which occurred at the Kenyan coast, damaged a crucial link for the bulk of internet and international voice traffic in the region.
The repair works were successfully completed at 2:55 am 24th March 2012 ahead of the planned repair time of midnight 25th March 2012. Commenting on the repairs work, TEAMS’ General Manager Joel Tanui said: “Due to several undersea cable cuts around the same period (EASSY, EIG, SMW3, TEAMS) , the submarine cable maintenance company had a lot of challenges coping with the unusual workload. We were lucky to be allocated a cable ship that was just completing routine service at dry docks, Dubai.”
The repair cable ship arrived at Mombasa at midnight 20th March 2012 and immediately started the work the following day. A landmark public-private partnership, TEAMS is the premier undersea cable system serving the entire East African region. Besides the Government of Kenya, the other shareholders in the TEAMS consortium include Safaricom, Jamii Telecom, Wananchi, Essar, Kenya Data Networks, Access Kenya, Telkom Orange and Bandwidth & Cloud Services.
Mr Tanui further said, “We are deeply grateful for the patience that our TEAMS consortium members and all our customers showed during this time.” It is estimated that the repairs of the cable, including costs for temporary traffic restoration via other cables during the TEAMS cable outage is about Usd 6 Million (Kshs 500 Million), excluding loss of business as a result of heavily constrained bandwidth.
