The Seacom cable is one of the main data tributaries which help keep us online and serves to connect the African continent to international cable systems.

An MWEB spokesperson stated this morning on the service providers' Facebook page, "SEACOM cable break north of Cairo. Engineers only able to repair this morning due to current curfew conditions in the region. We do have some alternative bandwidth on another leg of SEACOM, and of course, have our full SAT 3 capacity."

It has since been reported that service has been restored to the cable, and this is, "likely to remain stable during the restoration of the fibre break."

The cable has been bogged down by problems a few times in 2010, including a period of extended connectivity problems when a part of the undersea cable was damaged.

According to MyBroadband, this time the fault doesn't seem to lie with the undersea portion of the cable, but rather on the terrestrial side, with the problems blamed on a fault on the route between Alexandria and Cairo.

The downtime seems to have impacted ADSL users across the spectrum, with some reporting a slowdown in international connectivity rates while others experienced complete international downtime.