The repairs on the fibre cables in the North African country of Egypt slackened Internet access in South Africa this week. This caused sluggish average Internet speeds in South Africa, service provider MWeb said.

Many Internet service providers in South Africa use the Seacom cable to provide global data volumes to their clients. Seacom manages a 17 000km undersea fibre broadband cable.

This cable is linked to a number of places alongside Africa’s eastern coastline like Mombasa in Kenya and Mtunzini in South Africa. The cable also connects to Europe and other sections of North Africa. “Seacom are carrying out maintenance today which should continue until 10pm this evening. This may potentially cause slow browsing and downloads during peak times,” MWeb told its customers.

Meanwhile, Seacom has given a further explanation on what the maintenance in Egypt involved. “Seacom has a planned maintenance activity that has been scheduled on 29 April to repair a shunt fault near Abu Talat,” Linda Carter, who is the head of marketing at Seacom’s shared services, said in an e-mailed statement.