Slow internet speeds expected as TEAMS undergoes week long maintenance

Internet users should brace for slow speeds and periodic outages as a key fibre optic cable undergoes maintenance.

The east African Marine System Cable (TEAMS) which connects Kenya to the international internet network in the United Arab Emirates port of Fujairah, will undergo maintenance works for eight days starting on Wednesday through to July 28.

The TEAMS cable is jointly owned by the government and private sector players and was the first major undersea cable to connect to Kenya in efforts of increasing internet speeds.

Besides the government, other shareholders in the cable include Safaricom, Telkom Kenya, Liquid Telecom, Jamii Telecom, Wananchi Telecom, Access Kenya Group and Bandwidth and Cloud Services Group

During the maintenance period users will experience constrained bandwidth supply.

TEAMS General Manager Joel Tanui said the planned cable reinforcement works is expected to increase security of the TEAMS cable against anchoring ships and external aggression as the port of Fujairah undergoes expansion.

“During the time of complete system downtime, estimated at a maximum of 10 days, customers are likely to experience slow internet speeds because of bandwidth constraints as result of limited traffic restoration via other cable systems,” Mr Tanui said.

TEAMS estimates maintenance works on the cable, including costs for temporary traffic restoration via other cables during the cable outage at Sh300 million, excluding loss of business as a result of heavily constrained bandwidth supply to contracted customers.

Kenya is connected to three other undersea cables; SEACOM Eassy and LION2, with internet service providers expecting little disruption as they use other cables as redundancy.