The recent internet disruptions being experienced in Kenya and other East African nations may persist for almost a month.

The CEO of Technology Service Providers Association of Kenya (TESPOK) Fiona Asonga, while speaking in an interview on Citizen TV disclosed that the damaged deep-sea cables may take up to a month to be repaired.

Submarine cables are cables laid on the sea and ocean bed that use fiber-optic technology to transmit data such as telephone and internet traffic to provide telecommunications links across the world’s continents.

The cuts which occurred in Mtunzini area of South Africa have caused the internet outages, with extensive effects felt over the past weekend throughout the region.

The various service providers have set up measures to ensure business continuity. Kenya’s leading telco Safaricom issued a statement on X (formerly Twitter) to assure their customers they have strategies in place to assist them.

“To address this we are pursuing additional capacity with other undersea cable partners to take care of the affected bandwidth and working with impacted cable provider for resolution,” read part of their statement.

According to the CEO the conditions that are being experienced now have been occurring since January this year.

“What happened over the weekend has been happening since the beginning of this year. Several incidents have taken place where we have had submarine cable systems being disrupted to the point we cannot access certain services” she disclosed.

Kenyans are encouraged to bear with the process as it requires extensive assessment. Divers must go to the ocean floor determine extent of damage and thereafter a report will be made to the stakeholders which might take time.

“We have to give them another three weeks to a month to fix the interim. There is a lot of solutions being put forward by the service providers” Asonga added.