Zimbabwe's Internet Went Down for About Five Hours. The Culprit Was Reportedly a Tractor. (slate.com)

Zimbabweans lost internet access en masse on Tuesday when a tractor reportedly cut through key fiber-optic cables in South Africa and another internet provider experienced simultaneous issues with its primary internet conduits. From a report: The outage began shortly before noon local time and persisted for more than five hours, affecting not only citizens' day-to-day internet usage but businesses that rely upon web access. And while five internet-free hours might sound unfathomable to those of us accustomed to having the web constantly at our fingertips, large-scale internet outages -- from inadvertent lapses caused by ship anchors to government-calculated blackouts designed to showcase political power -- do happen, and maybe more frequently than you'd thought. According to local news sources, a tractor in South Africa damaged cables belonging to Liquid Telecom, which has an 81.5 percent market share of Zimbabwe's international-equipped internet bandwidth as of the second quarter of 2017 and leases capacity to other internet providers. In a bad coincidence, city council employees in Kuwadzana, a suburb of Zimbabwe's capitol city of Harare, cut an additional TelOne cable around the same time. (According to NewsDay Zimbabwe, it was an accident. The company blamed "faults that occurred on our main links through South Africa and Botswana" in a statement.)

Comments

Not just in East Jesus

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> five internet-free hours might sound unfathomable to those of us accustomed to having the web constantly at our fingertips

I've been working with large datacenters for about twenty years now. One of the most terrifying things we can hear is that a truck with a backhoe has just pulled up down the street. And I've seen more "oops, they accidentally dug up all our redundant links" (because they were concentrated at point X) more times than I can count. So yes, it happens, and that large cable that you may see from time to time lying right on the ground (near a hole) is really some poor business's lifeline to the Internet.

Re:Not just in East Jesus

[tlhIngan]

I believe there's also a term for it, "backhoe fade".

Happens now and again - even when you follow all the rules. Most places have a "call before you dig" rule where if you blindly dig and disrupt services, you're responsible not only for the damage, but also for the repairs and remediation and other costs. (And of course, opening yourself up to other costs since it basically admits guilt - think 0of the whole neighbourhood of displaced people you need to pay hotels and other costs for because you hit a gas line).

Even so, you do hit unmarked utilities now and again - usually it's unused cabling that was forgotten about. But calling usually indemnifies you from damage costs since everyone thought it was a clear spot. Either way it's usually on the utility to fix it at their expense since you did the right thing and called to make sure you weren't digging where you shouldn't.

"Backhoe Fade"

[slipped_bit]

I believe this is what is known as "Backhoe Fade."

Not exclusive to Zimbabwe...

[XxtraLarGe]

A farmer in Michigan took out the internet with a backhoe for several hours. His farm is on the I-94 corridor and he accidentally cut through Merit's backbone connection. It made being the LMS administrator for a college with 500+ online courses a lot of fun. Phone rings: "Hi, I can't connect to my online classes!"

Re: Five hours!?

[Gary van der Merwe]

Wth dude? I've never seen a 419 come from Zim. They generally come from Nigeria, which is over 6000km from Zim. I guess you are one of these ignorant Americans who have never had a geography lesson in your life?

"unfathomable"

[greenwow]

What? Much of this country has Comcast, so more than five total hours of outages happen nearly every week.

Re:poor protection?

[HumanWiki]

This stuff happens even here in the USA.... Not even a stretch... I've had tickets I've closed out for ISPs due to "fiber seeking backhoe"

Great for Hiking

[clonehappy]

Whenever you go hiking way out in the woods, always be sure to carry a length of fiber along with you, in case you get lost. This way when the backhoe operator arrives to dig it up, you just follow him home.

Re:poor protection?

[ShanghaiBill]

I've had tickets I've closed out for ISPs due to "fiber seeking backhoe"

A backhoe makes sense. A tractor does not. Plows rarely go deeper than 8 inches (20 cm).

Most likely this is just a dumb journalist that doesn't understand the difference between a backhoe and a tractor.

Call before you dig

[portwojc]

Backhoe Fade