South African internet users utilising SEACOM bandwidth are currently problems with international connectivity due to an unconfirmed cable fault.

The problem arose shortly before 11:00 this morning and has persisted throughout the day. SEACOM has yet to confirm whether the problem is terrestrial or submarine related or when the issue will be resolved.

Numerous South African internet service providers utilize SEACOM bandwidth for international traffic. One of these is Afrihost, which sent out the following notice to its users this morning:

“Our upstream service providers' engineers are investigating the cause of the problem. We will post more details here shortly once we have more information,”

Other services including instant messaging such as Skype and Google Talk have also been affected. Local traffic has not been curtailed.

According to a number is ISPs some traffic is in the process of being rerouted through SAT-3, South Africa’s other major submarine cable network.