Kenya grapples with fiber cuts

The country of Kenya has been stung by the network architecture it has chosen for its national fiber-optic infrastructure.

Winfred Kagwe of news provider The Star has reported that the permanent secretary of Kenya's ministry of information and communications, Bitange Ndemo, is proposing changes to the way fiber-optic cabling systems are designed and administered in his country.

The catalyst for these proposed changes is a string of fiber cuts, the most recent of which "nearly [cut] off the entire country for two days," Kagwe reported. He further stated that Ndemo is proposing changes intended to reduce the incidence of outages when cuts happen.

The country has not implemented a ring architecture for its fiber-optic cabling system, leaving it prone to widespread outages like those it has experienced recently. Ndemo is quoted as saying, "Initially we thought everyone would behave, so we put all the cable in the one-line format; this is what is causing the outages."

Kagwe reports that experts are saying the financial loss suffered by the outages "runs into millions."

You can read Winfred Kagwe's full report here.