Mobile Telecommunications Ltd, MTC, has announced that a scheduled maintenance work on the West African Cable System (WACS) is ongoing from 01 June until 16 June 2025. During WACS maintenance, internet connectivity may be temporarily affected in regions that rely on the WACS cable for their internet traffic – of which Namibia is part of.
This means that three of MTC – internet links that run via WACS will be affected, and as such, as an interim MTC has rerouted data traffic to alternative back-up links to ensure service continuation to our customers to ensure minimum disruptions. This allows them to maintain acceptable service levels and compliance even when WACS is offline.
“WACS maintenance is a regular occurrence, and is usually scheduled to allow for repairs, upgrades, or other necessary work on the cable. To minimize the impact of WACS maintenance, we have invested in our redundancy links (routes) and alternative infrastructure to support operations and ensure that you as the customer impact is kept at minimum levels as per industry standards” enthused Tim Ekandjo, MTC’s Chief Brand, Marketing, Communications, and Sustainability Officer.
Our team is monitoring the network for any possible swift intervention that might be required” added Ekandjo. WACS is a high-capacity broadband undersea cable system linking Southern, West Africa to Europe, and is designed to support present and future Internet, e-commerce, data, video, and voice services. Its landing station in Namibia is Swakopmund, from which the cable travels inland to major towns and cities in the country. The 14000-km WACS cable brings direct connectivity between Namibia, West Africa, the UK and the rest of the world, with a design capacity of at least 5.12 Tbit.
It has landing points in South Africa, Namibia, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Cape Verde as well as the Canary Islands, Portugal, and the United Kingdom. WACS was constructed at a cost of US$ 600 million by international and local partners. Namibia`s investment in the design and construction of the cable amounts to some US$75 million, which has been co-invested with Botswana on a 50/50 basis.