South Africa damage to the SAT-3 and WACS undersea cable Jan 16 2020

See https://mybroadband.co.za/news/internet/336416-how-south-africas-internet-survived-cable-breaks.html and the aftermath at https://mybroadband.co.za/news/internet/336426-slow-internet-speeds-in-south-africa-at-least-12-more-days.html.

Both the SAT-3 and WACS undersea cable were damaged Jan 16, 2020. This left many South Africans with slow Internet connections to international websites. The cable systems are deployed in the Atlantic Ocean and connect various African countries to Europe – including South Africa. That leaves Africa Coast to Coast (ACE) and Equiano providing access to Europe and beyond and SAFE providing access via India and Malaysia and the South Africa Express (SAEx2) which will provide access via India and Malaysia in 2021. 

From https://mybroadband.co.za/news/internet/336426-slow-internet-speeds-in-south-africa-at-least-12-more-days.html

“Leon Thevenin on its way to the WACS S1i cable grounds,” TENET said. “We have a provisional repair date of the 8th February for the WACS cable system.”

“SAT-3 will be attended to thereafter. This information may be subject to change.”

Maps of the cables (from https://www.submarinecablemap.com/)  to Europe are shown below:

SAT3 (RFS 2002 April)	WACS (RFS 2012 May)	ACE (RFS 2012 December)	Equiano (RFS 2021)

Cables going East to India and Malaysia are shown below.

SAFE (RFS 2002 April)	South Asia Express (SAEx2) (RFS 2021 Q1)

RfS = Ready For Service so the current backups to Europe and probably the US are  ACE going West and SAFE going East.

Result as observed by PingER

Looking at the minimum RTT seen from SLAC to 20 targets in Southern Africa we see a step function going from a 25%-75% of ~ 300-320 ms to 325-355ms. See the statistics below.

Minimum RTT measure every 30 minutes  for Sites in Southern AFRICA seen from EDU.SLAC.STANFORD.PINGER 

The targets are