Cape Town - The repairs to the West Africa Cable System (WACS) have been completed, but South Africans may experience 'brief connectivity interruptions', said the South African National Research and Education Network (SANREN) in a tweet posted on Friday.
SANREN tweeted that it began to see recovery of the SANREN WACS links as of 07:13 on Friday morning.
It has confirmed that post-recovery checks are being done to ensure that the cable is properly fixed.
"We are hoping that this is the permanent recovery", said SANREN, adding that it is awaiting final clearance that all is well.
South Africans can expect the slow internet to be working at its optimal speed by Saturday.
Repair vessel Ile D’Aix reached the site of the cable break of the Wacs and started the repair process earlier this week.
The outages have inconvenienced many who are trying to work from home after President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a nationwide lockdown to stop further spread of coronavirus.
The breakage that happened on the March 28, as well as a second break along the South Atlantic Telecommunications (SAT-3) off shore Congo, has led to slow internet over the course of the week.
The SAT-3 fault is located in a similar area to a previous break in January, which was apparently caused by a short circuit.
The cable systems are deployed in the Atlantic Ocean, connecting SA and many other African countries to Europe.
For now it seems the break will affect only customers using Telkom's network locally.