Internet Service Outage: Impact on South Africa.
Internet Service Outage: Impact on South Africa.
South Africa plunged into digital darkness today as Microsoft grapples with a widespread service outage spanning the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region. This disruption has left businesses and individual users stranded without access to vital cloud services like Microsoft 365, Teams, and Azure.
Acknowledging the problem, Microsoft has updated its service status page and social media channels to inform users about the ongoing investigation into the issue. However, the tech giant has refrained from providing an estimated timeline for the restoration of services. The outage couldn’t have come at a worse time for businesses heavily reliant on Microsoft’s cloud services.
Microsoft has stated on its recent social post ‘We’ve identified a networking issue within the region and are redirecting traffic to mitigate impact. While the Admin center is unavailable for some customers, we’ll provide more frequent updates”
We’re investigating reports of an issue where some users in the EMEA region are unable to access one or more Microsoft 365 services. Please follow the SI MO737187 in your admin center for more details. Majority of the reports are coming from South Africa and the United Kingdom.
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) March 14, 2024
Reports of service disruptions aren’t limited to Microsoft alone. According to downdetector, a platform monitoring online outages, several other service providers such as MTN, Telkom, Vodacom, Seacom, Vumatel, and Openserve are also experiencing issues. While it remains uncertain if these outages are interconnected, they collectively pose significant challenges for many South Africans.
Several subsea cable breaks have disrupted internet connectivity in South Africa. These cable outages are impacting various internet service providers and cloud service providers nationwide, resulting in a lack of connectivity for some South African users.
Openserve can confirm the cable failures of the WACS and SAT-3 undersea cables. The impact on the Openserve network is limited to customers on the international private leases circuits (IPLC) services.
— Openserve (@OpenserveZA) March 14, 2024
Certain customers are currently experiencing intermittent connectivity issues due to multiple undersea cable failures affecting SA's network providers, including us. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
— Vodacom (@Vodacom) March 14, 2024
