Internet service in and around Mogadishu, Somalia suffered a crippling blow recently as the East African Submarine System (EASSy) cable, which provides service to the area, was cut by the anchor of a passing ship. The government of Somalia estimated that the impact of the submarine cable cut was US$10 million per day and detained the MSC Alice, the cargo vessel that reportedly caused the damage.

The cable was repaired on 17 July. The incident is the latest in a series of recent submarine cable breaks (see Nigeria, Ecuador, Congo-Brazzaville and Vietnam) that remind us how dependent much of the world remains on a limited set of physical connections which maintain connectivity to the global Internet.

Internet in Mogadishu

West Indian Ocean Cable Company together with local partner Dalkom Somalia, brought the first broadband cable to the troubled horn of Africa via the East Africa submarine cable system. (Video source: CGTN Africa)The story of how high-speed Internet service came to Mogadishu is nothing short of remarkable. It involved Somali telecommunications personnel staring down the threat of a local terrorist group (Al-Shabaab) in order to establish Somalia’s first submarine cable connection. This submarine cable link would be vital if Mogadishu were to have any hope of improving its local economy and ending decades of violence and hunger. However, in January 2014, Al-Shabaab announced a prohibition against ‘mobile Internet service’ and ‘fiber optic cables’ stating,

Any individual or company that is found not following the order will be considered to be working with the enemy and they will be dealt with in accordance with Sharia law.

The government of Somalia urged its telecoms not to comply with the Al-Shabaab ban. Then in February 2014, technicians from Somalia’s largest operator Hormuud Telecom were forced at gunpoint by Al-Shabaab militants to disable their mobile Internet service.

At that time, Internet service in Mogadishu was entirely reliant on bulk satellite service, which has limited capacity and suffers from high latency when compared to submarine cable or terrestrial fiber-based service. Liquid Telecom’s terrestrial service to Mogadishu wouldn’t become active until December 2014 and the semi-autonomous regions of Somaliland and Puntland in the northern part of the country use terrestrial connections to Djibouti for international access.

Despite the threats from Al-Shabaab, Hormuud Telecom elected to press ahead with its planned activation of new service via submarine cable that would be crucial for the development of Mogadishu’s economy.

The graphic below shows a dramatic drop in latencies as Hormuud Telecom shifted its transit from satellite to submarine cable. Hormuud passed traffic across the cable for a little more than an hour on 18 February 2014, starting at 21:05 UTC. It then shifted traffic again at 20:07 UTC on 20 February for about 12 hours before committing to the new cable for good at 17:17 UTC on 21 February.

Immediately following the activation, I drafted a blog post (as I had done in the cases of Cuba and Crimea) heralding the EASSy subsea cable activation in Mogadishu as a great milestone for the troubled region. However, at the request of the leadership of WIOCC, the company that owns the EASSy cable, we refrained from publication. The primary concern at the time was the safety of the hostages Al-Shabaab had recently taken when they raided a Hormuud Telecom office in the Jilib district. We agreed not to publish the blog post so as not to draw additional publicity to Hormuud’s defiance of Al-Shabaab, which could have put those Hormuud employees at risk. Now, 3.5 years later, the fact that telecoms in Somalia use the EASSy cable to connect is no secret.

January 2017 Outage

Somalia held a presidential election earlier this year, and as the candidates were getting ready for their first nationally televised debate, the country’s primary link to the global Internet went out. Many Somalis were understandably concerned:

However, despite its tremendously unfortunate timing, this Internet outage was due to emergency downtime on the EASSy cable which was needed to repair a cable break that occurred the previous week near Madagascar (which we reported on here). Regardless, 12 presidential candidates walked out on the debate believing the outage was a political dirty trick.

The following graphics depict how this outage impacted WIOCC service into Mogadishu as well as Mozambique.

Recent Cable Cut

At 17:47 UTC on 24 June 2017, the spur from the EASSy cable leading to Mogadishu was severed by a passing ship—not an uncommon occurrence according to the International Cable Protection Committee, an advocacy group whose aim is “to protect the world’s submarine cables.”

As illustrated in the graphic below, the loss of EASSy caused Hormuud to revert to medium-earth orbit satellite operator O3b and, to a lesser degree, Liquid Telecom out of Kenya. As we have noted in the past, O3b enjoys a latency advantage over traditional geostationary satellite service; however, a satellite link cannot replace the considerable capacity lost due to a submarine cable cut. As a result, during the cable outage, there were widespread connectivity problems in Mogadishu.

Conclusion

A couple of months after the EASSy cable went live in 2014, BBC reported on the ‘culture shock’ sweeping Mogadishu due to the introduction of high-speed Internet service. Its absence informs us of the value the EASSy cable brings the Mogadishu economy: $10 million/day.

Presently, Mogadishu is lauded as one of the fastest growing cities in the world and is enjoying a resurgent economy primarily due to the withdrawal of Al-Shabaab but also due to improved telecommunication services, the lifeblood of a modern economy. If it wasn’t for the heroic work of the dedicated telecommunications professionals in Mogadishu in 2013 and 2014, this service could have never been established.

This article was originally published on Dyn’s weblog.