Telecom network in Seychelles to undergo maintenance this weekend

The cause of the degradation is a land joint in the beach manhole at Beau Vallon in Seychelles and a land joint in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. (Seychelles Cable Systems Company)

(Seychelles News Agency) - Seychelles expects interruptions in telecommunication services from this Saturday evening to midday Sunday when the Seychelles Cable Systems Company undertakes maintenance work.

The company said on Wednesday that according to measurements conducted in May it was determined that there is substantial signal degradation on the land sections of the Seychelles East Africa System (SEAS).

"The cause of the degradation is a land joint in the beach manhole at Beau Vallon in Seychelles and a land joint in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The supplier Alcatel Submarine Networks has confirmed that both joints have to be replaced as soon as possible as the signal is continuously degrading and it is highly probable that traffic will cease in a matter of a few months," added the company.

Seychelles Cable Systems Company said that it is also expected that there will be a negative impact on the quality of service on telecommunication services nationally during this period.

Meanwhile, the principal secretary of the Department of Information Communication and Technology, Benjamin Choppy, told SNA on Wednesday that Seychelles expects to see the landing of the second submarine communication cable system - the Pakistan East Africa Cable Express (PEACE) – by the end of the first quarter in 2022.

The second submarine cable system will provide Seychelles, an archipelago in the western Indian Ocean, with connectivity security.

PEACE will run from Pakistan, go up to Europe and come down to Africa. The branch connecting Seychelles will come from Kenya. The project which is being undertaken by the Seychelles Cable Systems Company Limited is expected to cost $20 million.

"The system has already been manufactured and right now there are certain planning taking place relating to its deployment," said Choppy.

"We need to fit ourselves in the timetable of the larger system. Based on the most recent plan of work we have received from Huawei Marine Network, the contractor undertaking the project, our cable will land towards the end of the first quarter of next year, assuming that there will not be any adverse conditions internationally. Commercial operations are expected to start soon after," he added.

The signing for the installation of the cable took place in 2018 and work was expected to start in 2019 and be completed in 2020, however, this was pushed to July 2021 and now to March 2022.

The second submarine cable will land at Perseverance - a man-made island on the north-eastern coast of the main island of Mahe - and at the moment, the new Cable Landing Station is being built and expected to be ready by the end of this month so as to receive equipment that will come in by next August.

Currently, Seychelles has only one fibre-optic cable, built under the Seychelles East Africa System (SEAS) in 2012 connecting the main island - Mahe - to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

SEAS supports over 90 percent of internet traffic in the country with the amount on the satellite being minimal.

"The main rationale of the second cable is to provide connectivity security as we currently have only one cable. Should a problem arise on the current cable, we will lose connection and go in the dark. It will be difficult for operators to switch to satellites with the amount of traffic that we have on the current cable," said Choppy.