[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Sat-3 cable has been cut 53km into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Cape Town, though the impact on services for consumers has been minimal, Telkom subsidiary Openserve said on Friday.

Openserve has diverted international traffic along other routes to mitigate the impact.

The submarine cable is a consortium-owned system managed and operated by Openserve from its Melkbosstrand cable landing station on South Africa’s west coast in conjunction with the network operations centre in Centurion.

“A power loss detected on the cable by our technical team in Melkbosstrand on Wednesday, 12 July at 7.11pm triggered further investigation of the failure,” said Openserve CEO Alphonzo Samuels in a statement.

“A physical break in the cable occurred about 53km into the Atlantic Ocean from our landing station at a water depth between 182m and 201m. The cause of the break has not been determined as yet.”

Samuels said traffic carried by Telkom’s Saix network is unaffected by the break owing to redundancy that has been put in place.

“We were aware that this break will have an impact on some of our Internet service provider clients and, in turn, their customers. Our engineers committed to, wherever possible, assist in diverting traffic of our clients to ensure continued international connectivity,” he said.

“Users of some Internet service providers may still experience slow response from websites based on servers outside South Africa but I believe that we have managed to contain the impact.” — (c) 2017 NewsCentral Media