Tuesday, July 06, 2010

M-Web 2, Seacom 0

SEACOM is an undersea cable that links Africa with Europe and Asia, when it works. It's also the primary bandwidth provider for my ISP, M-Web. Right now it's broken. This is the second time this year, and it will probably remain broken for the semi-finals and finals of the FIFA World Cup. How embarrassing.
M-Web gets my thumbs up during this debacle. When the cable went down yesterday, it effectively cut all access to the rest of the web, including this blog, Google, news sites, etc. M-Web responded quickly, posting a network status notice explaining the problem, and within a few hours they had alternative connectivity in place.
Last time the cable went down, M-Web sent a letter of apology to its customers and promised to have more effective plans in place for any future issues. Clearly they have kept their promise. Viva M-Web, Viva! They were also the first ISP to offer uncapped broadband, and it works really well. Right now we're in "emergency mode" so some services are flaky, but the important ones are online, unlike other ISPs who have nothing.
Update, Wed 7th July: Telkom, that bastion of reliability and business ethics (NOT!) decided not to provide M-Web with bandwidth after all. They have an effective monopoly of the other undersea cable, SAT3, and decided to sell the bandwidth to someone else. So now ISDSL has bandwidth but M-Web doesn't. ISDSL's connectivity has been up and down like a yo-yo the whole day. And SEACOM is still broken. Eish!

1 comment:

Drew said...

...now you SEACOM now you don't.....?

SEAGONE?......SEAFUN?.....NOCOMS?

SEAKING....?