The East African Marine System (or TEAMS) cable is to undergo scheduled, preventive maintenance works aimed at enhancing the security of the cable at UAE Off-Shore against anchoring ships and external aggression following the proposed expansion of UAE Port of Fujairah is planned for July – August 2016.
The actual downtime of the system will be from July 20 – 28, 2016. The works carried out after July 28, 2016 will not be service affecting. This is to assure our esteemed customers that every effort will be made to minimize system downtime and service interruption.
Commenting on the planned Preventive Maintenance Works, TEAMS General Manager Joel Tanui said: “This planned cable reinforcement works is designed to increase security of the TEAMS cable against anchoring ships and external aggression. The timing for Preventive Maintenance Works has been chosen in compliance with the UAE Port of Fujairah timelines to avail more anchoring space required for expansion of the Port. 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. Thereafter, the remaining protective works will be carried out after the system is re-powered and traffic restored. TEAMS kindly urges our esteemed customers to bear with us during this time of preventive maintenance; aimed at improvement of the quality of service and availability of the cable. All the preventive maintenance works are estimated to take about 2 weeks, subject to favourable sea weather conditions, with every effort being made to reduce the overall time as much as possible.”
It is estimated that the Preventive Maintenance Works on TEAMS cable, including costs for temporary traffic restoration via other cables during the TEAMS cable outage will about US $3 million (Kshs 300 Million), excluding loss of business as a result of heavily constrained bandwidth supply to contracted customers.
TEAMS is a public-private partnership and the premier undersea cable system serving the entire East African region. Besides the Kenya government, the other shareholders in the TEAMS consortium include Safaricom, Telkom Kenya, Liquid Telecom Kenya, Jamii Telecom, Wananchi Telecom, Access Kenya Group and Bandwidth & Cloud Services Group.
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