Ship finally sets sail to repair severed cables

A ship that spends most of its time docked at Cape Town is at the centre of a drama to restore SA’s full internet access to the world.

The Leon Teverin, operated by Orange Marine, a subsidiary of French telecommunications giant Orange, is specifically tasked with repairs to the Wacs and SAT3 cables. However, it was confined to the harbour for several days as storms lashed Cape Town in the wake of the internet outage.

Telkom’s wholesale division, Openserve, has been issuing regular updates on the status of the mission, finally announcing on Wednesday that the ship had set sail at 9.30pm the night before.

However, it will take up to a week to reach the site of the break on the SAT3 cable, between Angola and Gabon. From there it will head to the first break on the Wacs cable, further north near Libreville, Gabon.

The cables are operated by two separate consortia and Openserve says it has “made its resources available to both consortiums to assist wherever possible”.

Once the ship reaches each site it must lift the cable, attach buoys, examine the cable, splice new lengths of cable to repair the break, conduct testing, and then re-lay the cables on the sea bed. The process can take another week. This means final repairs may only be completed in about 10 days from today.